somewhat URGENT - Support inner cavities

[Nicolinux 285]

Hi,

Sorry for the URGENT tag, but I'd need to print this birthday present and I am running out of time

Here is the object in question:

I'd like to print the model without infill, but there is a big inner cavity that would be printed without anything beneath it. What to do? Printing with infill increases the printing time and I'd like to avoid it. Thanks!

Here is an animated gif (click on the thumbnail to play):

(by the way, I used "licecap" to create an animated gif from a portion of my screen)

 

• http://www.cockos.com/licecap
  

 

[IRobertI 438]

Would you be ok with a little hole in the bottom of the print? What I'm thinking is that you could cut out a cylinder that would cause cura to print perimeter lines going up to the cavity.

 

[Nicolinux 285]

Good idea, thanks.

I think I'd be fine with it. I'd need to design the cutout in such a way that the flower soil that goes inside yoda's head won't fall through to the bottom.

 

[Nicolinux 285]

Not using SW because it looks scary

I'd use Moment of Inspiration or OpenSCAD. Will try to match that up. Thanks again.

 

[IRobertI 438]

My thinking was to stop the cylinder just shy of the surface of the hole so that you basically get a ring formed support for the bottom part of the hole to build from. You could branch out more cylinders at an angle higher up if you need more support.

edit: Dammit, you replied while I was deleting that comment

 

[illuminarti 16]

Similar to what Robert said, you can try drilling tiny holes through the base of the model - so small that they actually close up when printed, but Cura will probably still print the walls and so form support.

 

[Nicolinux 285]

Oh no, I can't do that. I need to use the fix horribly (type-a) option in order to fix some issues with the eyes that I couldn't handle otherwise. This in turn eats up all internal structures. So the cutout would need to go through the bottom/top.

Hm, need to think of an alternative.

 

[chopmeister 0]

If I remember the yoda STL correctly, the eye problems are a result of messy boolean operations. The best solution (and usually the only one) is to load the stl in a poly-modeler such as 3dsmax and fix it by hand.