Non Planar 3D Printing

[Rajeswar 3]

Dear Community and Experts,

 

I am dying to implement Non Planar 3D printing in our UM3.

This is a great feature to great smooth products, without staircase/stepped surfaces.

I am referring to the following video and appreciate inputs on how to achieve the same in Ultimaker 3.

 

 

Regards,
Raj

[Ishy 8]

Can't help but I would love some of this. Obviously not a hardware limitation.

[Rajeswar 3]

Dear Ishy,

All it needs is movement of build platform, as can be seen clearly in the video,

 

[Esenwein 0]

On 9/4/2019 at 11:24 AM, Rajeswar said:

Dear Ishy,

All it needs is movement of build platform, as can be seen clearly in the video,

 

You're using Cura? Or Slicer?

 

[Rajeswar 3]

Cura.

 

[gr5 2,167]

That video shown above was created by Joris.  6 years ago.  He did it in the older version of cura - 15.X - actually 13.X (back then the version number indicated the year of release.

 

But the trick was that he wrote a plugin for cura that makes the Z go up and down - it's a post processing plugin that takes the resulting gcode and it modifies the Z values in this up/down pattern.  

 

This wouldn't work for just any shape - he just wrote it as a simple zig-zag (sine wave) pattern.  It works best for cups.  It's designed specifically for this one cup and wouldn't help you out for say a car roof.

 

The code for the plugin is available - I think it's on thingiverse search for "joris cups" on thingiverse - he made one a week for a year I think.

[Esenwein 0]

Thanks!

 

Do you think "non-planar" will become a plugin/setting in the next year?

It's cool, but too hard to make 😞  

[Smithy 1,144]

I don't think it will come. On UM printers the distance between the printhead and the nozzle tip is too short, therefore you have no much room for the movement before you hit the print head body.

[Esenwein 0]

In a final version that movement would have to be done in multiple parts to optimize all the possible parts without colliding with the print. Each layer would do a part of the movement to smooth the top layer.

 

I really believe this will the final step to end the "ladder" problem.

[gr5 2,167]

The nozzle has a flat tip.  If you print at an angle then the flat tip is angled to the surface of the print making grooves like a tiny snow plow pushing plastic around.  The steeper the angle the worse this gets and now the tops of spheres are ugly in a new way - instead of the staircase you get grooved parallel lines.

 

Better if you have a 5 axis printer where the nozzle can tilt +/- 90 degrees along both X and Y axes.  This would allow printing overhangs also.  This is common in CNC milling (5 axis CNC).  The math is complicated and usually done in the CAD software (not the slicing software).  Maybe because you need a CAD model of the print head as well.  So you kind of need $5000 per year per seat CAD software for now to create the "tool path".

 

But right now even that software doesn't do 5 axis 3d printing tool paths -- at least I haven't heard of any software to do this at this time.

 

[Esenwein 0]

Not all the plastics behave the same way. I print mostly in TPU and the material has much more cohesive force than the PLA and it gets more liquid when melted due to the longer time it takes to harden, so the "ladder" effect it's not as apparent with TPU as it is with PLA. Also, the speed has a huge impact in that effect.

 

That being said. You're absolutely right, the effect won't disappear, it will only help a bit and the only way to fix that would be a 5 axis 3D Printer. But this would be an industrial level 3D printer that will probably have a private software.

[geert_2 557]

For now I think the best solution is to print the outlines at half the layer height (can that be done in the newest Cura versions?), and afterwards mechanically polish or chemically smooth the model, similar to acetone smoothing of ABS? But I don't know if this works on TPU?

 

[Esenwein 0]

TPU won't have the same effect as ABS, so you won't get a polish surface, but acetone will hide the ladders a bit.

[TheodorK 11]

this guy has done some nice things with a 5-axis 3d printer:

https://makezine.com/2019/01/03/5-axis-3d-printing-brings-new-possibilities/

Edited October 23, 2019 by TheodorK

[Siamak 1]

Good afternoon all,

I have been looking at Non-Planer Slicing for a while, and there are some out there.

 

The one I like very much and it has worked for me very well is Curvislicer.

https://github.com/mfx-inria/curvislicer

 

It works in Windows 10, it is command line based, it is  bit rough at the beginning, but it really works great, it prints in real 3D from the start.

 

What I have done so far is slice the object in Cura first, then do it with Curvisliser, edit the GCODE file and add the ones you like from Cura GCODE to the newly sliced GCODE from Curvislicer, and off you send it to the 3D printer.

 

Make sure you will have enough clearance on you printer Hotend to avoid physical collisions.

 

Read instructions and you will see how beautiful the result would be.

 

Good luck

 

Siamak

[IzziPrint 0]

This discussion highlights important aspects of Non Planar 3D Printing. Joris's approach with the Z-axis movement is innovative but limited in application. The idea of a 5-axis printer, similar to CNC milling, shows promise for complex shapes, yet current software and hardware constraints are significant.

 

Considering material properties, like the differences between TPU and PLA, is key. Short-term solutions like half-layer height printing and post-processing techniques might be effective interim steps. Thanks for sharing these insights!