Ok, I have not received my Taz5 yet but I have been playin with Cura this weekend and I am alarmed at its inability to support overhangs.
Is the program just not telling me it will print support structure or is thee a command or option I a missing? I exported a fig from Poser. I have it upside down (head down) because it seemed most logical to print that way. Maybe not, love to hear input. One had has a curled set of fingers, you know, like its relaxed or might be holding a can or round object.
When I scroll up the slices (bottom to top) I can see the tips of the fingers will be printed before the fingers attach to the hand. Not possible. So will it build support structure? Is there something else I need to do to be sure the parts are supported?
I really cant get a good screen shot of it because I can’t figure out how to move the camera up and down in altitude. I figured out how to rotate and to pan but not up and down. Very frustrating.
There are two kinds of support material:
Touching build plate will only add support material for those items touching the build plate.
Everywhere will add support, everywhere.
In order to specify which kind of support material to use in Cura, you’ll need to switch from “Quickprint” to “Full Settings”.
That can be changed at: Expert > Switch to full settings. Then import your desired slicing profile (download them at (lulzbot.com/cura) by selecting File > Open Profile and navigate to the profile you downloaded from the previous link.
I selected the PLA high quality. I did have “everywhere” selected in the dropdown. When I get home from work I will see if I can get a screen shot of the settings and the problem area (best I can without any sort of altitude movement on the cura camera).
First attachment:
Figure is upside down, this is near waist level. Directly below the expert confid dialog box you can see two red spots in mid air where it will try to begin the curled fingers.
Second attachment:
Render view showing the fingers so you get a better idea of what you are looking at in attachment1.
Third attachment:
Render with overhang. You can clearly see cura detected the fingertips as overhang.
look at the overhang angle setting- it’s set at 50 degrees. Try changing that to 55 or 45 degrees and look at the gcode preview to see what angle is needed to trigger support material for the fingers.
I have been having a similar issue as well trying to print a dolphin jumping straight up out of some waves. It “printed” the bottom part of the fins over thin air. The dolphin look great except for the portion of the fins it tried printing without support before it got to the body. I did not realize that there was a portion where you could trigger the angle at which Cura adds the supports. I will have to look at that and try the dolphin print again.
