Feature Request : Advanced control on Gyroid Infill

[KHANtech 1]

Hi guys !

First, thanks for developping CURA. I've been using it for over a year now with my Anycubic i3 Mega, with great success.

 

I'm currently designing a 3D printed RC airplane, and I have found that the Gyroid Infill gives promising results for creating strong yet lightweight wing sections.

It could almost be used as is, but to make it perfect, and make us plane designer definitely quit time-consuming custom-drawn infill structure, we would need the following features :

• ability to set XY offset of the gyroid infill
• ability to rotate the gyroid infill in reference to the machine XY axis
• ability to scale the infill in the Z direction, as we need the stiffness most along the wingspan

 

Could that be part of a future release ?

[burtoogle 516]

Hi, as the implementer of the gyroid infill, I can answer your questions....

 

1 hour ago, KHANtech said:

ability to set XY offset of the gyroid infill

 

Yes, that would be possible.

 

1 hour ago, KHANtech said:

ability to rotate the gyroid infill in reference to the machine XY axis

 

Almost certainly possible but may require quite a lot of coding, I would need to look into that.

 

1 hour ago, KHANtech said:

ability to scale the infill in the Z direction, as we need the stiffness most along the wingspan

 

I can't picture how that would work. Can you provide a graphic showing how you imagine it would be?

[ctbeke 133]

To get attention from the developers its probably best to report this via https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues.

[KHANtech 1]

Thanks for your answer !

 

8 hours ago, burtoogle said:

I can't picture how that would work. Can you provide a graphic showing how you imagine it would be?

 

If you take a cube filled with gyroid, its side would look like the attached image.

On the left, a regular gyroid infill

On the right, the Z-scaled infill => XY period stays the same, and the infill is stretched in the Z direction..

[burtoogle 516]

Hello @KHANtech, I have implemented the Infill X/Y Offset and Infill Line Directions settings for gyroid infill. If you want to try them out you will need to install one of my future Cura builds (Linux and Windows only). My next release which will probably be later today will have these changes. You can find my releases at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s43vqzmi4d2bqe2/AAADdYdSu9iwcKa0Knqgurm4a?dl=0

 

Here is a cube whose gyroid infill has been rotated 12 degrees...

 

 

I still don't understand your 3rd request about scaling in Z.

[KHANtech 1]

Awesome, I didn't expect to see results so quickly ! Thanks very much 🙂

I've downloaded your build, I'll give it a try soon.

 

About Z-scaling, does the attached picture help ?

 

[burtoogle 516]

Thanks for the image (very creative), I understand now what you want. I have implemented a new setting called Infill Vertical Scaling. Default is 100%. Larger values stretch the infill pattern vertically, smaller values shrink the pattern vertically. Not sure how much use it is except if one is being "artistic". Will be in build 0914 available on dropbox soon.

[burtoogle 516]

Here's an example...

 

[KHANtech 1]

11 hours ago, burtoogle said:

I have implemented a new setting called Infill Vertical Scaling

 

You're the man ! Downloading now ...

 

11 hours ago, burtoogle said:

Not sure how much use it is except if one is being "artistic".

 

It has a real technical purpose : it will help 3D printed RC planes designers save a few precious grams on each wing section.

[ahoeben 1,986]

It could also be interesting for belt printing.

[burtoogle 516]

42 minutes ago, KHANtech said:

It has a real technical purpose : it will help 3D printed RC planes designers save a few precious grams on each wing section.

 

You should understand that changing the infill vertical scaling doesn't alter the amount of filament used compared to the un-scaled version. What differs is the paths the filament takes. It will only save you weight if by using scaling you can reduce the infill density required.

[KHANtech 1]

1 minute ago, burtoogle said:

It will only save you weight if by using scaling you can reduce the infill density required.

 

I was testing your release, and that's the conclusion I came up to 🙂

 

Now, I'm not familiar with software development. What's the future for these new features ? Will they be integrated in the next official Cura revision ? Sounds too easy ...

[burtoogle 516]

10 minutes ago, KHANtech said:

Now, I'm not familiar with software development. What's the future for these new features ? Will they be integrated in the next official Cura revision ? Sounds too easy ...

 

I doubt very much they will be integrated into Ultimaker's releases any time soon. What happens is that I can submit a pull request (PR) asking for the changes to be incorporated. At some point in the future the Cura developers will look at the PR and either reject it outright for some reason, or they may request changes. When they are happy they will merge the PR into their source code and assuming that it works OK, the new features will appear in the next release. So far so good, the problem is that PRs can hang around for many months before they get around to looking at them. I currently have 18 PRs in the queue. Some are trivial and some fix (IMHO) important bugs. One is now almost a year old. I have other changes that I really would like to submit as PRs but, quite frankly, I can't see them ever being accepted because they are simply not getting through the backlog. I've gone past the point of being pissed off, I just accept it now and no longer care whether they use my PRs or not. Anyway, just to show willing, I will submit a PR for these changes and then I can say I've done my bit.

[Carla_Birch 116]

1 hour ago, KHANtech said:

 

You're the man ! Downloading now ...

 

 

It has a real technical purpose : it will help 3D printed RC planes designers save a few precious grams on each wing section.

You might want to look into this filament from colorfabb: https://colorfabb.com/lw-pla-black

[burtoogle 516]

7 minutes ago, Carla_Birch said:

You might want to look into this filament from colorfabb: https://colorfabb.com/lw-pla-black

 

If I remember right, someone (maybe @SteveCox3D) has tried that filament with gyroid infill? Unfortunately, I can't remember the outcome.

[Carla_Birch 116]

24 minutes ago, burtoogle said:

 

If I remember right, someone (maybe @SteveCox3D) has tried that filament with gyroid infill? Unfortunately, I can't remember the outcome.

 

[burtoogle 516]

I have submitted the PR(s) for these changes. All we can do now is wait...

[KHANtech 1]

On 9/14/2019 at 11:46 PM, Carla_Birch said:

You might want to look into this filament from colorfabb: https://colorfabb.com/lw-pla-black

 

Yes, people have tested printing planes out of it, but with partial success : The printed parts are light, but obviously not as stiff as  the original PLA the planes were designed for. For some, it ended in flutter and ultimately a crash.

 

On 9/15/2019 at 12:21 AM, Carla_Birch said:

 

Thanks, but this post is about PA-CF... 🤨 I'll look a bit further though.

 

On 9/15/2019 at 9:32 AM, burtoogle said:

I have submitted the PR(s) for these changes. All we can do now is wait...

Thanks for your involvement ! Fingers crossed (expect typos)

[SepehrAbdar 0]

On 9/13/2019 at 2:47 AM, burtoogle said:

Hello @KHANtech, I have implemented the Infill X/Y Offset and Infill Line Directions settings for gyroid infill. If you want to try them out you will need to install one of my future Cura builds (Linux and Windows only). My next release which will probably be later today will have these changes. You can find my releases at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s43vqzmi4d2bqe2/AAADdYdSu9iwcKa0Knqgurm4a?dl=0

 

Here is a cube whose gyroid infill has been rotated 12 degrees...

 

 

I still don't understand your 3rd request about scaling in Z.

Hello, 

 

Is there by any chance a newer version of this that you have for anything past Cura 5.1? the model I'm trying to use the rotate function on is quite big so with the older cura it just takes a lot longer to slice.