Decided to try out my first multi color print that wasn’t the test dragon.
Printed pikachu since it used the filament colors included with the printer.
Kept everything default like layer height 0.2 mm and initial layer height 0.25.
Only changes I made from default was
disabling reduce infill retraction
sparse infill pattern to gyroid
And for supports I used Top Z distance 0.25, organic tree, on build plate only, support critical regions only
What can I do for future prints to make the bottom not come out rough, and what could have been done to make the upper mouth region to come out smoother?
I’m guessing not enabling support critical regions only would have helped?
Is there a good setting for making supports easy to come off compared to the default values?
That’s the $64k question. If you look at the baby dragon, you’ll see it has been carefully designed to avoid any overhangs at less than about 30 degrees. It has a flat bottom. Rounded undersides are always a problem. Also, there are textured surfaces that hide minor blemishes. The “remove small overhangs” support setting might help.
Making support easier to remove means using a different filament, eg PETG as support for PLA, but that means losing a colour. If you make the support easier to remove by increasing the Z gap, the quality of the print in that area goes down because it is printing over a gap. The best quality undersides come from a different support, zero Z gap, and ironing the support surface.
Even with those measures, trying to print a sphere is a fool’s errand. The tiny gap where the curvature breaks away from the build plate (or raft) is too thin for effective support, so there is always a defect. The right way to print a sphere is as two hemispheres and join them together – and that applies to any object that must have a rounded bottom and can’t be printed the other way up. You could consider printing your pikachu in a different orientation.
I don’t tend to print decorative objects. My prints are oriented to consider fewest overhangs requiring support, and which way I want the grain to run for best strength.
Thanks for the reply. Learning what are common challenges, and seeing rounded undersides not turning out great not being unusual does give some peace of mind. After watching some videos it does seem like cutting those type of prints into parts and connecting them is the simplest path.
Looks like the underside of the feet also aren’t flat on the build platform. This is a big problem for bed adhesion. It’s a miracle the print even worked in my opinion.
Makes me think this was an AI-generated model.
The screen shot shows a brim, which would have helped.
“Not designed for FDM printing” comes to my mind. There are plenty of 3D models out there only meant / suitable for graphics rendering rather than actual manufacture. Some of them don’t even have watertight meshes.
Makerworld is absolutely full of AI slop lately, I received a survey from them about it yesterday
Yeah, it was a nice learning experience. Gives me a better idea now on what to look for in future prints.
