Bridging direction on first bridging layer is very often (=almost always) extremely strange

[pingufan 0]

I am printing a lot of technical parts where support cannot be used. So bridging is the only way.

 

What I almost always find out is this very stupid way the first (and therefore most important) is done. I had the hope that some improvement would be done with Cura 4.13.0, but I couldn't notice any improvement.

 

Because I make technical parts, I usually use very thick wall+bottom+top thickness, so 5+ lines are very usual.

 It is also often the case that a bridge has no straight perimeter. Imagine a horizontal slot coming from the side and ending in a vertical bore (=round hole). In such case the wall is printed first, hereby the extruded material is a straight line from the bridge-start-point to bridge-end-point.

 

Very often it happens in addition that the first layer is not printed in shortest direction, so I watched that Cura makes 50-80 mm long bridges instead of 10 mm long ones (if it would change the direction by some degrees).

When will this be fixed?  this I watch since "almost ever" in Cura.

 

I would recommend:

• automate finding the shortest bridge length in every area to be bridged independently.
• print first some "spiderwebs" below curved walls before printing the walls. This way the wall has something where it can stick on when changing direction, so it will have a lots better shape.
• If possible, sub-divide the first bridge layer into sections. First fill (in shortest direction) those regions where shape is almost rectangular, then change direction and fill the rest with i.e. triangles starting from the bridge towards the wall behind a curve instead of printing from a wall point being not at correct position because it was a curve.

 

Hope I could explain well enough. I made a little sketch that could help.