change infill setting for each layer

[alqaadi117 0]

is there a way to alternate between 2 different infill pattern/setting similar to how infill direction can alternated?

 

i'm try to print a bar that is flexible and can bend in one direction only; so to acheive this i wanted to use thin lines in the longitudinal direction for 1 layer and in the next layer use thicker lines(line multiplier) that are oriented in the cross direction and repeat throughout the whole printing process alternating between the two properties. this would make bending easier in one direction and more difficult in the other.

 

is there a way to achieve this using Cura slicer or any other slicer.

[Slashee_the_Cow 410]

Yes, but it'd be a major hassle. You'd need to use modifiers for every second layer to change the infill properties.

To properly answer the question we'd probably need to know the size, shape and intended use of bar.

 

The most important question up front though is: what material are you using?

• PLA will not bend. It doesn't matter how you do the infill, the walls, whatever. It won't bend. It will just snap.
  Yes, I’m aware anything will bend if you make it long and thin enough, including PLA. I haven’t seen a model of the bar, but it doubt it fits the required ratio.
• ABS will not bend. It will give a little more than PLA before it breaks, but not enough. Try bending a Lego brick (they're made of a proprietary blend of ABS) and see how it goes.
• PETG will bend, but only so far before it snaps. Without knowing the size, shape and intended use of the bar I can't say whether it will bend enough.
• TPU will bend, and pretty damn far (using a vice and pliers I've managed to twist a bit of TPU 360° without it breaking) however getting it to bend enough in the right axis and not the other may take some experimentation. It might also be undesirable for some purposes because of its soft texture.
• Those are the materials I'm most familiar with. If you're planning on using something different, please let us know.

So if changing the multiplier is impractical, how can we make it stronger on one axis than the other? Possibly the best bet is to use Lines infill, and use Infill Line Directions to make it do two layers for one direction for every single layer of the other:

I know, picture hard to make out, but there's two layers of lines going crossways for every one lengthways. That's with the the line directions set to [0,0,90] although exactly what you'd need depends on the orientation of the model.

 

However, if you do want to go the hard way, to create a modifier follow steps 1-4 from this post. You'll want to enter size (make sure to turn off Uniform Scaling) and position (aligning with your layer height) manually to make sure it covers the whole area and is only one layer height high. You'll want to keep it as an infill mesh, but click Select settings at the bottom:

The setting you want to add is of course Infill > Infill Line Multiplier. Either search for it or scroll down and turn it on, then set it to 2:

Now we have two lines going across:

Right click your modifier and choose Multiply Selected. In this example I'm going to do one. You'll probably need a lot more. Now, it's created our second multiplier, but it's not where we want it:

So select it, open the move tool, and set it to the same coordinates on the X and Y axes but two layers up on Z:

Now go back to preview: we have two sets of double-then-single!

Now all you need to do is repeat that a bunch of times. When you multiply it, you can create a bunch of multiples at once and then just move them so you don't have to go through that step every time.