Support material complete guide for 3D printing

this is your guide to 3D printing support material we'll cover how to use it efficiently as well as how to tweak your slicer to get it to peel off perfectly [Music] [Music] personally I don't really like using support material in fact I designed my plants to try and avoid it but sometimes it just can't be avoided and in those cases I want it to be as easy to use as possible my patrons requested a video on this topic so here we are covering multiple scenarios as well as multiple slicers let's start from the beginning by asking what is support material and why and when do we need it here is a simple test piece to show what a 3D printer can and can't achieve when building up layer by layer on the left we have an overhang in this example 45 degrees in the middle we have a bridge supported on both sides and then on the right we have an unsupported section cantilevered let's preview this print and see that in the earlier stages our angled overhang is in effect we can see on the left at the 45 degree overhang prints really without any trouble at all and as the print progresses a little further we can see that we're going to have our bridge in the middle as well as a are cantilevered unsupported section on the right if you're new to 3D printing you might be amazed just how good they are at bridging despite being a molten material the part cooling fan will solidify the plastic in mid-air however on the right the overhang supported on only one side is drooping badly because there's not enough support there to hold up the extruded plastic amazingly it doesn't recover quite well by the end of the print but in other cases such as this key ring we won't be so fortunate previewing layer by layer we can see that legs will be fine but as soon as these arms are introduced the tip of them will be printing in mid-air so to stop this from being unsupported we introduce support material shown here in Gray you can think of support material like scaffolding on a building a temporary structure designed to hold pieces from falling to the ground until the rest of the structure is completed and once the structure is complete just like building scaffolding we can remove it as it's no longer needed this means that there 3D printing support material is sacrificial and therefore will use up extra time and filament so coming back to our original questions support material is additional sacrificial plastic that we add to the print to support sections that would otherwise droop down and possibly cause the print to fail before we continue we need a suitable test model to demonstrate the principles and I think this support test by fotmas is ideal if we examine this model we can see that the geometry will cover a variety of scenarios where we might need support firstly we have a 45 degree overhang then we've got Affiliated overhang which starts close to vertical and gets steeper as it goes we've got an overhang with a flat surface we have an overhang with the circular bore on the inside and we have one more overhang on top cantilevered but most importantly this sits above the model rather than sitting on top of the bed the first thing I'm going to do is to slice it and print it without any support material in place just to see how it goes like this we use minimal filament and this took just under 15 minutes and considering no support honestly it doesn't look too bad but there are droopy sections where the plastic is messy because it's been extruded in midair so let's see how much we can improve this print by turning on support material next we'll answer the question what are the available types of support material and at the time of recording there's two to choose from traditional and tree or organic traditional is by far the most common so we'll start with that it's also the most like the scaffolding example we looked at from real life let's come back to our slicer and turn support material on slicing with the defaults at this stage all of the support material is shown here in green and let's break down exactly what we're seeing most support material has some sort of thicker element on the bottom which we can refer to as a raft this is to give a stable foundation for what's going to be built on top we'll then have a much Spicer pattern built up in layers vertically and this will form the bulk of the support material perhaps the most important layer is what we call the interface layer shown here in dark green this is designed to provide a solid platform on which the actual model is then printed however it's not printed on top directly there's always a subtle air gap in between to ensure they don't fuse together permanently we'll also note that by default this upper section has not been supported but we'll get to the settings for this shortly what you've seen so far is in my slicer of choice super slicer but you'll find that most slices build up their support material with these same elements they just might call them by a different name across various slices the approach is still more or less the same so now let's look at how to tweak these parameters to get that oh so satisfying to remove perfect support material this is where variation in slices makes things tricky but I'll try my best to cover most of the popular ones so we have Cura as a standalone as well as simplify 3D and the other popular slices started from slick 3r which was forked by Prussia slicer which was forked to make super slicer and also forked by bamboo labs to make bamboo studio and then that was by Soft fever to make Orca slicer when you hear me talk about prusa slice of derivatives we're talking about prusa slicer and everything that followed as the names of the settings seem to be quite consistent we'll start with some general settings that affect how the support is applied remember this section up the top which is unsupported because it's above the rest of the model to get support there we need to change from build plate only to everywhere and now when we re-slice we can see that this area is supported unless your model explicitly has a section like this it does need support above the model I would recommend leaving the setting on build plate only as less support will be generated in general the next common setting is called overhang threshold or in Cura support overhang angle if we look at the curve on our test model we can see it's nearly vertical down this end and almost horizontal up the Top If we exaggerate this setting setting it to 10 degrees we can see that support material is not applied until the model is almost horizontal and if we exaggerate it the other way to 80 degrees we can see that support material is applied much earlier in this curve the right value will depend on your model but to work out a good default you can download and print this torture test from the description and find out at what angle of overhang your printer starts to struggle with the general settings out of the way let's start to look at specifics starting with our bottom or raft section of the support the amount of control we get over this depends on the slicer for instance for prusa slice and derivatives by increasing the raft layers and then slicing the model we can see that it adds a raft underneath the entire thing not just the support material girl and you probably won't want this so instead the setting we want is first layer density here's the default 90 and here's a much lower 45 you're probably going to want to keep this quite dense just to give it additional grip to the bed in Cura the equivalent setting is enable support brim we can see without it we don't have much grip on the bed but turning it on and re-slicing will give us a much denser section for maximum adhesion simplify 3D handles this explicitly with bass support layers with the default being to generally the aim of our support base is to get a good solid platform to build on so we want it to be fairly dense without wasting too much filament let's move to our core support material in the middle this simply acts as a scaffold but we can still customize it quite a bit the density of this section is handled differently in various slices it's called support density in Cura and support infill percentage in simplify 3D this is like your regular in-field density you is the default value of 20 and here's the value up to 50 an equivalent of this for the software derived from prusa slicer is a spacing setting is the default 2.5 millimeters spacing of one millimeter and here's 0.5 millimeters everything packed a lot tighter some particularly intricate prints might need this density increased but for most prints you can leave the percentage low simply to say filament we can optionally wrap walls or a sheath around the outside of our support here is this setting off and here it is on with A continuous exterior wall in Cura this is called support wall line count and then simplify 3D support outlines this is personal preference but I like to have this on as it holds the support material together in chunks and makes it easier to grab and rip off with pliers what about the XY gap between the support material and our actual model in prusa slicer and derivatives this is called XY separation and can be expressed as a percentage or in millimeters in Cura it's called support XY distance and in simplify 3D support horizontal offset from part is a typical close Gap that you'll see by default but I actually like my Gap to be exaggerated and large as it gives more room to fit Tools in between the sub port and the model to help lever It Off now our most important section the interface if you wanted to you can change the thickness for this including setting it off in Cura it should be ticked by default and we set the thickness in millimeters instead of layers in simplifier 3D it's off by default and we change the upper dense support layers to add it most of the time you're going to want this pretty dense as that will give the flatter surface to build on top of however if you'd like to say filament or perhaps you'd like to make this easier to peel off in Cura you can lower the density with this grid being quite sparse or here in 80 being a lot denser simplify 3D also has a percentage for changing the interface density in prusa slicer derivatives it's a little counter-intuitive if the interface spacing is set to zero it will be dense but we can manually override that with a millimeter value which will add gaps in between the Extrusion making it less dense it's important to note that when we see bottom interface layers this doesn't affect the support raft touching the bed but rather geometry where a model will require support that's built off the model instead of the bed so the lower interface is the section just above this finally our most important parameter to tune which is the air Z Gap in between the interface and the model pressure slicer derivatives called this does it offset and we have a value for top and bottom Cura callsys the support Z distance and simplify 3D calls this the upper and lower support separation layers unique to this slicer because it's not measured in millimeters when we see a bottom said distance this is talking about the Gap where support is built on top of the model and relates to the air gap in between the model and the lower interface these vertical air gaps are a setting you should do some trial and error test prints with here we can see a series of test prints where I experimented with the air gap to try and find the best setting for the sloped parts of the model the removal of the support material is actually quite similar the larger of the two gaps can be removed completely by hand but as we head to the tighter two we need a tool to get them going and then the final peel happens with our fingers when it comes to the 90 degree section however the difference is more apparent with the largest gap that's room to slide the tool down and get the peel separation started but from the second largest gap we need to use a flat scalpel to get in between the two halves and pry the support Material off however we can see that the separation is not entirely clean the second tightest once again requires a blade to get in between the two and it feels like I'm cutting a little bit instead of just separating the support material after this initial phase I can get my pry tool in to get it off but once again the separation is not very clean this smallest Gap is quite difficult because it's hard to even get the tip of the blade in to start separating the support section eventually after a lot of cutting and wiggling and then using the pry tool I get the support Material off but there's quite a lot of it left on the underside of the model and this is the compromise where we're trying to find The Sweet Spot to small the Gap and will have nice flat layers but the support material will be difficult to get off cleanly too big a gap the support material will peel off easily but the layers will droop and not exactly be flat each printer is different and it's all about finding that Goldilocks zone in the middle there are many more settings than this between the different slices but what we've covered so far I think are the most important ones so far we've looked at traditional support material but what about tree or organic if traditional supports are like scaffolding on a building site then organic or tree supports are like thick fines growing around a structure here's a comparison with traditional supports versus tree supports and you can see that approach is entirely different even though they still complete the same task in Cura we select this by changing support structure from normal to Tree in bamboo studio and orca slicer we change the type from normal to tree and prusa slicer will now let you change the style from grid to organic but at the time of recording you have to scroll past the stable release and download one of the 2.6 Alphas for this feature to be included organic supports aren't currently offered in simplify 3D and super slicer doesn't have them either but hopefully this will be included later on tree supports might look different but they still have the same structure as traditional with a raft on the bottom a midsection that flows more organically and of course an interface layer on top to touch the underside of the model when you switch to them in Cura you get some specific settings for angles and minimum and maximum thicknesses and in prusa slicer we have this section at the bottom with exactly the same type of thing the real question is when to use them and I would argue that our existing test model is not ideal so how about something more organic in the form of this Earth Dragon by Alex this dragon has some large overhangs and clearly needs support underneath but looking at traditional supports this becomes quite awkward as they struggle to match these Contours so let's change them over to tree except the recommended settings and slice again already we can see that this looks completely different so there's nothing left to do but to print a test to see how easy it is to remove fun fact this might be the first print I've ever completed with three supports but I use the settings that I already tuned in for this printer most importantly the Z air gap between the interface and the model in my opinion this process turned out really well and most of the support material could be removed just by pulling it in the right direction with my fingers we can see that the organic supports Contour nicely to this rounded belly the hardest support to remove came from this section but I didn't need my blade instead just my prying tool to apply a little bit of pressure to each side of the support and then it just pops straight off the end result is a very clean Underside to the model therefore I'm calling this one a success tree or organic supports are a really nice option depending on the model that you're printing let's finish with using support efficiently support material takes up extra time and filament so how can we be intelligent about applying it simplify 3D has a pop-out control panel for support material and then we can generate these automatically what's really nice now is that we can click to remove individual support sections and we can also click to add them in specifically Troublesome areas giving us more control over where support material is placed in Cura if we click on the model we can then come down to the support blocker icon and then click around the model to prevent support from being added in those locations it can be a little bit tricky to get to all of the areas that you want so it's good to know that you can click to select these models and manipulate them like any other 3D model you've imported scaling them and rotating them to suit and moving them into the ideal position for what you're trying to achieve now when we slice we can see that for the most part support material has been emitted from any of these areas that these boxes overlapped prusa slicer and derivatives perhaps have the most control by clicking on the object and then coming to the paint on support tool we can use the left Mouse button to paint surfaces where we want support to be applied and the right Mouse button to paint areas where we want support to be emitted we then change our supports from everywhere to support enforcers only and we can see that the whole model is ignored apart from where I painted that I wanted support we can also right click on the model and come to add support blocker or add support enforcer I'm going to add an enforcing box and then move it into position again if I have support set to win forces only when I slice the model only the sections that overlap will have support material applied let's consider if we have a 3D printer with multi-material capabilities dissolvable support material filament exists that is soft and flexible just like TPU in these cases we tilt the slicer to print the support material with a different filament we then pop the completed print into some warm water something like 50 degree and after a few minutes it will start to soften and should be very easy to remove you'll need to wash it to get rid of all of the little bits of Gunk but once you've done this the result should be outstanding because you can have a very tight Z Gap and that will give you a very clean underside of the model as if the support was never there you can achieve a similar effect with two filaments that don't bond to each other such as pla here in dark green and petg in white it's just a matter of setting support and interface to a second extruder which will designate the two materials accordingly this is the first time I've tried these materials together and it works surprisingly well I only needed a little bit of massaging with my pry tool to remove the support between the two halves of the model and then the support slid on out giving me very clean undersides in fact the horizontal undersides were better than the angled overhangs on this model if the secondary filament you're using is expensive then you only need to print the interface material using it that means only the support material that touches the model will be printed with the other filament making the roll last much longer there are exciting developments on the way to avoid support material altogether as covered nicely by chiffon from CNC kitchen but until these methods are stable hopefully this video is of use thank you to my patrons for requesting this video thank you so much to you for watching and until next time happy supported 3D printing g'day it's Michael again if you like the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the Bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my 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Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 119,763

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print, 3d printed, support, support material, guide, tutorial, how to, lesson, step by step, slicer, slic3r, simplify3d, s3d, cura, prusaslicer, prusa slicer, super slicer, superslicer, bambu studio, bambu lab, softfever, orca slicer, orcaslicer, paint on, support enforcer, support blocker, interface, settings, parameters, tuning, calibration, test print, model, seckit, spacing, gap, offset, dissolvable, pva, pla, petg, raft, angle, density, percentage

Id: K_ZGZe-pbTI

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023