Fill thickness only with perimeters

[MaxSC 0]

Hi everyone,

I've been printing for a while, mostly using UM2s and S3D/Cura, but I m facing a new challenge today and thought someone may be able to help me out !

So the situation is the following :

I'm printing models that already have a thickness (which is set to 3mm, but that's not really relevant here).

'I m using T-glase as the target is to have a pretty solid part that would remain translucent.

Due to the translucency requirement, I would like to print using only perimeters, as any infill will make the area much more ''cloudy'' (and the target also being to have a pretty ''uniform looking'' part, avoiding infill would definitely be best).

The issue I'm having is that the models already have a specified thickness to them, which is generated using the normals, so the actual thickness in the horizontal direction actually varies depending on the slope on that specific area of the model. Because of that, Cura can not always completely fill that thickness with only perimeters, and ends up ''randomly'' creating infill here and there ..

So basically my question is the following : Is there any way to import a model with a given thickness, and have Cura (or any other slicer actually) calculate a different wall thickness (or actually perimeters width) for each layer in order to create layers with the right thickness using only perimeters (with no gap between them) and no infill.

I'm not sure how clear my description is, and will post some screenshots later if needed, but basically I'm having the same issue as this thread : https://ultimaker.com/en/community/10509-no-infill-means-no-infill (which I actually created a while back with a different account) , except that the models I m using now are not as regular/geometric, so not all layers have the exact same thickness all around, and I cannot start from a closed body part and then ''hollow'' it in Cura as the shell process is part of a larger creation process than cannot be modified.

I've tried a lot of different configurations, but so far I haven t found a perfect solution except basically using ''SwapatZ'' plugin (which is amazing by the way) for every layer, and tweak the shell thickness from there for each layer, which will it could work would just require way too much set-up time and adjustments.

So please, feel free to suggest any option you can think of, any help would be much appreciated !

Thanks,

Max.

[DidierKlein 729]

Hi and welcome,

Maybe you could try to hollow the model (with meshmixer for example)?

[avogra 68]

Did you try to set infill to 0 and disable top bottom fill and then increasing shell thickness really high? that should give you perimeters only. but I guess that is not all that you are after?

[MaxSC 0]

Hi,

@DidierKlein : Actually the model is already hollow, it's a shell with a thickness, and this aspect cannot be modified as the files are generated through a larger process that doesn't allow me to work with a closed body and then hollow it.

@Avogra : I tried both, but they're not working (or at least not the way I want to) : I do need a solid top and bottom (I could use SwapatZ to only have to bottom and top solid and don't have it on the overhangs that Cura would consider to be a top or bottom), but if I set the infill to 0 I would end up with some gaps. Setting the perimeters really high does generate only perimeters, but again, they're not spaced in an optimal way that would make them the exact thickness of the shell for that specific layer, so I always end up with some gaps and some perimeters lines not touching.

What I would like to achieve is to have Cura (or again another slicer, I like Cura but wouldn t mind at all switching to a different one if needed) determine for each layer the right perimeter/shell width in order to have each layer printed with only perimeters without leaving gaps so that it would only be touching lines (which is better for both translucency and strength). The only thing I can think of for now is to tweak the extrusion width by hand for different areas and use SwapatZ multiple times to achieve that, but this would take a crazy amount of time to set up for each part, and would also not give perfect results as in theory I would need to tweak the value for every single layer (which would then take an insane amount of time ..).

Any suggestions on how to achieve that without having to spend a day doing the slicing setup ?