Why not turn the fan to FULL POWER when bridging?

[birdysign 0]

Hello Makers, Hello Daid )

I have a problem PRINTING SOLID THINGS THAT NEED BRIDGING.

When printing solid parts low fan speed is essential for best adhesion ... well, thats pretty implemented in cura 13.11, THANKS A LOT !!! ...

But when it comes to bridging quick cooling is important ...

So, here my hopefully simple suggestion:

WHY NOT IMPLEMENT A SETTING FOR THE FAN SPEED WHEN BRIDGING!

Wouldn't this improve many results from the UM2 very much and could be implemented (almost) easily?

Greetings to all makers!

birdysign

 

[gr5 2,172]

I'm not a bridging expert. You might know more about this than me. But I thought you might find this interesting:

 

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/?p=25304

Post #17.

 

[Daid 306]

Just wondering, why did you feel the need to shout this birdysign?

The reason why there isn't a fan speed for bridging is two fold. First I do not want too many settings. Secondly the fan is controlled per layer right now, controlling it per print area would require some serious changes in the code.

 

[IRobertI 520]

Daid, do you not want too many settings because it adds complexity to the code (understandable if so) or because it goes against your KISS philosophy? I think a lot of users would love more control, me included. If you want to keep the interface clean just dump all the settings in an "advanced expert dialog" or whatever and let us figure it out.

 

[Daid 306]

Daid, do you not want too many settings because it adds complexity to the code (understandable if so) or because it goes against your KISS philosophy? I think a lot of users would love more control, me included. If you want to keep the interface clean just dump all the settings in an "advanced expert dialog" or whatever and let us figure it out.

 

Both.

It adds code complexity, which more stuff to go wrong. And it adds more settings which is more confusing for the users.

I am thinking of a few UI redesign options, to improve this scenario of lots of settings. But I do not have a final solution yet.

For bridging, the bridging code needs work. Right now the bridge detection code could be better, as well as the final bridge handling. One of the highly advanced things you could do with bridges is print them at a different layer height then normal layers. Bridges at 0.15-0.2mm layers print better then at 0.1mm layers for example.

 

[birdysign 0]

Thanks for all the quick response!

@Daid: sorry, i didn't want to hurt your ears I just thought it would make it easier to get a quick overview...

I'm not into the code of Cura... but i'd appreciate you saving this idea for a later time, when you have to touch the part of code anyway.

Until then ... would it be senseful and is it possible to change the Controller-FW, so that tuning the fan speed over the menu is not allways overwritten by the next gcode setting, but to make it a percental tuning value for the gcode values over the whole rest of the print? This would give us a "manual" way to partly solve the solid/bridging problem.

@gr5: Thank you for the link, i've read this before and agree that temp is the major factor, but, when printing solid parts that need to be as rigid as possible, high temp is important for best possible adhesion/merging of the layers, so because you can't change the temp rapidly while bridging, changing fan speed is the only way i see...

@all: any other ideas to solve this?

 

[musti 0]

The idea for controlling the fan in bridging is definitely useful, however as Daid said difficult to implement. I am proposing a compromise, that should hopefully not add too much complexity to the system.

Fan is controlled per layer, so would it be possible to create a plugin that sets the fan to a predefined value on layers containing bridges/overhangs. Cura can visualize these overhangs, so the mechanism to detect them is already present.

I have successfully used cooling on overhang layers by manually adding the fan control in gcode, so I believe the approach works.

 

[gr5 2,172]

@Musti - More and more I learn that 100% fan is useful for almost all issues - not just bridging. At least for PLA. Do you print ABS? I know for ABS people prefer no fan or very little fan.