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Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?


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Posted · Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?

Say I have a part that is too tall, and I want to print a portion of it.  

 

I don't want the printer to "pause at height", because I want to finish the top layers correctly and not leave exposed infill. 

 

I don't want to "scale Z height" because I don't want to compress or squish the model.

 

I want Cura to basically cut the STL at a certain Z height, then slice the rest normally. Is there a way? 

 

Sometimes when I want to cut the BOTTOM part of the model off, I do this all the time in Cura by entering a negative Z offset. The portion of the model that extends below the bed height is simply removed by Cura, and Cura slices the rest normally including adding bottom layers etc. I want to do the same thing, but cutting off the TOP of the model.  And yes, I considered flipping the model and doing the negative Z-offset thing, but some things won't print in that orientation. 

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    Posted · Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?

    I think it would be a lot easier to use the 'split' option in MS 3d builder (part of windows)

    then load the split stl's into cura.

     

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    Posted · Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?

    Use a modification cube, with 0% infill, 0 contour . You will have no print inside this cube and the layers before the cube will be considered as top layers.

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    Posted · Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?

    Here we have my Sport FIshing Benchy scaled to 350mm tall on a printer that is 250mm tall.  The Support Blocker is as @Cuq says and configured as a cutting mesh with no walls, no tops/bottoms, ad 0% infill.  I went into the machine settings and adjusted the Z(height) of the printer to 400 (or the model won't slice).

    image.thumb.png.0f27027c1811c7840eeb62112e38b21a.png

     

    When I need to do this I also add 1.75mm diameter cylinders as cutting mesh at the mate line between the two prints.  They are typically 12mm long and sunk into the part by 6mm.  They can be any diameter that will fit but I just use filament for the locating pins.

    image.thumb.png.44fcc4d362d297a15cc298f5feab54ac.png

     

    When printing the top part of the model it gets sunk into the base as you've been doing, throw out the big block but keep (and do not move) the locating pin cutting meshes.

    At assembly, I use a pin drill and clean up the little holes, glue in pieces of filament as locating pins, and then glue the assembly together.  The alignment between the parts is real darn close to perfect.

    image.thumb.png.2bf411501e5306bfb157abf4f4f71fe3.png

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    Posted · Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?

    I'm not really splitting parts in half, but I will keep in mind it's possible. 

     

    When you split a part like that, do you have any special method to match up the layers exactly? Or do you just use the same mm values for Z-offset of the bottom part, and z-height of the bottom of the support blocker cube? 

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    Posted · Stop printing at certain height, but still finish the model normally?

    I use the height.  If you locate the cutting mesh an exact distance from the build plate then that's how far you would need to sink the model into the build plate to print the next higher part of the model.  Little tricks like that allow you to print large models on relatively small printers.  It also allows you to do something like print one part of the model at one layer height, and the other part of the model at a different layer height.

     

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