Hi all. I'm making a Deadpool headset stand and it'll take about 2 days to be complete. I have a 10% infill and 3 lasers at 50 speed and i was wondering if a new piece will break easily with no infill. Thanks!
I'll try this for my next big piece! Thanks
Lightning is also an alternative
Yeah this is pretty much what lightning was designed for. Large decorative prints.
True, but lightning often makes a piece weirdly topheavy because of how much material it puts to support the top surfaces vs. how little it places at the bottom.
I did a piece with lightning recently and stopped the print 3/4 of the way up and filled it with airsoft bbs. Came out really cool and had nice heft.
How do you stop the BB's from rattling around inside?
Well for that particular piece I liked the rattle because it gave it kind of a maraca-type affect. Initially I was going to try sand but then I remembered someone posting about how they did that and then the extruder fan blew sand out all over the inside of their printer. So I guess what I'm saying is lightning is useful if you want to fill the print with something to give it weight, but what that ends up being is situation dependent.
I'm so glad I read this. That sounds like it'd be a nightmare in hell to deal with and clean up
You can use sand, just mist the top layer of the sand with water and it won't blow around. I've done it a couple times, just be smart about it
Lead shot would be a good for weight as well
That was my first choice but I didn't have any laying around
Thank you for this comment. The throwback to the sand incident gave me a chuckle.
Though I wasn't the op, I remember that incidnent vividly.
I don't often learn from others' mistakes but that one stuck with me.
He forgot to share that the model was actually a pair of maracas so the rattling was a feature.
Mix them into some epoxy and pour it in. Just make sure they're submerged enough that the ones on top won't break free.
Won't the heat from the epoxy cure warp the print?
Probably not? You want a mix that's basically all bbs, there shouldn't be a big mass of epoxy.
But I've only actually done it on finished prints with thicker walls. So good point. Experiment at your own risk and all.
That's a sweet idea! I've used other things to weight models but never thought of airsoft BBs. Nice cheap solution. Thanks for the recommendation!
What have you used?
Usually I use fishing weights when I need to weigh something down, but you have the issue where sometimes the magnetic sensor on certain printers passes over your void and picks up the weight. Or I do a fair bit of embedded magnets.
Half the appeal of using BBs is that they're not magnetic so I wouldn't have to worry about those issues.
Could increase bottom layer thickness to offset that a bit.
add more bottom layers.
I guess the only downside is that it doesn’t support the walls in any way, so if you have large flat walls, the wall might warp because of the such low strength of having no infill in some areas.
Yup, which is why i use gyroid. I'd rather have a sturdy print than a filament saving fragile one
Look for the gradient infill setting if you use Cura to slice, if you only print decorative things this is gonna boost the efficiency!
Cubic subdivision also isn't a bad option
This will be helpful with flower pots or argentinian "mates" too?
Its depending on the durability, you have to think about the settings. In most cases the middle of the print will be nearly empty with infill.
Oh, i see. Since at the moment i was Just trying that my printings looks nice, i was not thinking really about durability for that cases
What about like a 5% gyroid im usually good with just 3
Til thanks
This is the way.
I still prefer the Gyroid.. What I would do in this case.. is make a HOLLOW sphere void in this print.. so that the gyroid infil is only a half inch thick.. all the way around.
You could shell the model into whatever thickness you want and either leave the bottom hollow with supports or see if it will create supports inside an object
Adaptive cubic? What slicer is that on? I'll assume probably anything except creality print... I guess it is time to switch slicers...
Ooo thanks for the tip! Is it in orca slicer
Which slicer is that on? I’m using creality slicer, cura and voxeldance tango
In my experience stronger parts come from more walls, so reducing your infill to 5 percent and printing 3 walls will give you just as strong of a part and use less filament/time. I’ve also had good luck with lightning infill especially when using larger nozzle like .8 it feels almost the same as any normal print
3 Walls plus 1-5% infill makes for PLENTY strong parts. I printed a whole huge Cosplay-Gun for my GF using exactly this method and it is rock-solid. Like you said, strength comes from the walls. The infill is just there to keep the walls from being able to "bend" (which can otherwise cause layer-separation)
Don't the overhangs between the supports become an issue when the percentage of infill is that tiny?
Yes but gyroidal or lightning infill can cover for that.
I’ve never tried this, but what about 0% infill with internal tree supports with 0 top distance, 0 bottom distance, and 0 interface layers? Â
Good to know thank you! I've been here thinking that 10% was the recommended minimum. I've got a big print coming up that I need to be strong, I'll be sure to drop it down.
I'm using 3 walls, but i'll check 5% infill. How about the .8 nozzle? How is the final result?
The 0.8mm nozzle will get the print done in record time.
Appearance-wise, you will see the layer lines, but you'd see the layer lines with 0.4mm anyway. Either you can accept it and enjoy the 3D printed look, or you can post process with filler, sanding, and painting. Post-processing takes the same amount of time and produces the same result regardless of which nozzle you used.
You can also use a fuzzy skin texture to hide the lines, but it can triple print time.
That was what i need to know since i've never post processed prints with filler and sanding. Thanks!
After that first layer of Bondo spot putty, the size of the layer lines will be irrelevant :P
The gray benchy is .8 nozzle lightning infill this print is pretty big, you can see not greatest quality but that’s because my hot end was getting cranky, but as you can see from the good parts it looks good
Wow, thx por the pic. For bigger pieces like this i see is super useful
A lot of walls and lightning infill might also be a possibility.
What's the difference between adaptive cubic and lighning? I've seen that lightning reduces a lot of time and filament
That might be a bit of oversimplification, but you can think of lightning infill as it's a support, just inside your print for the print's roof. Adaptive is basically a cubic infill but cubes get bigger further from the walls/roof.
So the lightning generally consumes less material but has a bit of risk that infill would fail like supports sometimes do.
I see! Thanks a lot for the explanation!
Another thing is that if you have a model with a very detailed and bumpy top surface, not all infills will actually support every bit, unless it’s overly dense. In other words some spots will print over nothing and fail. Lightning is both very light (not dense) and actually supports the entire top surface.
I'll take this in consideration! Thanks!
Just something with lightning, I have used it for a few decorative pieces. Everything is incredibly light, so maybe look at adding weight to the model, old washers or nuts, if you plan on putting your headphones on and off of it.
Thanks! I've been making changes in Cura and i've seen that the piece i'm making right know weights 400grs or sĂł, and with 5% infill and lightning, its 163grs and 24 hours long
Yeah. I had made a Darth Vader bust with lightning. It turned out amazing but is so damn light it ended up tipping over if I just looked at it wrong.
Lightning is minimum infill needed to support the print, adaptive cubic would be for added strength when just increasing the walls isn't what you want.
Now it's make to me! Thanks
I’d just slice the model with both infills and look at the differences yourself
for big models I usually go with 5% infill - always worked great so far ...
I'll try reducing this too. Thanks!
Use an adaptive type or lightning infill.
I use support cubic for models like these.
Yikes! What is your infill %? You have it way too high for a static model.
I do 5% infill as my default, I'll go down to 3% for larger things.
For things that I want "strong" I might bump it up to 10-15%. Part strength comes more from wall thickness (number of perimeters) than it does infill.
And i second what u/shadowkiller said, "Adaptive cubic" is the only way to go for giant voids like this.
This piece is on 10% infill on giroid infill. Since i'm still learning i try the same i do for small character busts. But after lots of hours, material and advices here, i'm never going this way again! Lol
Sometimes I'll use like 5 or even 3% infill if it's a large piece
I rarely go over 5% infill unless I need a functional part to be extra strong. More outer walls is usually the best way to go. For a model I usually use lightening supports.
Thanks!!
It totally depends on your model and your usecase. In some cases you might get away without infill, but usually you will need *something* inside of the model as a support.
In some cases a adaptive cubic or a really low percentage might be a good choice.
If you need structural strength you might need a few layers extra of the wall or a high percentage infill,
Ie, there is absolutely no one-size fit's all
put a hollow sphere in the middle
If you are comfortable enough with 3D modelling software, you could add a hollow cavity to the design, so 80%+ of the interior volume would just be open air.
Not necessarily. Depending on the model and settings, the amount of filament necessary for the new internal walls would be larger than the infill needed to fill the base model. I once tried to hollow a star wars blaster and the base model was lighter than the hollowed one (2 walls, 10% infill).
I'm newbie at this, so i really dunno how to do this yet
You can do it in some slicers with a negative part. In Orca you just right click the model and go to Add Negative Part, then pick a primitive.
No, but it depends
most of the print's structural capabilities are done through the skin (outer surface) of the print if that is even an issue, but infill helps keep overhangs from sagging
if you can manage it, you can make custom support structures and just double, triple, quadruple or pentuple wall it to reinforce the outer layer wherever the supports dont make sense and cut down on nozzle move amounts and overall filament used (both of which also translate to a faster print time, so quicker print or faster issue to then find and stop, if you have, say a chip in the z-axis screw or something like that and then thus further still translates to less wasted filament when if/when it does fail)
for some prints, you can get away with it being completely hollow, but every time you have an overhang, it can sag, which can ruin the print, thats the biggest reason why there are supports, and infill also gives strength to the part to prevent it from being squeezed, but if its not structural, you can sometimes just outright ignore the infill
Thanks for all the explanaition! Since i'm new to this, i'm still learning!
For something like this, I'd go with one of the adaptive or support infills at 5-10%, or if it isn't going to be subject to much sideways or twisting force consider lightning infill at around 50% which will leave even bigger voids.
Most strength comes from perimeter count and width, infill is there to give some internal structure and weight. For something like this, you might have fared better by upping perimeter count, then use lightning or support cubic infill.
If you’re using Cura you can use the cubic subdivision infill or use the gradual infill setting. Cubic subdivision leaves larger voids the further the infill part is away from the hull, gradual infill sets a smaller infill percentage further away from the top.
I'm using Cura! Thanks!!!
No. For parts without mechanical constraints you can print with 0 infill but keep in mind that it will print successfully if it doesn't need internal support so to speak. Alternatively you can use lightning infill to save lots of filament and printing time
The only reason to use Gyroid is if you are doing a prop or cosplay piece that could take some hits every now and then, like someone bumping into you or smacking the piece on accident or somehting
I use gyroid since i've seen a youtuber recomending that for faster but resistent pieces, but i thing that applies for smaller pieces tho haha
I've never found it to affect speed much, but impact resistance is it's main feature. Size isn't really the key factor either, it's more the density of your infill, type of infill, and number of walls you are using. For example, I print Mando armor, and the average wall count I use is 3-4, with between 10-20% Infill. I use gyroid because all of the things I print will encounter regular use and jostling, and will need that added impact resistance. Size of the part doesnt really affect this too much in my experience, it's how you plan to use it. It looks like you are printing a spiderman bust, which would honestly have done fine being hollow with 4 walls.
Oh i see. Is good to see that my actual config is good for stuff like cosplay. But now i'm learning making figures just for my desktop. Thanks for the recomendation!
Of course! :) More than happy to help!
I almost always use less than 5% gyroid on stuff like that. Walls matter more than infill. Depending on the top of that print, you could probably do 1-2%.
Lol made an avacarosaurs model for my son, filled the infill with print waste so it rattles. He loves it.
Imo, no infill is not really an option. Don't do that. Like others have said, you can experiment using different styles or percentages though!
there are plenty of prints that can do without infill at all, but its completely dependent on the model, slicer, skill of the user, etc.
Yep, model dependant. Lets say a 100mm cube wont work without infill, you would have to bridge nearly 140mm diagonally, the majority of printers cant do that well enough to have a closed and uniform top layer. If i print a traffic cone, i dont need infill for the cone section, but probably for the flat base.
Generally speaking a little infill never hurts, even if it just reduces the squishiness of a model, so it doesn't feel like it will collapse as soon as you grab it
You can just add more top layers. The first bridged layer will be bad most likely but with enough layers it will even out nicely. I do this quite a bit on large models where I use something like 2% gyroid. It needs a lot of bridging and if you have 1 top layer or something you'll easily see the infill and the top will be weak. Simply adding a larger top layer and this solves the problem without having to increase the whole print by a large amount of unnecessary infill.
The question is, how many top layers are you willing to print? And when is it quicker to use a little infill rather then making top layers significantly thicker? If we stay at the said 140mm, id expect minimum of 6 to 8 top layers to get acceptable top surface, if not more. Unless you work with modifier objects, this also applies to the rest of your model.
There are also models that are simply impossible without infill, for example you have a cube and place a cylinder on the top surface, you wont get a successful transition from cube to cylinder as the material of the top layer of the cube has nowhere to hold onto. Maybe with lots of top layers it might recover, but then we are at the question of the paragraph above
I often put threaded screws on top of other much larger cylinders at 3-4 top layers and 2% gyroid. At 2 layers it is questionable. At 3 it's usually fine and the threads end up being perfect.
When the base cylinder is 200 mm tall and 80 mm in diameter the difference of using 2% and 5% infill and adding a couple top layers is still large.
Thanks! I'll check with all the advices so i can keep on learning!
some infill is necessary most of the time to avoid overhangs but you can definitely use lower infill or other types of it that use a lot less filament
Make your wall about 1.2-1.5 mm thick then use 5% infill
Depends how much strength you actually need.
I opt to go with lightning fill which is basically no infill at all save where a roof needs support and instead add more walls for strength.
change your infill settings... when I started, I was printing at 15% all the time.. too much, waste of filament
Yeah! I started at 20! Lol. Now i'm on 10, but reading the comments, for this pieces i'll reduce it to 5
Walls matter more. You could do a hollow shell if you wanted to. The issue is bridging the first top layer which is where adaptive infill comes in handy.
For large prints that aren't going to be under any stress other then themselves.
You can use whatever infill you like, but do put the walls to 4 (top/bottom too) and your infill to 5%. This will save on material while still giving the print some strength so it won't deform when you touch it.
Adaptive Cubic and Lighting leave too much "air" on the lower portions of the part that, if you don't have enough walls, the part will split and brake when just trying to remove it from the plate even. They are basically "tree" supports but for infill instead.
I like adaptive cubic for lather prints like this it prints faster and I believe uses less material then normal cubic
Do you mean 3 walls? I got really stuck on the laser parts lmfao
Hahahaha typo! Yeah, i mean 3 layers, as in 3 walls! Lol
Go for vase mode and you'll understand why the infill is required for big pieces :D
Printing a skull pencil holder for my sister right now. I dropped the infill to 5%.
I use lightning and then fill with plaster
Idk. I do like 2 percent on big space ls but if I never needed any of those fsr so idk how durable that is
Nice one
Depends, if you want your printer to run for 40 days next to your bed, print solid.Â
Otherwise, 5% for non-strucural.
If they are not going to hold anything but themselves, Lightning "infill" is a good option, then you can play with walls count for more or less stiffness
You can use a lot less than that.
You only need supports for over hanging components - try printing the top third of the model separately and glue it on afterwards
I usually make 4-5-6 walls, depends on the print and fill it with sand or somethin’, much heavier, feels more “premium” and generally people like it better that way. Obviously don’t use it on something that will be moved much, only decorations I guess
It's interesting what you say about the sand and the feeling of Premium. So, do you pause the printing and put the sand in and then continue?
Exactly, I 3D printed some tools to help me fill it easier and it’s not that big of a hassle as it was when I did it the first time
I use Infill for big prints but only like 5 percent or less.
Lightning infill is good for that
1 most important thing is: if u want to reduce infill, make sure to first increase wall number and width. You can easily add an extra 2-3 wall layers which will really help with the integrity of the build while allowing you to do a small 5% infill or watever
The width of the walls depends on the nozzle right? Or wider layers can be made with the stock 0.4 noozle?
You can squeeze them wider, just know your max volumetric flow rate, so slicer knows at what speed to cap at, to not outrun what you can melt (not underextrude). 0.5mm is a common first layer default for 0.4mm nozzles
Thanks for the example! There's so much about the parameters i don't know yet, is good to have a reference
Slicers like Orcaslicer have both pretty descriptive tooltips when you hover over options and great documentation. There are also a lot of guides that help with solving print issues to solve what you see And don't like.
Best thing is printing and paying attention and not changing too many settings all at once, so you can see the effects of each change by itself.
More important than line widths/heights is the creation of a good filament profile, based on how picky you are you'll end up with more or less of them as different brands and types like different temperatures, flow ratios and pressure advance.
Ok, I'm done flooding you with words to Google. ;)
Haha. It's good for me all the info! As a beginner, i really aprecciate the time you have take to write this out.
I've never used Orca, i'm still learning in Cura, but i'll check this slicer
You're welcome
Lmao, I love how you left the green sticker on like I did.Â
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16d
How do you define "thin" so i can understand the advice? I'm on 0.88mm and 3 walls
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16d
I see. The major part of this learning process is as you said, trying by my own. There are so many factors that might change. What works for you, might not work 100% for me. Thanks!!!
Depends on the application, if it's just a show piece you can do 5% infill
Adaptive cubic is good for prints like that. It leaves larger voids in the middle of models.