Closing the top of prints

[somerwil 0]

Hi guys,

I'm trying to find a good way to print hollow part with a nicely filled top. I had some difficulties in closing the top of my parts with Netfabb's standard Hollow build style.

Problem is the printed part does not close due to large overhangs on the last part of the print. In particular a problem with human heads and the cartoonish puppets I like on Thingiverse.

Easy solution is adding fill to the part. This will definately solve my problem but it will add print time, material and extra stringing. I'm trying to avoid these by optimizing the hollow settings.

I took the Countour count from 2 to 4 which helped a lot in closing the top but also added print time (it nearly doubles). Had a few good results with that one but I feel it can be made even better.

Looking through the Netfabb wiki I found a setting that will probably influence the closing of the top being 'Upskin-layers' and 'Overlap with filling'. I tried several things but they don't seem to make any difference on the print.

Perhaps the 'Upskin-layers' only affect rectangular sections and not curved sections (since a curved surface is not detected as an upskin). I can imagine the 'Overlap with filling' will only have an effect when filling is enabled...

Any suggestions on a better top-filling are welcome. I also had a look at Netfabb's region options but I don't think that will be a workable solution for this application.

Thanks for reading,

Michael

[antiklesys 3]

What quality settings are you printing with?

[somerwil 0]

Hi Antiklesys,

I print most of my parts @ Netfabb's 'Standard' setting so I select the Material setting "Standard" and Build Style to my Duplicate of Standard Hollow.

I changed two things from standard Netfabb profile:

1) print 4 contour 'shells' instead of 2

2) Disable Downskin

[antiklesys 3]

I printed a diamond with the standard profile with just 1 contour shells instead of 2 and worked fine, but without disabling the downskin.

I would try to check if it happens with these settings too.

[somerwil 0]

did you download the diamond model from Thingiverse? I'd like to give it a try!

[antiklesys 3]

Yes, here's the model I've used:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10416

The only change I did to it was to scale it down by 50% as it was a bit too big for a test print