I've printed a number of large pieces for a model ship so far using lightning infill, and the hull so far has printed perfectly and almost completely hollow - the end result is a perfectly structured piece that isn't brittle but weighs much lighter that printed 20% faster with 80% less material. (80% may be exaggerated, but its ALOT of material saving)
@@walterkennedy9474 I used 20% infill with 3.2 line distance which I think is default, had no problems with this. Print speed 50mm/s and 35mm/s wall, t/b and support speed. The keel prints better perpendicular to the build plate to minimize visible print layers, so angled 90 degrees as if the bow is pointing straight up. Obviously cut your pieces into parts that require little to no support if possible. Suggest a resin printer for small detailed parts and decorations.
@@Lakrimoz figured as much for the print direction, arrangement to avoid supports and resin printing. What materials do you use? Do you intend to sand and paint your models? If so, what paints?
Seems very logical, although why it's a type of infill I don't know. It seems that "Internal Supports" would be a valuable new category that is actually orthogonal to Infill. I can see using a Grid or Gyroid for structural strength and still wanting to run this "lightening" algorithm (or some other internal support algo) afterwards to improve the support of minima. Still, good progress!
@@technik27 you can't /yet/ but I also can't imagine why you wouldn't want to. A 5% grid for integrity and then lightening supports for bridging that could even use the infill as a start point.
It's not exactly what you are describing, but gradual infill gets pretty close, although it's denser under any top surface, not just those that really need it. But if you subdivide it 1-2 steps, you use half or quarter infill density in the rest of the internal volume :)
I have seen this comment a lot, it makes sense on the face of it, but I find it doesn't seem to happen in reality, the infill is so thin. Of course it could be countered with more bottom layers if it was an issue, say if you were printing a human head or something. I had a horrible idea about using it to print stacked dice. 🤣
@@ChibiKami Most 3d printed dice will be stacked anyways due to walls and top/bottom not being constructed in the same way. Printing a decently fair dice requires either going with a roller dice design (printed vertically, with seams positioned randomly), or printing each face separately (so 6 pyramids for a six-sided dice) and assembling them.
@@dsp4392 That's why you print them solid as accurately as possible then sand them to be even. I have rolled a 3d printed dice 100 times and calculated the probability and it is within margin of error compared to a regular dice. Not an issue at all. Also always print them at 100% infill, of course doing otherwise will likely give stacked results.
Not just material, time as well. I've a model that before would have taken me over 3 days to print, with the new lightening option it basically cut a whole day off. I 100% plan to test and use this new feature.
If you use the default 20% infill and just set "Gradual Infill Steps" to 2, you will get 5% infill for most of the volume, and 20% in a thin layer just below all the overhangs where it's needed. I prefer that, because bigger objects are not very rigid with "Lightning".
Yeah gradual infill steps are good for things that need to be less flimsy that you know where they will be loaded from. I made a stand for something and saved a ton of plastic by doing that. I mostly do functional prints so I don't think I will have much use for this new infill as I typically need a strong part from all sides. However, it's always super cool to see the advancements in 3d printing just from the software side, and this very clearly will help reduce filament usage and print times for prints that can take advantage of less infill.
Holy cow! Thanks for shining a light on the little known esoteric features. Your video was clear and concise. I've just been compelled to try Cura again just of this one feature.
Great, this shows up a week after i had to print a 1 kg, 30cm (or: one spool, one print) Deadpool head, on which i spent a couple of hours tweaking walls and gradual infill to stay just below 1kg while maximizing the print height... this Lightning infill would have been exactly what i needed: more walls, less infill, more height, and still
Yeah, literally. Running off something highly specific which is time sensitive and every hour counts and I needed to keep the time down and lightning literally would have saved me 5 hours. Could also be part of the reason for the name. Looks like lightning... goes really fast.
Great find I found Adaptive infill in PruseSlicer quite good It is NOT lightning support, but a support that increase support at the walls, and decrease in the center. Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀
I am so glad i seen this video , I just set up my first #D printer today and have been learning cura 4.12 . I would not have figured that out for a bit so thank you!!
as soon as I saw the preview for what the lightning infill looked like I started the upgrade. This has been a feature that I wanted when I first learned about 3d printing but did not have the technical understanding to express. Most of the things that I would print at larger sizes are things that I would like to finish once and make a mold from, those objects do not need to be dense. You can even cut into the bottom of the lightning infilled 3d prints and use expanding foam if you are really concerned about strength, which most infill patterns will not allow for just due to their structure creating more chambers within the print.
I know this is most likely going to be drowned out in the sea of comments but the video idea that you mentioned about going more in-depth of when to infil and when to just leave it hollow would be a really useful guide. Your 10 tips helped me from printing lumpy failed prints to lovely detailed ones and a guide of how and when to infil would help alot of people, myself included. Keep up the great videos mate, have a good one!
@@LostInTech3D Cheers mate! In the mean time I'll check out your backlog of videos. Your style of guides and commentary is great and I hope you continue to make videos in the future.
More people need to see this. I've been wasting so much plastic on infill and have only just started in 3d printing. Lightning infill makes so much sense.
I'd be interested to see how this performs with ABS since that looks like a whole forest of edges to curl up and get knocked into. This is pretty much internal tree supports.
@@thanhavictus I wonder if something like this could be created but to use a Hamiltonian Path instead as, I agree, one smooth run would be much better than starting and stopping constantly.
People I know want to use this to fill their prints with foam, to make them tougher while still staying light. This technique seems to be used for rc models of airplanes for example.
@@myuzu_ There's filament which can print foamy or strong, dependent on the temperature, but it's rather expensive. Also, not sure if it would work well. In case of needing more foam than shell it might not make any sense. Avoiding additional steps isn't always the best way.
Awesome, I thought I recognized your name! Thank you for the work you did, as you can see it's very popular in the community 👍 (for those who haven't worked it out, this was one of the guys who wrote the paper!)
What's curious about this video is that "gradual infill steps" in Cura were already a thing, and does pretty much exactly what you say Lightning Infill adds. Lightning is a much improved version - but you could always have used Gradual Infill to print, for example, the Companion Cube without using infill throughout.
While I think this is a great step forward, I do think that there should be a lot more development in low density infill support like this. The lightning seems a bit chaotic at times almost as if its just randomly generated up to the surface. Still very cool though
Thanks for the heads-up. I've occasionally wondered why there aren't options to treat infill like supports, for exactly the same situations you mention. Well, now there's something even better!
I literally been waiting for this feature for years and have projects waiting for it. Did not want to waste hours and hours of time for a simple internal support that this technology can produce. I've never printed anything solid or super dense, just go on to other projects.
you could have, theoretically, made an object hollow with ~1mm walls and that way used tree or other type of support for inner top layers. but that would introduce other problems with certain shapes while printing...
Great explanation, I wish I 'd watched this video a week ago when I was printing Christmas ornaments! I will definitely be using lightning infill ongoing.
I did knew about the new infill when I installed 4.12 because it pointed it out, but NOW I understand that it's actually the infill I needed most of the time in the past
I'm glad you chose the companion cube as the example as it illustrated one potential problem... The weight or feel would be off for some prints. The companion cube would be heavier on the "top" side. If you printed a relatively large model of it, you'd be able to tell (but if you just did it for a display item and not something you'd expect to be picked up from a desk, then this would be a great choice).
@@LostInTech3D ah true lower density would be less noticable by feel but I was also thinking of large DnD dice like a D20 being too biased or spherical objects that would roll... But nice to know that at the density you used you really couldn't notice a difference by feel at least
In order to make my sacrificial molds for Lost PLA Casting... - Lighting Infill. - 0.1 Millimeter Nozzle. - Variable Layer Height. - Non-Planar Slicing. - Completely clear PLA (with no additives or pigments; the tiny particles might gum up the tiny nozzle). - Input Shaping + Elephant's Foot Compensation. - "Wobble Wing" device (to eliminate Z-wobble). - Texturing (to improve stiffness and surface qualities). - Gradient Infill (to minimize material usage when "traditional" infill is required). - 3D Gyroid Infill Pattern. To make structural parts, I'd ditch the 0.1 millimeter nozzle because I'd be working with materials which would invariably jam it. I would also add Load-Dependent Infill to the mix, and I'd do a crapton of tempering and annealing.
Another take on this would be what you might call spiderweb internal support. It looks like lightning support still starts from the bottom of the print and I can also see that it's often not connected at both ends. Instead, spiderweb support would leave the bottom of the print empty and start bridging across the print before the internal support is needed to build a net on top of which more dense structure can be built (still supported by strands from the side of the print). As a designer, I like to make models that have supports in the model instead of relying on slicers. Similarly, for an isolated local minimum in a top surface, you can hollow out the model below it to create an invisible internal pillar.
It looks like it does both from the bottom and/or from the nearest stable surface. It probably looks for the most reasonable spot to put support, and if it can't find a nearby internal surface that is flat enough it will just use the bottom surface, which seems reasonable. Webbing would need another available surface to attach to, and it won't be able to web across layer boundaries (e.g. a spot on layer 15 to a spot on layer 25), so anywhere the print struggles with bridging webbing will also struggle. It doesn't seem like it would actually solve a problem except to maybe give a small amount of overall support.
If you branch out at 45 or 60 degree angles you can basically be able to start the infill higher off the ground without requiring bridging. Maybe we need an option to specify to the slicer at what angle we're confident the printer can handle. Or what length of bridging can it do
Great video, and fascinating subject. I agree.... calling it "lightning" does it no justice. I wish it had been available when I printed my Maltese Falcon (from the film).
Big fan of your explanation and I do believe it makes a lot of sense. However, compared to other common infill methods I can see two caveats: - lightning support assumes an orientation of the part. Unless the parts intended orientation of display is the same as when printing, the internal support becomes “useless” besides improving printing surface quality (not a problem for decorative parts). - Compared to uniform infills, this also impacts the weight distribution of the model by shifting the center of gravity more to the top. It is a great tool, but there are some trade offs.
This is awesome and I'm definitely going to use it for ornament printing. I look forward to Stefan at CNC Kitchen stress testing this new infill pattern!
Great content and do agree! Can you print with lightening. Leave a hole to inject expanding foam. I bet u will be finished with an very strong part simple to make
These should be called sacrificial supports. They will work internally as well as externally, and hopefully Cura will come out with localized supports that start at the nearest vertical up the model. This will work on internal as well as external features as well. So glad Cura keeps coming out with new features.
SuperSlicer has ‘infill only where needed’ for ages, as well as dense infill layers beneath top surfaces so they can be supported without having dense(or any) infill throughout the model.
Usually I just leave cura updates as in the past they've been troublesome - getting profiles to work again I found difficult. But this is very tempting.
I have been using simple rectangular infill mesh modifiers with no top/bottom and only 1 wall to support local minima for a few layers just before its first skin layer goes down. You can easily generate them by converting the mesh type of a support blocker cube then resizing, however this lightning infill seems like a one-and-done with less fiddling, so if it works, awesome!
I agree there hasn't really been enough improvements in support (internal or external) in the last few years. I blame s3d for being a paid program that a lot of influencers got that worked better than anything out (at that time) but then NEVER got updated. Now that the free software has the same features and more I haven't looked back at the software I paid as much as a cheap printer for...
How else would someone pronounce "gyroid" (saying that as someone from the UK living in America)? Didn't Stefan at CNC Kitchen show that the best way to add strength to a part is with more sidewalls, not infill anyway? I've been thinking about infill as internal support for a while, so I'm glad Cura has added this. Now if only Simplify3D, my preferred slicer would add it. Hahaha! (S3D hasn't been updated for years, for those of you not familiar with it).
Im no language expert but in my opinion the g in 'gy' (without a g before it) should sound like 'juh' rather than 'guh'. For example: edgy gym orgy. However, there is at least 1 exception: gynaecology. Imo it sounds more accurate to what it is if the first g sounded like j
@@LostInTech3D Yeah but we all know people that say jif are wrong anyway. Although that would support a hard G sound on gyro... but that's obviously wrong as well...
I could never understand the logic in 3d printing that Supports can only support overhangs on the outside of the object. But never on the inside. That is like building a house and asking Don't we need to support the roof on the inside with columns? And the constructor answering I don't see how we could do that. We can only use columns on the outside. Those are the rules! And it took them years to figure out that it might be a good idea to let people use supports in 3d prints on the inside. How about column supports? Can place those wherever we want?
It didn't took us years to figure out that it was a good idea, it took us years to finally have the time next to all the other things that needed doing ;) The implementation for the Lightning infill was actually due to an internal hackathon at Ultimaker.
Nerds don’t like it when someone from outside their echo chamber spheres makes them look dumb with obvious, “low brow” as they call them, but solid answers
There are a TON of models I wanted to print but couldn't because I wasn't able to justify the infill requirements to prevent surface sagging. Most of those items were cosmetic (anything serious has ~50% infill, gyroid ideally). Now with this lightning infill, that changes most of them. Might be able to justify breaking out the printer for the first time in AGES.
To me looks like it would be even more useful in Resin printing in conjunction with the hollowing tool. Currently you have to do this manually. Only been resin printing for about a year but even though resin is orders of magnitude more simple compared to FDM but the Resin slicers are very poor with many now requiring exorbitant SAS fees for the privilege. Many printers are now also locking to things like Chitubox because Chitubox can't compete... so I'd guess such a useful feature wont appear for resin unfortunately.
that might change soon - every time I look at printer prices I notice there's a lot of really cheap resin printers...It only takes one really smart, really annoyed developer I guess.
@@jackhaynes8944 Yes, I use this method often (with PrusaSlicer, but same idea). There are also tools for converting between the different formats too, but export/import STL is more reliable in my experience.
Now they have to do combined hybrid grid and lightning infill. Coarse Grid for rigidity and fine lightning in the upper most layers for better top layer support.
Thanks for sharing the Information about the new support infill! But it is not a calibration cube - it´s the companion cube from the game Portal 2. Sorry no cake for you ;)
I've printed a number of large pieces for a model ship so far using lightning infill, and the hull so far has printed perfectly and almost completely hollow - the end result is a perfectly structured piece that isn't brittle but weighs much lighter that printed 20% faster with 80% less material. (80% may be exaggerated, but its ALOT of material saving)
Material that can easily be applied elsewhere.
If you print an alot with the material you saved, it could even be true literally.
Do you have any tips for the model? I’m about to undertake a 1:125 scale print of a destroyer I designed.
@@walterkennedy9474 I used 20% infill with 3.2 line distance which I think is default, had no problems with this. Print speed 50mm/s and 35mm/s wall, t/b and support speed. The keel prints better perpendicular to the build plate to minimize visible print layers, so angled 90 degrees as if the bow is pointing straight up. Obviously cut your pieces into parts that require little to no support if possible. Suggest a resin printer for small detailed parts and decorations.
@@Lakrimoz figured as much for the print direction, arrangement to avoid supports and resin printing. What materials do you use?
Do you intend to sand and paint your models?
If so, what paints?
This was much better coverage than I've seen the lightning infill receive. Thank you for explaining how useful this setting really is.
Seems very logical, although why it's a type of infill I don't know. It seems that "Internal Supports" would be a valuable new category that is actually orthogonal to Infill. I can see using a Grid or Gyroid for structural strength and still wanting to run this "lightening" algorithm (or some other internal support algo) afterwards to improve the support of minima. Still, good progress!
I think every infill is a form of internal supports + stability (except lightning)
Not exactly orthogonal, as you wouldn't be able to turn on both internal supports and infill at the same time.
@@technik27 you can't /yet/ but I also can't imagine why you wouldn't want to. A 5% grid for integrity and then lightening supports for bridging that could even use the infill as a start point.
dang you really have a point! a very low density gyroid infill plus "lightning" internal supports would be an absolute winning combo.
It's not exactly what you are describing, but gradual infill gets pretty close, although it's denser under any top surface, not just those that really need it. But if you subdivide it 1-2 steps, you use half or quarter infill density in the rest of the internal volume :)
This infill would also be great when you want to fill a part with epoxy or some other 2-part resin.
Yes, and by golly, yes!
One disadvantage of lightning infill might be that it could lead to larger parts being more top- heavy.
I have seen this comment a lot, it makes sense on the face of it, but I find it doesn't seem to happen in reality, the infill is so thin.
Of course it could be countered with more bottom layers if it was an issue, say if you were printing a human head or something.
I had a horrible idea about using it to print stacked dice. 🤣
@@LostInTech3D stacked dice are the first thing I thought of
@@ChibiKami Most 3d printed dice will be stacked anyways due to walls and top/bottom not being constructed in the same way. Printing a decently fair dice requires either going with a roller dice design (printed vertically, with seams positioned randomly), or printing each face separately (so 6 pyramids for a six-sided dice) and assembling them.
@@dsp4392 That's why you print them solid as accurately as possible then sand them to be even. I have rolled a 3d printed dice 100 times and calculated the probability and it is within margin of error compared to a regular dice. Not an issue at all. Also always print them at 100% infill, of course doing otherwise will likely give stacked results.
Not just material, time as well. I've a model that before would have taken me over 3 days to print, with the new lightening option it basically cut a whole day off. I 100% plan to test and use this new feature.
This is a huge benefit!
If you use the default 20% infill and just set "Gradual Infill Steps" to 2, you will get 5% infill for most of the volume, and 20% in a thin layer just below all the overhangs where it's needed. I prefer that, because bigger objects are not very rigid with "Lightning".
Thanks. Ive been trying to figure out how to print infill only where I need it
Yeah gradual infill steps are good for things that need to be less flimsy that you know where they will be loaded from. I made a stand for something and saved a ton of plastic by doing that. I mostly do functional prints so I don't think I will have much use for this new infill as I typically need a strong part from all sides. However, it's always super cool to see the advancements in 3d printing just from the software side, and this very clearly will help reduce filament usage and print times for prints that can take advantage of less infill.
Is that what Lost in Tech is using at 2:55? I want to replicate that infill for a project.
@@FiveToTheFifth yeah that's it. You'll have to show the settings first as I think they're hidden by default.
Holy cow! Thanks for shining a light on the little known esoteric features. Your video was clear and concise.
I've just been compelled to try Cura again just of this one feature.
Just been using this on some large prints, it saves a ton of filament and time
Great, this shows up a week after i had to print a 1 kg, 30cm (or: one spool, one print) Deadpool head, on which i spent a couple of hours tweaking walls and gradual infill to stay just below 1kg while maximizing the print height... this Lightning infill would have been exactly what i needed: more walls, less infill, more height, and still
Well I can only see one solution here - print more Deadpool heads!
Yeah, literally. Running off something highly specific which is time sensitive and every hour counts and I needed to keep the time down and lightning literally would have saved me 5 hours. Could also be part of the reason for the name. Looks like lightning... goes really fast.
Just installed 4.12.1, I'll give it a shot. Thank you sir!
Thanks for this video, really informative! I wouldn't have even bothered using it otherwise, but now the benefits are clearly highlighted. Subbed :)
Welcome! 👍
Wow !!!
Thank you, I will use this feature. Filament isn't getting any less expensive.
it sure isn't, plus less plastic = better for everyone.
This is a great addition to cura and a great video!
Great find
I found Adaptive infill in PruseSlicer quite good
It is NOT lightning support, but a support that increase support at the walls, and decrease in the center.
Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀
I am so glad i seen this video , I just set up my first #D printer today and have been learning cura 4.12 .
I would not have figured that out for a bit so thank you!!
Thanks for the explanation. Read about the infill in Cura announce but didnt understand it until watched you video. Will definitely try it.
Great job on realizing the potential of this!
as soon as I saw the preview for what the lightning infill looked like I started the upgrade. This has been a feature that I wanted when I first learned about 3d printing but did not have the technical understanding to express. Most of the things that I would print at larger sizes are things that I would like to finish once and make a mold from, those objects do not need to be dense. You can even cut into the bottom of the lightning infilled 3d prints and use expanding foam if you are really concerned about strength, which most infill patterns will not allow for just due to their structure creating more chambers within the print.
Great video! I hadn't noticed the new infil mode until you told me!
I know this is most likely going to be drowned out in the sea of comments but the video idea that you mentioned about going more in-depth of when to infil and when to just leave it hollow would be a really useful guide. Your 10 tips helped me from printing lumpy failed prints to lovely detailed ones and a guide of how and when to infil would help alot of people, myself included. Keep up the great videos mate, have a good one!
I still read all the comments 👍
Yep I've made sure to note down a future video on infill, or probably scope for a few videos actually on the topic!
@@LostInTech3D Cheers mate! In the mean time I'll check out your backlog of videos. Your style of guides and commentary is great and I hope you continue to make videos in the future.
I saw the update notification and ignored it. Really glad you made this video!
Oh, I will absolutely use that when I have a need for it. (But right now all my prints are mechanical!)
More people need to see this. I've been wasting so much plastic on infill and have only just started in 3d printing. Lightning infill makes so much sense.
I've been printing curved bunkers with 15% infill and it wastes soooooo much material. Lightning sounds like EXACTLY what I need.
I'd be interested to see how this performs with ABS since that looks like a whole forest of edges to curl up and get knocked into. This is pretty much internal tree supports.
good point
It'd be better if it was continuous pathing instead of a million little pieces
@@thanhavictus I wonder if something like this could be created but to use a Hamiltonian Path instead as, I agree, one smooth run would be much better than starting and stopping constantly.
I've been having excellent results with lightning infill on ABS, give or take a few models warping off the bed, usual ABS stuff.
People I know want to use this to fill their prints with foam, to make them tougher while still staying light. This technique seems to be used for rc models of airplanes for example.
What about printing a foam interior at the same time
@@myuzu_ There's filament which can print foamy or strong, dependent on the temperature, but it's rather expensive. Also, not sure if it would work well. In case of needing more foam than shell it might not make any sense. Avoiding additional steps isn't always the best way.
Cool video ! Nice to see this work is appreciated !
Awesome, I thought I recognized your name! Thank you for the work you did, as you can see it's very popular in the community 👍
(for those who haven't worked it out, this was one of the guys who wrote the paper!)
What's curious about this video is that "gradual infill steps" in Cura were already a thing, and does pretty much exactly what you say Lightning Infill adds. Lightning is a much improved version - but you could always have used Gradual Infill to print, for example, the Companion Cube without using infill throughout.
I sometimes use "infill as support" option
That’s pretty cool. Once I figure out my printer issue I’ll definitely be using it
While I think this is a great step forward, I do think that there should be a lot more development in low density infill support like this. The lightning seems a bit chaotic at times almost as if its just randomly generated up to the surface. Still very cool though
Thanks for the heads-up. I've occasionally wondered why there aren't options to treat infill like supports, for exactly the same situations you mention. Well, now there's something even better!
Yes I’ve been using it since the Beta. It’s great
Thanks for testing the beta! We really appreciate you doing that :)
I literally been waiting for this feature for years and have projects waiting for it. Did not want to waste hours and hours of time for a simple internal support that this technology can produce. I've never printed anything solid or super dense, just go on to other projects.
you could have, theoretically, made an object hollow with ~1mm walls and that way used tree or other type of support for inner top layers. but that would introduce other problems with certain shapes while printing...
HAL has a bunch of great papers on 3d printing and infill generation. Good stuff man.
I keep meaning to go back and spend some time looking at them!
I totally clocked on this just for the thumbnail.
Glad I did, I've been tempted to try cura for a while, this might just have given me a nudge.
Go for it....the learning curve is fairly steep but it's worth doing
the new feature is great and all but, WHY THE F... YOU HAVE ONLY 4K SUBS, you my friend make really nice content and deserve much, much more
a week ago I only had 1k subs 👍😂
Great explanation, I wish I 'd watched this video a week ago when I was printing Christmas ornaments! I will definitely be using lightning infill ongoing.
This is sooo nice! Thanks for that tip, i would of miss that update without your Video. Thanks!
This seems really usefull, i do alot of decorative pieces! Thanks for video!
I did knew about the new infill when I installed 4.12 because it pointed it out, but NOW I understand that it's actually the infill I needed most of the time in the past
I'm glad you chose the companion cube as the example as it illustrated one potential problem... The weight or feel would be off for some prints. The companion cube would be heavier on the "top" side. If you printed a relatively large model of it, you'd be able to tell (but if you just did it for a display item and not something you'd expect to be picked up from a desk, then this would be a great choice).
It didn't, at the density I printed at. But yeah a higher density infill would be more obvious
@@LostInTech3D ah true lower density would be less noticable by feel but I was also thinking of large DnD dice like a D20 being too biased or spherical objects that would roll... But nice to know that at the density you used you really couldn't notice a difference by feel at least
I've been waiting for this for so so long.
In order to make my sacrificial molds for Lost PLA Casting...
- Lighting Infill.
- 0.1 Millimeter Nozzle.
- Variable Layer Height.
- Non-Planar Slicing.
- Completely clear PLA (with no additives or pigments; the tiny particles might gum up the tiny nozzle).
- Input Shaping + Elephant's Foot Compensation.
- "Wobble Wing" device (to eliminate Z-wobble).
- Texturing (to improve stiffness and surface qualities).
- Gradient Infill (to minimize material usage when "traditional" infill is required).
- 3D Gyroid Infill Pattern.
To make structural parts, I'd ditch the 0.1 millimeter nozzle because I'd be working with materials which would invariably jam it. I would also add Load-Dependent Infill to the mix, and I'd do a crapton of tempering and annealing.
Awesome video, really well explained. Subbed! Cheers
yep, i will be using it! thanks for showing and explaining so good!
Brilliant solution to a common problem. Saves material and time.
I can definitely see this saving a lot of material for larg prints or several multiple prints.
Definitely going to use this!
BRILLIANT!
Extremely helpful. I've got it, but honestly read right through it. Thanks so much for pointing this out!
Keep up the amazing work!
"Reinstalling Windows" "Don't wanna go into that.." "Lost In Tech"
checks out.
Wow, great info! I just discovered your channel, and instantly signed up after watching this! Good luck and keep up the excellent work!
great video! thanks! Will certainly try this out.
Defiantly good for lost PLA casting.
Another take on this would be what you might call spiderweb internal support. It looks like lightning support still starts from the bottom of the print and I can also see that it's often not connected at both ends. Instead, spiderweb support would leave the bottom of the print empty and start bridging across the print before the internal support is needed to build a net on top of which more dense structure can be built (still supported by strands from the side of the print).
As a designer, I like to make models that have supports in the model instead of relying on slicers. Similarly, for an isolated local minimum in a top surface, you can hollow out the model below it to create an invisible internal pillar.
It looks like it does both from the bottom and/or from the nearest stable surface. It probably looks for the most reasonable spot to put support, and if it can't find a nearby internal surface that is flat enough it will just use the bottom surface, which seems reasonable. Webbing would need another available surface to attach to, and it won't be able to web across layer boundaries (e.g. a spot on layer 15 to a spot on layer 25), so anywhere the print struggles with bridging webbing will also struggle. It doesn't seem like it would actually solve a problem except to maybe give a small amount of overall support.
If you branch out at 45 or 60 degree angles you can basically be able to start the infill higher off the ground without requiring bridging. Maybe we need an option to specify to the slicer at what angle we're confident the printer can handle. Or what length of bridging can it do
Great video, and fascinating subject. I agree.... calling it "lightning" does it no justice. I wish it had been available when I printed my Maltese Falcon (from the film).
What would you have thought were a better name for it?
Big fan of your explanation and I do believe it makes a lot of sense.
However, compared to other common infill methods I can see two caveats:
- lightning support assumes an orientation of the part. Unless the parts intended orientation of display is the same as when printing, the internal support becomes “useless” besides improving printing surface quality (not a problem for decorative parts).
- Compared to uniform infills, this also impacts the weight distribution of the model by shifting the center of gravity more to the top.
It is a great tool, but there are some trade offs.
This is awesome and I'm definitely going to use it for ornament printing. I look forward to Stefan at CNC Kitchen stress testing this new infill pattern!
Great content and do agree!
Can you print with lightening. Leave a hole to inject expanding foam. I bet u will be finished with an very strong part simple to make
You could. I'd be interested to see how well that would work especially on really large pieces
Whoaaaaaahh, gotta test this.
Thanks for the explanation
Thanks for the update.
Support infill has already existed for quite some time, but now the infill can build up from the sides of the print.
These should be called sacrificial supports. They will work internally as well as externally, and hopefully Cura will come out with localized supports that start at the nearest vertical up the model. This will work on internal as well as external features as well. So glad Cura keeps coming out with new features.
Thanks for the info! I had no idea this was a new feature.
SuperSlicer has ‘infill only where needed’ for ages, as well as dense infill layers beneath top surfaces so they can be supported without having dense(or any) infill throughout the model.
cura also has the "infill support" which doesn't print infill where it's not supporting anything, but this is a new algorithm i guess.
Really neat; I don't know why I didn't think of "internal trees, why not?" before now.
I know, it's definitely one of those "why did this take so long" moments.
Usually I just leave cura updates as in the past they've been troublesome - getting profiles to work again I found difficult.
But this is very tempting.
Great video, thank you!
I have been using simple rectangular infill mesh modifiers with no top/bottom and only 1 wall to support local minima for a few layers just before its first skin layer goes down. You can easily generate them by converting the mesh type of a support blocker cube then resizing, however this lightning infill seems like a one-and-done with less fiddling, so if it works, awesome!
It also uses different logic than regular support. In the case of infill, you don't really care about x/y or z offsets.
I never thought about it like that. Wow this was such a revelation, I thought It was just a useless good looking infill. Great video
Damn, congrats on those views man, you deserve it
thank you! shocked is an understatement 😂
This was awesome and makes a lot of sense. Thank you for explaining it 😊
Seeing the cube fail made me smash that like button.
I agree there hasn't really been enough improvements in support (internal or external) in the last few years. I blame s3d for being a paid program that a lot of influencers got that worked better than anything out (at that time) but then NEVER got updated. Now that the free software has the same features and more I haven't looked back at the software I paid as much as a cheap printer for...
I am not always well informed on such news but it is certainly a bigger upgrade for certain reasons.
Step aside Gyroid, this is my new go-to infill for sand filled prints!
It look awesome! Definitely will worth some time to try!
Excellent tutorial, earned a sub.
This seems especially useful for printing large parts with large nozzles where even 1 or 2 perimeters is plenty strong.
How else would someone pronounce "gyroid" (saying that as someone from the UK living in America)?
Didn't Stefan at CNC Kitchen show that the best way to add strength to a part is with more sidewalls, not infill anyway?
I've been thinking about infill as internal support for a while, so I'm glad Cura has added this. Now if only Simplify3D, my preferred slicer would add it. Hahaha! (S3D hasn't been updated for years, for those of you not familiar with it).
Gif. If you get what I mean 😂
Im no language expert but in my opinion the g in 'gy' (without a g before it) should sound like 'juh' rather than 'guh'. For example: edgy gym orgy. However, there is at least 1 exception: gynaecology. Imo it sounds more accurate to what it is if the first g sounded like j
@@LostInTech3D Yeah but we all know people that say jif are wrong anyway. Although that would support a hard G sound on gyro... but that's obviously wrong as well...
This is great. Thanks for the advice
heck yeah im gonna use it this is awesome
I could never understand the logic in 3d printing that Supports can only support overhangs on the outside of the object. But never on the inside.
That is like building a house and asking Don't we need to support the roof on the inside with columns?
And the constructor answering I don't see how we could do that. We can only use columns on the outside. Those are the rules!
And it took them years to figure out that it might be a good idea to let people use supports in 3d prints on the inside. How about column supports? Can place those wherever we want?
It didn't took us years to figure out that it was a good idea, it took us years to finally have the time next to all the other things that needed doing ;)
The implementation for the Lightning infill was actually due to an internal hackathon at Ultimaker.
Nerds don’t like it when someone from outside their echo chamber spheres makes them look dumb with obvious, “low brow” as they call them, but solid answers
There are a TON of models I wanted to print but couldn't because I wasn't able to justify the infill requirements to prevent surface sagging. Most of those items were cosmetic (anything serious has ~50% infill, gyroid ideally). Now with this lightning infill, that changes most of them. Might be able to justify breaking out the printer for the first time in AGES.
It's good. They should call it Low Infill. You could print high infill or low. Make it the lowest infill option below 10%
Well, the algorithm loves this video it seems!
Weird I know!
Ok when I first heard about the new 'infill' I was not at all impressed nor did I realize what it was truly for. Wow..that's useful.
Really reminds me of the tree support function, which also works really well
Definitely using this.
Aweeeeeesome videoooo00 thanks for sharing this infoooo
I think that brilliant, might try this one day :)
... damn, maybe I need to make a cura profile for my printers now.
To me looks like it would be even more useful in Resin printing in conjunction with the hollowing tool. Currently you have to do this manually.
Only been resin printing for about a year but even though resin is orders of magnitude more simple compared to FDM but the Resin slicers are very poor with many now requiring exorbitant SAS fees for the privilege. Many printers are now also locking to things like Chitubox because Chitubox can't compete... so I'd guess such a useful feature wont appear for resin unfortunately.
that might change soon - every time I look at printer prices I notice there's a lot of really cheap resin printers...It only takes one really smart, really annoyed developer I guess.
I haven’t used resin printers but could you slice the model in Cura and export the model with the lightning infill to the resin slicer?
@@jackhaynes8944 Yes, I use this method often (with PrusaSlicer, but same idea). There are also tools for converting between the different formats too, but export/import STL is more reliable in my experience.
Lychee Slicer creates auto internal supports for hollow models. I use it all the time when hollowing resin prints
During your intro i thought to myself, "hey, that looks like tree support" and it turns out I used the right keyword
we could start a petition to change the name to tree infill 👍😂
Maybe "lightning" is referring to this type of infill speeding up the overall print time? it's making printing "fast as lightning".
Now they have to do combined hybrid grid and lightning infill. Coarse Grid for rigidity and fine lightning in the upper most layers for better top layer support.
The wife's ears just pricked up at hearing the word "ribbed".
Thanks for sharing the Information about the new support infill! But it is not a calibration cube - it´s the companion cube from the game Portal 2. Sorry no cake for you ;)
This is one reason I still use IceSL to slice hollow objects. Nice to see the feature maturing in mainstream slicers.
I have somehow never heard of this slicer, I will take a look!
I'm sorry! I put the wrong one. It is actually IceSL, not KISSlicer that can support 'covers' internally.
@@LostInTech3D Check out the Cavity functionality in IceSL
Awesome.. Thanks for the tip, I think I will have to install cura.
yes do it - it's a piece of cake, especially if you have a printer there's already a profile for.
@@LostInTech3D FOSS ftw..