box hollowed out in model vs. not

[grue 1]

so i've been playing with a small building - basically the shape of a box with some ins & outs where windows would be, but nothing really detailed as i'm doing this for comparisons.

 

1. i modeled the building with the 4 wallls, but ZERO thickness to the walls. (i'll call this "solid walls")

• in cura i turned off top/bottom - set top/bottom thickness to 0.0mm
• i turned off infill
• i set my wall thickness to a multiple of my nozzle dia, 4.0mm
• i think this is more or less vase mode?

 

2. i modeled the building with 5mm thick walls. (i'll call this "hollow walls")

• in cura i turned off top/bottom - set top/bottom thickness to 0.0mm
• i turned infil on and set to 10%
• i set my wall thickness to 0.8mm - so this gives me two lines for outer wall and two lines for inner wall with void in-between which is filled with infill

 

i never thought about it to this point, but wow what a difference in estimated print time & material usage

 

the infilled walls (hollow) model is showing 18.25hrs vs. 14.3hrs for "solid" walls and 22.53m of material vs. 44.85m!

 

overall both models are roughly 91mm (w) x 91mm (d) x 78mm (h)

 

you really have to think these things through!

 

one concern might be how thick would walls have to be for some amount of structural integrity. in the case of #1 above, would 4mm thickness be enough for something up to 12inches or 15inches tall? etc etc...

[gr5 2,235]

Thicker walls with the infill and lots of air in there is much stronger than thinner walls that are solid.  Having said that the model in the upper photo is probably plenty strong but you'll just have to test it and find out for yourself.  In fact you could probably cut the infill in half roughly.