I normally never use rafts myself but I think it might be unwise to brush it off like this. Professional machines use rafts a lot. I know a very (15 years) experienced 3D printing entrepreneur who always use rafts and say that when you do you almost never have to care about bed leveling. Perhaps only few slicers implement rafts well. Netfabb has very good raft support for example.
I agree - if you print a raft, bed leveling is less important. But the reverse is also true: If you level very well, rafts are not needed.
My disdain for Raft is based on the fact that I've just never seen a use case where Raft seemed like the best solution on an Ultimaker or similar machine. Bed leveling really isn't that hard, and adhesion/anti-warp seems better achieved with Brim, if surface preparation alone isn't the answer. Brim is far easier to remove, and any damage to the printed surface is minimal.
I get the impression that where folks use raft, it's because they perceive that 'that's the way it's done'. Certainly it was available in most of the slicers before Brim became available, so I just wonder if it's a feature that has outlived its usefulness.
There probably are cases where Raft is the best solution, I just haven't heard about them - I'd welcome some examples.
Dim3nsioneer 557
I did a quite large print yesterday for which I used a 10-lines-brim.
This is just the brim and the outer shell:
Some layers later:
I think the brim looks quite ok but maybe some of you will call me a fool... :shock:
I think the brim looks quite ok but maybe some of you will call me a fool... :shock:
I think it's a Beautiful brim!!
Watch out, gr5 is going to steal those images to use as examples (in other words, that looks very nice)
brim porn! OH BABY!
Dim3nsioneer 557
brim porn! OH BABY!
feel free to watch it all night long... :wacko:
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gr5 2,069
I never use raft. I recommend you never use it. I believe Daid doesn't like it either. Illuminarti doesn't like it either.
But brim is nice. Here is a shot of a print I did with nice brim. It turned a man with small feet into a man standing on a pancake. All the people in the picture have brim but you can see it best on the person on the far right. Click the picture to zoom, then right click and "show image" to zoom more, then click again to zoom still more. If you can't see each individual pass of the nozzle around the brim then you should be zooming in more.
If I had printed without the brim he would have fallen over during printing.
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