I’m a beginner to the world of 3D printing but having a GREAT time printing on my TAZ 5.
See attached pictures…can’t figure why this is happening. It is not a solid print and it looks like the strings of filament are looking for something to grab on.
I think it is because I’m not using supports but not sure.
any help would be great
You will need support to print that model. Otherwise it is trying to print plastic out into open air with nothing to keep it from drooping.
Welcome to the forum unclebutch!
What you are seeing is droopage from a bridging, or overhang move. FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) printing builds layer upon to create your object. In your sunglasses, the drooping you are seeing is due to the design. In that specific layer, your printhead is laying down plastic in mid air. Naturally, gravity will pull this down until it cools enough.
There are a couple of things you can do to help bridging and overhang moves. The first will be to increase your fan speeds, and slow down your print speeds. This will cool the filament as it comes out of the toolhead almost “freezing” the extrusion in mid air. (You will most likely still see droopage, but it won’t be as significant.)
The other option you can try is to turn on support options. This will build a structure underneath your object, to give these mid-air sections support to prevent droopage in specific locations. Now support is a tricky beast. You can define how close the object is in the X/Y plane and in the Z plane. The closer the distance the better the support will be, but the harder it will be to remove. Oppositely the farther away the support is the easier it will be to remove, but will naturally support less. (Something fine tuning for individual STL files is highly recommended.)
I think you will find a wealth of information in this forum, just don’t hesitate to ask!
thanks brent…really appreciate the help.
one more question…where online can I learn more about how to build support structures
thanks again
Depending on which 3d printer control software you are using, there will be some sort of “generate support material” button or setting in the same location that you select your other pre-printing settings like layer height and number of perimiters.
Piercet is spot on, and you can find that options in quickprint mode. You can also find detailed info on support in your manual’s Cura section. It will require switching to full settings to fine tune, so be sure to load in a filament specific profile.