Advise needed with supports

[deonholt 1]

Hi all and thank you for your help.

I designed this phone stand and need to print it.

Left picture: the hole for the charging cable that needs supports.

Right picture: Support Structure: Normal and Placement: Everywhere.

When I choose "Touching Buildplate" it generates support for the text as well that has a -1mm reses into the stand.

I eventually used "Tree Supports" which worked perfect. But is this the only way? I would rather choose to use the first option as it is using less filament.

I tried to use Support Blockers on the text but cannot get it to work.

 

I will appreciate your advice.

Thanks.

 

[PizzaTijd 15]

Are all the surfaces that you don't want supported properly touched by the support blocker block? I don't see it in your screenshots.

 

Alternatively I can also recommend changing the overhang to an angle (±30-45°), that way you won't need to use support in the first place.

Edited April 2 by PizzaTijd

[Slashee_the_Cow 485]

If you could post the Cura project file (.3mf, in Cura get it ready to print then go to File > Save Project) that's always the best way to be able to get the best help for your specific issue.

 

A support blocker big enough to fit the text inside (it can be bigger and it doesn't make a difference as long as it doesn't cover anything else which does need support) should block support from being generated. In your screenshot I can't see any support blockers (they'll look like this):

Making a support blocker 101:

1. In prepare mode, click the support blocker tool  and click somewhere on your model.
2. Open the move tool  and then click on the support blocker so that only it is selected (by default both it and the model will be selected).
3. Move your blocker to around the right place by dragging the arrows attached to the blocker in the 3D view, then open the scale tool  and turn on Snap Scaling and turn off Uniform Scaling: 
4. Use the tool to make the support blocker the right size, just click and drag the handles for the dimensions which need to be bigger. You might have to switch back and forth between this and the move tool to get it into the right place at the right size.
5. Move and scale it so it's in the right place at the right size.
6. There is no step 6! You should be able to go back to preview mode and see the blocker and that there's no support inside it when you slice the model.

 

@PizzaTijd: it's awesome to see people helping out around here, but if the text is recessed, changing the overhang angle won't make a difference because it will always be a 90° overhang.

[PizzaTijd 15]

@Slashee_the_Cow I wasn't talking about adding an angle to the text - that just is what it is. I see I wasn't particularly clear on this, my bad.

What I meant was adding an angle to the area where the charging port is, instead of just having 90° bends. That way you can just ditch the support alltogether, provided that there are no other overhangs in the model that we can't see.

As roughly sketched here. Remove the red marked bit. They could do the same on the other side if they want it to look nicely symmetrical.

 

Edit: just to be clear, it's just a design suggestion, nothing more. If it's possible then it's an easy fix to prevent needing support. If not, then not.

Edited April 2 by PizzaTijd

[Slashee_the_Cow 485]

@PizzaTijd Sorry. Both of our bad. Not a bad idea but with the overhang angle you can realistically pull off you might end up making the charging port twice as big, or you'd have to do it going around the curve (which now that I think of it, actually seems sort of cool).

 

It does depend though on whether the OP needs the charging port to be an exact width (to fit a particular cable/connector) or just needs a hole for a cable to run through.

[deonholt 1]

5 hours ago, PizzaTijd said:

Are all the surfaces that you don't want supported properly touched by the support blocker block? I don't see it in your screenshots.

 

Alternatively I can also recommend changing the overhang to an angle (±30-45°), that way you won't need to use support in the first place.

Thanks for your reply. I realised that I don't have a clue on how support blockers are set up. After watching a video I managed to get it right.

Thanks very much.