Double Thick Infill????

[Tone 0]

I'm a noob here so perhaps this or something close has already been suggested.

I was thinking for infill that the layer could be printed at double the thickness of the shells and then it would only have to be printed every other wall layer.

Could speed things up a little. The infill doesn't have to be anywhere near the quality of the walls so printing it twice as thick could be just fine.

 

While I'm thinking about it, maybe the option to print layers at changing thickness would give a different texture like look to the walls. The change might be each layer is a slightly different thickness or it might be that the thickness changes on some linear frequency within the layer. There are obvious limits to how much the thickness could vary and still print.

 

Anyway, just a couple wild ideas.

[gr5 2,172]

I had the same idea 5 years ago but Daid (the guy who first wrote Cura - no longer working on it) pointed out that it's rare for two layers to be exactly the same.  I mean this works great if you are printing cubes but anything really fancy like a cone - now what do you do?  You want the infill to just barely touch the shell on every other layer now?  It gets more complicated and it's 3d and slicers aren't very 3d - they try to do most of the work in 2d.

 

Changing thickness layers is a feature in cura - it auto detects the slope (like the top of a sphere) and makes more layers there so the steps are smaller and larger layers when things don't change as much from one layer to the next.  It's called "adaptive layers".

[Tone 0]

Has anything ever been tried to create texture on the walls?

[BoostedGcode 2]

I'm working on a post processing script to achieve exactly what you described in the first part of your post. I'm still iterating over the implementation and so far managed to produce ok-ish prints at half the printing time, but have couple issues I need to work out. If you're interested let me know...

[ctbeke 133]

Doubling the infill layer thickness is already possible, check the settings under 'infill'.

[BoostedGcode 2]

I experimented with cura's infill layer thickness previously and found that it did not affect inner walls which I wanted to change also (meaning only the outer perimeters would be printed for each layer).

That's why I started to write my own post processing script...

[gr5 2,172]

On 5/25/2018 at 11:33 PM, Tone said:

Has anything ever been tried to create texture on the walls?

There's just one feature like this.  It's called "fuzzy skin".  Please start a new topic if you have any more comments/questions on outer textures.

[eldrick 65]

Fuzzy skin works well for items that require great grip. I use it for my fencing pommels.

http://stores.thefencingpost.com/pommel-epee-french-grip-melting-pommel-version-2-0/

Edited May 30, 2018 by eldrick

[ctbeke 133]

On 5/29/2018 at 12:02 PM, BoostedGcode said:

I experimented with cura's infill layer thickness previously and found that it did not affect inner walls which I wanted to change also (meaning only the outer perimeters would be printed for each layer).

That's why I started to write my own post processing script...

 

That's because walls are not infill... Keeping all walls the same layer height is quite important for structural integrity.

I also don't think it possible (at least in a way to get good results) to use a post processing script to double the inner wall layer height, as changes to the actual slicing algorithm are needed to do this properly.

[BoostedGcode 2]

Hi ctbeke,

 

I absolutely agree with what you wrote. I'm doing this because there are a number of cases when "perfect" structural integrity is not a must. (E.g. table top gaming figurines, decoration, rapid prototyping).

I was able to reduce print speed significantly with my experimental post processing. E.g. benchy sliced at 0.1mm but everything except outer wall and skin having 0.3mm layer height would result close to 2.5-3x speedup.

Using a 0.4 nozzle I even tried to do 0.4 with a bit of over-extrusion that is also promising.

Again this is not for functional part but in the creative process you end up printing the same thing with little changes here and there and being able to do that 3 more times on one printer in the same amount of time is worth the effort for me.

 

In theory it is possible to completely redo the infill just based on outer walls and shells in post processing especially that Cura labels structural block per layer in gcode which is really, really nice! (I very much appreciate the clean gcode Cura produces!)

The idea is that melted plastic does flow a bit and if you force it into gaps it would fill the space even under tiny overhangs. (and again I know this would not give the same level of structural integrity as printing everything at each layer...) 

[Tone 0]

On 5/29/2018 at 1:15 AM, ctbeke said:

Doubling the infill layer thickness is already possible, check the settings under 'infill'.

I see that setting but I don't believe it lets you print fewer infill layers, it just lets you print thicker ones. 

I want to double the thickness AND half the number of layers.

[BoostedGcode 2]

38 minutes ago, Tone said:

I see that setting but I don't believe it lets you print fewer infill layers, it just lets you print thicker ones. 

I want to double the thickness AND half the number of layers.

If you slice it with 0.1mm layer height and set the infill thickness to 0.2mm look at the layer view and compare two consecutive layers. One will not have infill the other will have infill (with extrusion roughly doubled to produce twice as thick infill in Z direction)

[Tone 0]

Ok, looks like it does do what I'm suggesting. Because the help text for that feature says "The thickness PER LAYER of infill material" I was assuming they were just making each layer thicker or thinner and not varying the number of layers in proportion. GOOD TO KNOW.

 

Edit: Works for support layers too with separate config. params.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Tone
Additional info

[agardip 0]

Hi!

 

I red somewhere on the "infill layer thickness" but can't find it again. It was about Cura might not work as it should be.

Here it is:

I set up a print with 0.1 layer height and 0.2 "infill layer thickness". I can clearly see every second layer gets infill printed in. This works for up to 40% infill, I can see a reduction in printing time, this is what I am looking for.

BUT beyond 40% infill Cura behaves strange. It "prints" infill with same direction every two layers, then changing orientation. Which means now all layers have infill printed, printing time again high. What is going on? Anybody any ideas?

 

[BoostedGcode 2]

I maned to publish the my post processor script to do something similar.

Here's an article on it:

http://www.customize-3d.com/faster-high-resolution-3d-printing.html

 

Feel free to give it a try. Note that I haven't tested it on complex models nor support...

[agardip 0]

Á! Egy magyar! Zsír! Szevasz! ?

 

Well, I took a look on your post but hardly understand what this does. :) The model is not too complex right now, the standard owl, no support. Probably I will give it a try tomorrow, I'll let you know my findings.

 

And thanks!