Improve your chances of 3D Printing Success! 3D Printing Masterclass Video Lecture | What is 3D Printing: Basic Knowledge - IT & Software

in today's 3d printing masterclass I'm
going to show you my techniques for 3d
printing difficult model successfully
first time using simplify 2d if you want
to improve your rate of success on your
3d printer and this is the video for you
let's get started what do you mean 3d
printing for as long as I have you start
to pick up a knack for determining
whether a 3d print will succeed or fail
depending on how you have sliced it in
your 3d printing slicer and I've only
learnt that through many many 3d print
failures so over the years I've devised
a sort of method of preflight checking
of my models in my slicer to make sure
that I've got the best chance of success
so I'd like to call us the 3 s's for 3d
printing success you have stability
support material and surface area these
are the three things that I check when
I'm slicing my file before I even set it
to my Trinity printer to give the file
the best chance of success so in this
video I'm going to go through three
different files of increasing 3d print
difficulty to show you how you can apply
this method to improve your odds of
getting a successful 3d print first time
so let's start with this file this is
the Easter a cash I designed last year
and it's a fairly easy to print model if
you do it correctly and if you don't do
it correctly it's probably going to fail
when you 3d print it so let's start with
our 3 s's let's start with the first one
stability looking at this model as it's
been brought in to simplify 3d you can
see straight away that if this model was
to be printed it's not going to be very
stable which is going to greatly
increase the chance of this model
failing now it could have support
material which I'll move on to in a
second but the first thing we need to
change is the orientation of the model
so to do that instability I'm going to
select edit and place surface on bed and
I'm going to try to make these models in
as stable position as I can as I can so
let's click the lower lip of this part
of the egg there and for the second one
place service on bed I want to click
this flat part there Center and arrange
so what I've done there is i reoriented
the 3d models so now they're going to be
nice and stable when they're 3d printed
which means they're more than likely
going to succeed so let's proceed to the
g-code print preview to have a look at
how it would 3d print so this is the
g-code preview of
now let's look at these second s for 3d
print success support what I'm going to
do is have a look at the model and see
if it's going to need support material
so I don't have a whole 3d print must
cast on support materials you can check
out right here if you want to dive into
it but basically looking at the models
you want to see if there's any direct
overhangs over nothing or parts that
start in thin air that would need to be
supported because 3d printing on FDM
machines it's molten plastic in air so
it needs support underneath it to build
but going from this model down the
bottom and up you can see that
everything's kind of quite gentle I mean
the curve of the inside thread of the
egg is a little bit aggressive but
that's not an issue it's not a 90 degree
overhang and you see as the egg forms
it's quite a gentle curve perhaps here
where the thread starts there but that's
internally in the egg I'm sure it's not
going to be a big deal and then
everything forms quite nicely like that
as it goes up and even here at the top
of the egg you see as it forms it's
going to do a bridge across there and
finish so we don't need support material
on this model you could have it but it's
unnecessary so we looked at support
material we don't need it for this model
what about the last one what about
surface area what do I mean by surface
area well the biggest cause for
catastrophic 3d print failures when they
detach from the print bed which means
your print will continue up to a certain
point it may be ninety percent complete
and then it breaks free and then
everything falls apart
your print fails and you end up with a
mess of noodles as your printer extrude
stress randomness into midair so this
model going back down we have a default
for bring it on the pressure I three
mark two and we play it you can see on
one half the egg we've got a nice solid
base but for the other half that's a
very thin supporting area for our egg
there's a risk that it may detach as
it's printing so what I had outside it
is called a skirt which lets the Machine
prime the extruder so it's ready to go
but it's not touching and it's not
assisting in increasing
surface area to the printbed so what I'm
going to do to increase the chance of
this print succeeding is I'm going to
turn that into a brim and a brim touches
the part and adds additional surface
area it's really quite valuable in
increasing that stick down hold down
force for the first layer so to do that
I'm going to go into additions and
underskirt brim see it has an offset I'm
going to make that zero and instead of
one outline I'm going to increase that
to four and here we have the
modification so now we have a brim
around our part so if we go right down
to the first layer it's only one layer
thick but you can see it's greatly
increased that first layer surface area
even with our other one it's increased
surface area and it's only one layer
thick so when the part is complete you
just peel it off with a pair of side
cutters sorry okay so that's how I would
print this egg model let's move on to
something a little bit more complicated
this is the Gaia Andersson Egyptian cat
3d scan that I love to study print on my
3d printers and initially it looks like
a pretty simple model to print but don't
be fooled there's a few key details to
this model that you really need to pay
attention to so I have to skirt again
not a brim and the model builds up and
initially if you're not paying much
attention it looks like it would be a
perfectly fine g-code model to print it
looks like there's nothing wrong with it
but if we look through our slicer
preview our decode preview you can see a
few key issues so let's start from this
point as it field as it forms the first
few layers of the print you notice one
very important detail most of the body
has a very good amount of surface area
remember 3 s's large amount of surface
area but that little foot doesn't now if
it's a small detail it's not going to be
a big big problem but as the model
builds up it's actually a very tall leg
and you can see as that leg builds its
independent from everything right up
until the body crosses over at that
point here but if you do not get a good
first layer adhesion you're going to end
up with this where the leg will print
almost to the top then the nozzle will
catch and break it free
and that is happening to me many many
times because I didn't really pay much
attention to that that very important
rule which is the surface area so we can
fix that again by creating a brim but in
this case I'm going to create an even
larger one I'm going to go to additions
and there are offset I'm going to
actually make it six like so so now I
have a brim of six lines on that first
layer not we're going to see is it
actually effectively created a joint
between those two legs so the first
layer we go right down like that it's
actually all joined together now so
again a brim can be broken away very
easily with a pair of side cutters once
the print is complete but now that leg
is not on its own it's actually joined
to the rest of the part so as it builds
up despite it being a separate body here
it's got a much larger surface area so
it's not going to break free and that's
probably the biggest issue with this
model that leg breaking off so now you
know how to fix it in that case let's
continue on shall we
so that fills up the model a little bit
more building up again model looks
gorgeous no issues at all till we get to
this point can you see the problem there
so without actually paying much
attention the model looks like it would
be fine but that overhang the caps head
is an overhang you can see here it
starts over thin air now if we don't
have support material holding that in
place it's going to fail and you're
going to end up with a cat with a very
very deform looking head we don't want
that so that solves that we need the
second s we need support material so to
apply support material to this print I'm
going to use manual supports because
we're using simplify 3d that's one of
the most powerful features it has in it
so you go to tools and customize support
features so we only want looking at that
decode preview we only need support
under that chin of the cat we don't want
it anywhere else so if we did an
automatic generation you can see it
fills it up in all these other places
under the legs under like the scarab
detail there under the eyes even in the
ears we don't need it there
this is where it's very powerful to just
manually add support so I'm going to
change our resolution to popular
resolution from 1 to 4 so it's a nice
thick support add new support structures
and I'm actually just going to view the
print underneath like that and then just
put them all around the chin as I can so
I'm blocking them together quite quite
tightly like so and if you view up from
here you can see that that chin may be a
little bit few more here will be fully
supported by support material you notice
I've accidentally added to support Tim
that's because when you pan and rotate
if you click and rotate it puts the
support in so I can go to remove and
just remove those so what we have now is
a column holding under the chin to make
sure the print to make sure the head is
held in place now there's one final
tweak I will mention for this particular
model and that's because we've just now
created a very tall fairly thin support
column remember surface area is very
important and we're building up a thin
column we need to increase its strength
and arguably its surface area now
unfortunately currently in this version
you can't add a brim or skirt around
support materials but what we can do
instead is if I go into support and turn
it on I can have an alternating angle
now again I talked about it in great
detail in my support material
masterclass 4 simplify 3d but what this
is going to do is alternate the layers
of our support giving us a very strong
column that's going to stay in place you
notice I've also set my dense support
layers to 4 which will support the
underside of our 3d print a lot better
than if it was not enabled and here's
our final results so we have a very
strong support material column that's
going to build up all the way up to the
top of the cat to the head right there
you see it nest beautifully under the
chin and once that print is complete
that support column will just break away
beautifully and you're left with a very
nice result that's going to work every
time alright so we're now on to our last
3d model the
which is a 3d scan done by the scan
Nevada initiative on my money Factory
I'm really a big fan of that sweater
gaya Anderson cap comes from as well and
this is a difficult 3d print without any
hesitation it's probably one of the more
complicated 3d prints I've ever
attempted it's ready print so why is it
so complicated well again let's go
through 3 s's stability let's have a
look at the model as it was brought in
now
the model has a flat base as you can see
here it's being prepared for 3d printing
in some cases it may have been a
different angle you might have to keep
that in mind or it may have been a raw
3d scan where the base looks flat that's
actually not quite so I'm just going to
double check here by going to edit and
play service on bed click there nothing
changed so it might have been slightly
off you never know always best to make
sure also you can see it in your gqo
preview if it's not perfectly flat right
support material now this is going to be
huge let's slice it without support
material let's dive in to see what the
support material will be needed for this
print ok again like the cat it's really
hard to tell where support material
needed unless you observe a model via
the layer-by-layer tool so let's go down
and scroll through the model right to
the start down here it's got a nice big
flat base that's excellent and then it
builds up with some actually quite
gentle curves realistically there's
nothing too serious about this part of
the model still working quite nicely
we've got some legs there so so far we
don't need support material so far so
good now we're getting to some trouble
areas so as I'm going up here you can
see over this area here and over this
area here we're going to form some
features and this is important because
this is the underside of the hand on his
on his knee so these details living
right in here
these details are small they're really
tiny and because of that with FGM 3d
printing they're going to be very
fragile the details under here not so
much under the knee we can get away with
some chunky support material that we can
just rip out we're not going to really
break anything but
here with the the fingers oh you get
over you have to be really careful so we
have to do that manually so going up
again where the fingers are also you see
there's the thumb again support material
is going to be needed to form most parts
and here's another hope overhang just
under next to his torso now look that's
sort of quite inside the model that
would be easy to miss you didn't look
carefully and again this this area here
that's quite a steep overhang we may
need support material there as well and
I speak tongue keyblock of it and
finally as we get towards the top you
think we're done not quite look at this
the hand the hand is over itself like
that and that's over in midair so that
definitely needs support material as we
go up again support material there and
finally finish the print so this is a
complicated print I identified about six
areas at least that needs support
material so let's go back to our preview
let's go back from preview mode and
let's go to customized support
structures so to help me identify them
again that's generated automatic support
structures and it's filled up lots of
areas but again we didn't we identify we
don't need it in all these areas so that
sort of helps us get an idea let's just
remove that to clear all like this part
of the rock there don't need support but
these fingers absolutely do need support
material they're going to be very
difficult to print so I'm going to enter
some maybe number level four so four
millimeter size pillars I'm going to add
some pillars under each finger like this
so now we've got pillars under each of
those fingers which is good and then
there's this overhang here on his chest
right we identified that so we can also
add supports there so I'm just going to
add them in along that line there great
we are obviously identified the fingers
the hand is going to be very hard so
let's add some supports in there so
under each of those fingers
then going back to the rest of the arm
missed the hand and of course we've got
overhangs under the chin as well so we
do need something in there something
within here so we're going to need
support there as well so there's a lot
of support in there so I'm going to have
to turn off the strongest support that I
designed with it into overlapping
90-degree offsets
I'm going to turn it back to normal
because it's going to be impossible to
remove that type of support from these
overhangs without breaking the fingers
it's going to be too way too fragile so
I'm going to do that so I'm going to go
to pretty sure I three and then support
generate support and let's remove these
we only want a zero Degree that's fine
okay so I've got our model and that
again go down to where we identified the
first parts of the support material so
you see it's got this column building up
here I would like it to be stronger but
it's hopefully going to be okay and you
see it's providing nice support a nice
better support for those fingers as it
builds up like that so that looks good
I'm pretty comfortable confident that
that's going to work and then we've got
more support up this area here to
support that overhang there so that's
going to be nice and supported and then
of course we have to build up to where
the fingers are here and this is going
to be the most tedious part to get right
so what I'm going to do once I'm
confident that it's going to work it
looks pretty good pretty dense supports
I will be honest but I should be a
removal with a little pick and a pair of
pliers so what I'm going to do is I'm
going to test that portion of the model
before I print the whole thing and this
is a great way to save yourself time and
frustration when you need to get a model
right but you're not sure the whole
thing is going to take say 20 hours
quite a long time to print it's
suggesting seven hours for this one but
I do have a quite small so what I'm
going to do is grab this model double
click and that offset I'm going to sink
it down into the print bed so by doing
that actually a little bit more - 75
thirty-six okay so by doing that we're
now only going to test the most
complicated parts of the 3d print to
make sure it works sort of wasting hours
to get to this point and find out it
doesn't work so we're going to prepare
to print so here we go it looks pretty
good
remembering the third s is service area
we've got a fairly large amount of
support here I'm not too worried about
that
if I if you were if you are concerned
about it detaching that I would
definitely turn your skirt back into a
brim like we did for the previous two
models this one I don't see it being
necessary building up like this and then
we have our model forming and the hand
and you can see with our test that the
support material though very tedious to
remove does remove and a hand is pretty
much unscathed so we were confident that
we can take this model and print it at
full size and once you get to the hand
part it will work so that way you save
yourself time and money with wasted 3d
printer filament to know the things
going to work especially if you're doing
it for a custom job like a customer you
can make sure that you're not going to
waste time trying to 3d print something
at full size as it fails you can test
the small elements that you're worried
about once you have your that proceed
and as long as you keep in mind the 3
s's stability support material and
surface area when it goes to slicing
your 3d printed files you're well on
your way to making sure you get a
successful 3d print first time every
time
so there you have it guys those are my
tips for getting your 3d print to
succeed every time first time on your 3d
printer instead of wasting hours on 3d
prints that fails because of a few
things you didn't look for in your
slicer a huge safety typify 3d for
sponsoring this episode of 3d printing
masterclass here on makers muse if you
wanna see future 3d putting tips tricks
and tutorials hit subscribe button helps
us out a huge amount look forward to
seeing again very surely catch later
guys bye
you
[Music]