TL;DR: "Preferences" -> "Configure Cura" -> "General" -> untick "Automatically drop models to the build plate" Really quick tip for anybody getting angry at Cura for dropping the parts to the build plate automatically (as I was before I looked at the settings): There's an option in the menu bar, "Preferences" -> "Configure Cura". It should start you out on the General tab (otherwise switch to it) and under the heading "Viewport behavior" there should be a checkbox for "Automatically drop models to the build plate". Uncheck that if you don't want the lowest part of your model to touch the build plate (i.e. hang it in midair to generate supports underneath). Extra tip: if you don't want to switch that option on and off all the time, you can manually drop the model by selecting it, using the "Move" tool (or pressing 'T' ) and setting the z value to exactly 0. Hope this helps somebody :)
Regarding your last point, avoiding support is the best strategy, I have had so many problems with removing support I have an aversion to support material at all! One thing not to be afraid of is to design your part as mutiple parts that screw, glue, or clip together. Its tempting to try to make it print out all as one part, but sometimes you can make a nicer looking part as multiple pieces. This also means that making minor changes means you can just reprint one or two pieces rather than the whole thing, and it also opens the opportunity to make your part multi-colour if the aesthetic is important and you don't have a printer with multiple extruders.
This. Comparing my more recent projects that are designed in pieces to my older projects that are just one big object cut up using meshmixer, designing for it means you have so much more control and can often avoid support entirely
Totally. Printing a model in various parts and gluing them together can be a great way to side-step hassles with supports. Something else I found helpful and quite easy is to design my own supports instead of relying on the slicer to do it for me.
Probably works well for machines and stuff, but I've found that with art designs this usually isn't really an option, especially not when it comes to organics.
Cura also has settings for interface layers and some small adjustments pay huge dividends (included my settings). Would be interested to see a follow-up with support interface enabled. Love your vids Angus! Keep it up! Awesome resource for the community. My settings: Tree supports, touching build plate 40deg branch angle 0% density 1 support wall line Enable support brim w/3mm width .2mm support z distance .4mm support top distance ⭐️enable support interface ⭐️enable support floor ⭐️enable support roof ⭐️ .12mm interface resolution ⭐️ 100% interface density ⭐️ concentric interface pattern
Came here to say the same. I have my interface on "concentric" and at 80 - 90% density for parts that need to be pretty and sometimes you can't even tell they were overhangs.
Thanks for the tip on the interface, I just never use it so wouldn't even know it makes a difference. Good cooling also makes an enormous difference in support removal ease. The difference between removing supports (both default settings) between my custom machine with single a 5015 blower with two side cooling duct vs. a stock Ender 3 is absurd. The supports just stick on the Ender 3 like they were supposed to be part of the model.
@@joshuajohnson5121 Nice, so you slow down before the layer above the interface? I can imagine that helping a lot. Then again that PLA I'm using prints pretty hot (225°c) so guess the cooling is definitely working extra.
Bambu studio sets the Z distance between tree support and model to 0 (if you click yes when choosing tree support). Maybe that's why they were stuck. I'm not sure the other slicers do that.
CONGRATS ON ONE MILLION!! I've been here since 800k, and although it has only been 4 or 5 months (I think), I have really enjoyed seeing you grow. Thanks for always sharing so much information, and inspiring me to get a 3d printer, which I now have. Thanks for inspiring others, too. I think you really have achieved empowering creativity through technology. Good job, Angus, and congratulations once again!!!
Super close to 1 mil Angus!! Very happy for you man, thank you for all the help over the last few years. I started up a 3DP Shop thanks to some of your help. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help in the future.
As somebody who has only been doing 3-D printing for about a month, videos like this are still helpful. I’ve had a few prints so far where I overestimated the support I would need and ended up breaking parts of the print or making them impossible to reach, The worst one of which took almost 2 days to print.
Hello Angus, I wanted to message you in anticipation of you crossing the 1 million subscriber marker on TH-cam. Whether it’s a big deal for you or not, it’s a very large accomplishment and you have earned it. Congratulations and best wishes. I loved the video too, found the same results with Bambu slicer. Took me a while to figure out that the threshold angle is backwards on that program haha.
Very interesting video. Did Cura’s supports fall more in line with Prusa’s if you inverted the angle? As I’m sure you’re aware, the reference is swapped compared to Prusa Slocer. For example, 30 degrees in Prusa is 60 degrees in Cura. Love the videos. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for this video Angus! I think it's a great video for beginners and refresher for people who have been printing for a while! Heck, I even learned something today too! Keep up the great work man!
As a beginner to 3d printing this is was incredibly helpful. Perhaps as a part 2 you can also include information and advice on model placement and orientation to help with better print quality and support use. For instance, you mentioned the sharp downward pointing angle and how it must have support. I would assume something like that could be greatly assisted with rotating the model. Placement and orientation is definitely an area I find to be tricky at times, especially when I need t set supports.
I'm at the point where I'm exclusively using my Bambu printer and I do find their supports very easy to work with. I experimented with printing a 1:285 scale Zeta shuttle, from Rogue One, using a 0.2mm nozzle - and was able to get the supports off the less-than-a-mm-thick laser cannons without destroying them! I had to be very careful of course, but it worked. I agree that the tree supports aren't awesome, though; and if aesthetics matter you'll want to try and make the supported surface the less visible one. I think of BaSl's supports as better than PrSl's, but I suspect that's more to do with the printer itself than the slicer proper, since my experience with Prusa Slicer's supports was all on an Ender 5. So, thank you for including them in this! And while I knew what changing the overhang angle did, I'd never figured out when I'd *want* to do that, so thank you for the mini tutorial there, as well.
I am surprised you didn't include Simplify3D v5 in the list. S3D v4 had some of the best supports for a very long time and I was wondering if they had gotten any better. I am fully on PrusaSlicer now but I print a lot of things with supports and that may have made v5 worth the money.
Around 11:53 you mention printing stands out of support structures only. I've been doing some explorations lately too, and I'm finding I can make remarkably good filter structures by setting my top and bottom thickness to zero, and playing with infill settings and wall thicknesses. It's remarkably accurate.
@@danbrunermer4295 I did not, I've always used defaults. The bambulab tree supports might benefit, but I feel they won't support the part if they're made to be further away.
Excellent overview man and I really love that you encourage people to create designs that don't need support when they can at the end. Its a good habit to get into especially when you start getting more and more into running production/ batches with your machines. 💪🏼
Great video and I appreciate your dive into the different slicers! I really enjoy using Bambu studio for generating tree supports. At 14:13, it shows your Top Z-distance set to 0 mm. As of course you're aware, increasing this distance even slightly will allow you to remove the support material more easily instead of directly fusing it to the support layer. 0.2mm is the default distance and allows removal. If you want the 0mm distance, a support-specific print material such as Bambu's Support W (printing with multi-filament such as Bambu's AMS) is a great option as it does not lend itself easily to weld to the printed PLA.
I appreciate all of your videos for help, as for this one I feel that the settings don't translate exactly to cura 1 to 1 so as a beginner it's hard to know what to change, it would be cool to have a short video going into the settings of each slicer showing what to change.. again love the videos thank you for all your help!
Success with supports for quality and ease of removal relies partially on layer height of the print and the z height gap between the print and the model. There's a ton of power in Cura for playing with this and some tuning with z distance, support interface density, and even x y distance can save a ton of print time, material, and cleanup effort. It seems like you talked about tuning in Prusaslicer but didn't bother to tune the support settings in Cura causing your supports to be more difficult to remove with Cura than it needed to. There's also plugins like manual cylindrical supports that can target the areas specifically needing supports too.
@@LeftJoystick I wouldn’t pay for a new license but did pay for the upgrade to v5, though I still prefer v4. I’ve used it forever and is the slicer that got me printing successfully.
Always used S3D v4 at work for years, does the job perfectly. When the v5 came out, i got pissed off to pay for BS and switched to Ideamaker which is more efficient with a bit of tuning. S3D v4 > Ideamaker > S3D v5 for me. Never used Cura, or Slic3r.
@@radish6691 go ask for a refund, i did and got a refund. the upgrade doesn't let you have two instances of s3d v5, you can have one s3d v4 instance on one oc and one s3d v5 on another, they never mentioned that anywhere in the purchasing process, and in the refund request they told me it is mentioned, I checked again and couldn't find any mention of this change so I just refunded and I'm using cura now, much better honestly than s3d v4 or even s3d v5.
Very nice! It remembers me the old days of 3D printing, when you could find models with "baked in supports". It was a life saver as most support generation was really disastrous back then.
If you can use soluble support then a trick you can use to cut down the cost (soluble is very expensive) is to print your model in the base filament and only print the interface layers with soluble. This has a side benefit of speeding up your print because you are not doing head changes for every layer.
Another option I almost always change in PrusaSlicer when I need support is Style: Grid to Snug. I find this support generation to create less waste, is easier to remove, and fails less often.
I've been splitting PLA models in my slicer to prevent use of supports, then using dichloromethane to weld them together. The joints are very, very strong and you need microscopic amounts of solvent so it's not a hazard.
There is an option (gradual support infill steps) in Cura to makes the support more dense a few millimeters below it touches the model. It gives much better results without wasting too much material or time.
Since this is all needed regardless of gravity orientation (or gravity at all), I'd suggest that it's not a support at all, but a platform. Maybe you'd call it semantics, but a support is to resist gravity, where as a platform provides a surface to print against, which sounds like it's more technically correct. The best kind of correct.
Designing parts that don't need support is a challenge I enjoy. Especially TPU when you can use its flexibility to create living hinges in the print, giving it some origami traits. One of my designs needed support so I made the pieces myself and put them into the design because I didn't trust the slicers to make them. It works well, the 3 support pieces easily snap off after printing, helping ensure the end users get perfect prints each time.
Have you tried PrusaSlicer's Snug supports? It's basically the same support columns, but they keep the supports a lot closer to the model and the interface layer is more cradle-like. I've gotten better surface finish with it and often it's easier to remove. Also, the Cura, PrusaSlicer 2.6 (when it comes out), and probably Bambu Slicer* all base their supports off a fork of Cura's tree supports. Thomas Rahm forked Cura, did a bunch of the work, the Cura and Prusa teams ended up working with them on the supports and are integrating it into their own slicers. Prusa said that their team came down with flu/*vid/etc. late December and they wouldn't get an alpha out in time. *Bambu indicated they found the supports from Cura, so I assume they are also using the same support setup, maybe with different set of settings.
At the 8:30 mark you have a circle all the way around the outside. I assume it's primary purpose is to ensure filimint is flowing well or to mark an area. For some reason I'm using Cura 5.2.1 and it makes that outer circle attach to my actual model. I assume it's purpose is to ensure the model is easy to remove. Should I let it continue fill that in and if it's a waste of material is there a setting I am missing to make it stop doing that?
It's called a skirt if its separated from the part and indeed does help start the flow of plastic reliably, but if it's touching the part it's called a brim and it can help hold thin parts down to the print bed more reliably.
I have been playing with Cura's tree supports in the alpha release. I had quite a few failures until i realised that it doesn;t cap off the supports by default. So you can end up with a tall support building up fine but because there was no top on it the thing it was meant to be supporting fails. There is the option to include a top but you need to make sure there is some infil in the supports otherwise there is nothign to build the top on.
That's a useful overview, Angus! Amount of flags and sliders may repel from exploring, especially if you only see the results in 3 hours. Knowing whats important and what can you achieve helps a lot
back when I was using ideamaker I remember that the big "selling point" was the amount of manual control you had over the print result. So I think it's fair to assume ideamaker is designed in a way that it assumes the user will place manual supports as the UI for them is pretty well made.
I think it's important to know that the major thing that controls the angle of overhang that can be printed unsupported is the ratio of the layer height to the line width (nozzle size) Use a 0.8 nozzle with a 0.08 layer height, you'd be shocked now much hang-out you can get away with. I regularly choose thinner layer heights when I want to avoid using supports.
Omg hello Angus. Fellow Aussie here. Huge fan of ur vids and really find ur advice helpful. Thank you so much for providing these videos. They help me with my prints a lot.
When I print D&D minis, I still use MeshMixer, its supports work very well for them. For everything else, I'm still wrestling with Cura to find something that works for most of my models...
I've always been impressed with the support material in the Zortrax Z-Suite slicer. It seems to leave the nicest surfaces of the slicers I've used while still being easy to remove.
Using tree supports on the Bambo X1 work incredibly in my opinion. Had the X1 for just a few weeks, but I will probably never use any other support on this printer. I thought the tree supports in their slicer were one of the greatest benefits!
Yes, "snug" is much easier to remove and less wasteful. I would prefer it the default option as well. Maybe not best for all purposes but especially good when supporting a detail over another layer.
Do any of these slicers offer a “manual mode” or manual override, say, were you could draw a polygon on the baseplate and force support generation in that area? For instance, let the auto algorithm do most of the work, but ensure you had something under the point of the “M”?
Great video! Another thing that helps a lot is the "snug" setting for PrusaSlicer, it saves a lot of print time and material. (Perfect timing 2.6 alfa is released the same weekend as this video😂)
As an end user, I feel like the Voron team has mastered the "design your parts with no supports" philosophy, going as far as designing built-in brides and parts that are meant to break away or be cut away after the print is done. Truly one of my best printing experience
I bought my first printer ( Anet A8 ) after seeing your video ( many moon ago ) I bought Simplified 3D after seeing your video iI now have S3D v 5.01 and i wont change because i can easily predict my result everytime I think that you should have include it into your test !
I've used Cura's standard supports in conjunction with the support enforcer/blocker mod (one of them is official Cura, the other isn't, I forget which) mainly through a process of elimination. The dual extrusion printer we have _really_ doesn't like the GCode from Slic3r lineage programs for some reason, and IdeaMaker's supports were just _awful._ I've had some pretty decent results (as in, the workshop said "Yep we can use this in production") when I used the breakaway support material E3D sold a while back but is now discontinued. It stuck to ABS _just_ enough to support it, but it wouldn't weld to it like HIPS would if it's set to the same distance. It's a total pain when it's encased by the model, of course, and I've reminded the CAD guys on a few occasions to not do that. We have a couple of Markforged Onyx Ones now, and although I wish Eiger had more features and avoided stupid things like creating tiny support towers, it's a really solid package. Sometimes you get these slinky or accordion like things when you peel off the supports.
i'm finding as i dig more into these settings, is that there's so many it becomes tough to keep things straight. well i did this, now i should do this, this should be done etc. checklists, discussions on what exactly effects what, 4etc, things like that. do you have any things that you have put together like that? a flow-chart of sorts? i had my printer pretty tuned in for printing a specific voxel model with a bunch of tiny over hangs etc, and it still needs to have the profile tuned a little more to perfect it, but i'm at the point where when i change this setting or that setting, it's enough to screw up the prints again. hopefully i'm making sense and if you know of a resource, i would appreciate being pointed twoards it! you have a great day sir!
I'd love to see this with a wider selection of slicers. I use MatterControl for a lot of my printing, for example, and there are some other popular options out there. I'd love to know for the slicers how much they cost, how wide a variety of printers they work with, AND how well they perform.
For me Cura has the best supports. I really tried using Prusa/SuperSlicer because everybody is superhyped about those. They are good but not for me I think. Cura's standard settings for supports are bad. With little tweaking the regular tree support is ok (sometimes doing crazy stuff) but the new christmass beta is amazing without any adjustment.
curas support interface gap is tied to layer height too. makes it hard to get supports to both support the print and release well. PrusaSlicer's supports are definitely my preference.
Nice. I need to make my video of my support system. All I will say is I had to print an item which was 969 grams, and CURA wanted to use over 350 grams of support, (I only wanted to use 1 x 1KG spool) and I did supports in 32 grams and had better results.
as someone new to 3d printing supports have been my biggest headache, so many times ive given up on printing something ive tried to do like 5x times only for the supports to weld onto the print or just impossible to break off regardless of what settings ive tried.
i must admit i still think simplify 3d has some of the best supports for customizing though i hate what they have just done with v5 i will stick with the older version. i hated cura supports i could never get the room sorted on the top of there supports it would always bond with the models. but again i was using an older version but again i never use it.
@@pennyfpv new version of cura or new version of s3d no issues with latest cura as i have not installed it. latest version of s3d. that they charge for the update already paid for the software once. not paying for what should been a free update. but older version still works great. also with cura when i try to install it. it wants to to delete my moia version of cura so not letting that happen :)
By far, the absolute best support I have ever seen for fdm is the tree supports in the flashforge oem slicer. I really don't know how they do it, but they come out better than any other fdm tree supports I have seen
That Cura support thing is a default for the Ender 3 standard profile, but if you make a new profile for a custom machine, it won't do this. It's kinda like the sheath setting on Prusa Slicer like you showed and I've always wanted to remove the setting, but just can't figure out how. It's annoying as heck to remove compared to the non sheathed ones I use on my machine. Another thing I don't understand is why tree supports keep like 2 or more layers separated from the print unlike normal supports that are 1 layer away, supporting well but still being removable. A slightly unrelated thing I would say is that when using soluble support, if you can physically remove the support from the part (say, it's not buried inside), use the soluble support material only on the interface layers. That way you get the benefit of the cheaper (usually, that is...) part material and the advantage of the soluble support to not leave marks on the part and print as if it was a top surface. It's pretty incredible how the parts end up.
Dang, I was hoping you'd cover Crealty's slicer since you are using an Ender 3 as the test machine, I just bought an Ender 3 V2 NEO, and am having a hard time getting the supports in the Creality's slicer working properly. I either get too much interface which pulls off layers of print, or not enough which gives a really bad print surface, I had access to a Form2 resin printer for many years. I mastered the supports in their software, but that slicer does not translate to an FDM printer.
I’m surprised no slicer is using local adaptive layer height to increase the printable overhang angle. It shouldn’t be that difficult to have it print the outer edge in two or more layers, and then the rest of the layer at ”normal” layer height. That way you can get away with really steep angles.
Re: the tree support in cura I had the same issue with single point contacts and pushed the 'Support floor density' up to 50% and used the support mod to add traditional support towers with the tree support
Have you done any testing with the x1c AMS and using the different materials for the support interface on the breakaway supports? I've had really good luck with the Polymaker support materials for PA12 and PLA prints and some 3dxtech HIPS as breakaway interface on my ABS prints. It's a world of difference in bottom surface quality, especially if you reduce the top/bottom z distance. I could even turn the z distance down to 0 for my HIPS/ABS prints and got pretty much flawless overhangs with minimal struggle removing the support material.
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PrusaSlicer 2.6a1 was released just before your video was published, of course :)
Nice to see someone include ideamaker. I like the approach in this slicer, although they probably need more feedback from big makers to improve what they have.
I think the Bambu print's supports actually resulted in a better quality final model once you pried it all off. The lines and integrity of the coin surface looked a lot better. I don't mind putting a little work into cleaning it up if it makes the end model better.
I find Prusaslicer calculates heights wrong when I combine raft and supports which is usually for first couple of hundred layers of a segmented hydrofoil with leading edge pointed downwards. The supports start mashes into the raft layer. I still get great wing prints though.
I have always had terrible experiences with support interface across several versions of cura (4.1-5.2) with several printers (ultimaker S5, ender 3, tenlog d3) The support interface never pulls off right away, has to be scraped or pulled off in small parts, leaves horrible marks and requires surface quality, it only helps stability of several close tall roses at that final layer I have never had any issues with default support without the interface, everything is supported, the supports come away easily, surface quality is clean and doesn’t droop
Microcenter is an unbelievable place that is so widely unknown still it seems like. I am so grateful i live 20 minutes away from one. It's heaven on earth
I have been using bambu tree supports for a few prints now and have not had the issue in this video. If anything they have been easiest supports to remove and have required very light tug to remove them. maybe they work better on bambu printers
I've recently started using the Organic supports in PrusaSlicer (and the support painter) and think they are a game changer. They seem equally effective (in my VERY FEW test cases) but seem easier to print they and use less material. While my strong preference is to figure out how to avoid needing supports completely, in the future if I need supports I'm going to at least look at using Organic.
How about a video about designed supports? Support that you design as part of the model. How do you design the support shape and what does the interface to the desired part need to.look like to break away easily yet still give adequate support?
It seems like you probably had the Bambu Studio tree support settings on the "Tree slim" profile that it suggests to you when you turn on tree supports. This generates tree supports with *no interface layers*, which I've found to be pretty worthless because then the supports fuse to the print and are very hard to get off, exactly as demonstrated in the video. If you decline the "Tree slim" suggestion pop-up, you get better support with regular interface layers that pull away much easier.
Oh hey I also printed that Egyptian cat statue. But I printed it on its side with supports because I knew I was gonna file it afterwards to make it look like stone. Worked really well though!
Love the video Angus. It would be awesome with your new partnership with Microcenter to test the real differences between their PLA, PLA Plus, PLA Pro, Tough PLA, etc. They have unfortunately saturated their own lineup with confusing products without a clear indication of the actual differences beyond marketing buzzwords. Even their PETG has PETG Plus and no clear distinction in the description.
I've used your link for designing support into the model many times. Not just designing the support in, but also adding it later in the program of choice. It's become a regular answer for me to post to StackExchange's 3D printing section. I'll have to add a suggestion for readers to the SE to subscribe and get you over the million subscriber mark.
Bro Microcenter is THE BEST, you wanna buy everything(mainly 3d printing stuff for me), their staff is really great and helpful, and their filament is REALLY good! That’s the only filament I use base pla for
I would squish a bit those 3 surface layers on themselves to give on the top of the head of that cat a bit of smoothness. I can't use prusa slicer or cura as I'm using an old printer that's not open source but I've done that tweaking and gave me a bit more surface finish
12:50 LOL here we are 3 days later and PrusaSlicer 2.6.0-alpha2 is out, "It brings the most anticipated Organic supports..."
TL;DR: "Preferences" -> "Configure Cura" -> "General" -> untick "Automatically drop models to the build plate"
Really quick tip for anybody getting angry at Cura for dropping the parts to the build plate automatically (as I was before I looked at the settings): There's an option in the menu bar, "Preferences" -> "Configure Cura". It should start you out on the General tab (otherwise switch to it) and under the heading "Viewport behavior" there should be a checkbox for "Automatically drop models to the build plate". Uncheck that if you don't want the lowest part of your model to touch the build plate (i.e. hang it in midair to generate supports underneath).
Extra tip: if you don't want to switch that option on and off all the time, you can manually drop the model by selecting it, using the "Move" tool (or pressing 'T' ) and setting the z value to exactly 0. Hope this helps somebody :)
Regarding your last point, avoiding support is the best strategy, I have had so many problems with removing support I have an aversion to support material at all! One thing not to be afraid of is to design your part as mutiple parts that screw, glue, or clip together. Its tempting to try to make it print out all as one part, but sometimes you can make a nicer looking part as multiple pieces. This also means that making minor changes means you can just reprint one or two pieces rather than the whole thing, and it also opens the opportunity to make your part multi-colour if the aesthetic is important and you don't have a printer with multiple extruders.
This. Comparing my more recent projects that are designed in pieces to my older projects that are just one big object cut up using meshmixer, designing for it means you have so much more control and can often avoid support entirely
Totally. Printing a model in various parts and gluing them together can be a great way to side-step hassles with supports.
Something else I found helpful and quite easy is to design my own supports instead of relying on the slicer to do it for me.
One thing that helps is using a hair dryer or heat gun to heat up the offending areas. Makes it much much more easy to pull off stuck supports.
Usually layer height x 1.25 worked for me quite well, depends also on material, some just have better layer adhesion than others.
Probably works well for machines and stuff, but I've found that with art designs this usually isn't really an option, especially not when it comes to organics.
Cura also has settings for interface layers and some small adjustments pay huge dividends (included my settings). Would be interested to see a follow-up with support interface enabled. Love your vids Angus! Keep it up! Awesome resource for the community.
My settings:
Tree supports, touching build plate
40deg branch angle
0% density
1 support wall line
Enable support brim w/3mm width
.2mm support z distance
.4mm support top distance
⭐️enable support interface
⭐️enable support floor
⭐️enable support roof
⭐️ .12mm interface resolution
⭐️ 100% interface density
⭐️ concentric interface pattern
Came here to say the same. I have my interface on "concentric" and at 80 - 90% density for parts that need to be pretty and sometimes you can't even tell they were overhangs.
Thanks for the tip on the interface, I just never use it so wouldn't even know it makes a difference.
Good cooling also makes an enormous difference in support removal ease. The difference between removing supports (both default settings) between my custom machine with single a 5015 blower with two side cooling duct vs. a stock Ender 3 is absurd. The supports just stick on the Ender 3 like they were supposed to be part of the model.
@@XxBanziixX1 Same results here.
@@Kalvinjj I'm still running a mostly stock Ender 3 v2 and have had great results. But I can totally see how good cooling would help
@@joshuajohnson5121 Nice, so you slow down before the layer above the interface?
I can imagine that helping a lot.
Then again that PLA I'm using prints pretty hot (225°c) so guess the cooling is definitely working extra.
Bambu studio sets the Z distance between tree support and model to 0 (if you click yes when choosing tree support). Maybe that's why they were stuck. I'm not sure the other slicers do that.
CONGRATS ON ONE MILLION!! I've been here since 800k, and although it has only been 4 or 5 months (I think), I have really enjoyed seeing you grow. Thanks for always sharing so much information, and inspiring me to get a 3d printer, which I now have. Thanks for inspiring others, too. I think you really have achieved empowering creativity through technology. Good job, Angus, and congratulations once again!!!
cheers!!!
Super close to 1 mil Angus!! Very happy for you man, thank you for all the help over the last few years. I started up a 3DP Shop thanks to some of your help. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help in the future.
As somebody who has only been doing 3-D printing for about a month, videos like this are still helpful. I’ve had a few prints so far where I overestimated the support I would need and ended up breaking parts of the print or making them impossible to reach, The worst one of which took almost 2 days to print.
A month in 3D printing is nothing. "videos like this are still helpful" I think you are overestimating your knowledge way, way too much.
I've been 3D printing for 2.5 years and these videos are still helpful
Hello Angus, I wanted to message you in anticipation of you crossing the 1 million subscriber marker on TH-cam. Whether it’s a big deal for you or not, it’s a very large accomplishment and you have earned it. Congratulations and best wishes.
I loved the video too, found the same results with Bambu slicer. Took me a while to figure out that the threshold angle is backwards on that program haha.
Very interesting video. Did Cura’s supports fall more in line with Prusa’s if you inverted the angle? As I’m sure you’re aware, the reference is swapped compared to Prusa Slocer. For example, 30 degrees in Prusa is 60 degrees in Cura. Love the videos. Keep up the great work!
You're right, I mixed it up ! I'll do more testing to see how it behaves with a lower angle threshold
I was so bamboozled when he told that. I was doubting myself whether I was increasing or deacreasing support in cura haha
Thanks for this video Angus! I think it's a great video for beginners and refresher for people who have been printing for a while! Heck, I even learned something today too! Keep up the great work man!
As a beginner to 3d printing this is was incredibly helpful. Perhaps as a part 2 you can also include information and advice on model placement and orientation to help with better print quality and support use. For instance, you mentioned the sharp downward pointing angle and how it must have support. I would assume something like that could be greatly assisted with rotating the model. Placement and orientation is definitely an area I find to be tricky at times, especially when I need t set supports.
I'm at the point where I'm exclusively using my Bambu printer and I do find their supports very easy to work with. I experimented with printing a 1:285 scale Zeta shuttle, from Rogue One, using a 0.2mm nozzle - and was able to get the supports off the less-than-a-mm-thick laser cannons without destroying them! I had to be very careful of course, but it worked. I agree that the tree supports aren't awesome, though; and if aesthetics matter you'll want to try and make the supported surface the less visible one.
I think of BaSl's supports as better than PrSl's, but I suspect that's more to do with the printer itself than the slicer proper, since my experience with Prusa Slicer's supports was all on an Ender 5. So, thank you for including them in this! And while I knew what changing the overhang angle did, I'd never figured out when I'd *want* to do that, so thank you for the mini tutorial there, as well.
I am surprised you didn't include Simplify3D v5 in the list. S3D v4 had some of the best supports for a very long time and I was wondering if they had gotten any better. I am fully on PrusaSlicer now but I print a lot of things with supports and that may have made v5 worth the money.
I do find S3D is good at supports
Seconding this. Best ever supports.
I also agree as well with the support quality in s3d v4 and v5 i feel has improved it.
Angus, try the snug supports in prusaslicer. They are way easier to remove and use less material.
Around 11:53 you mention printing stands out of support structures only. I've been doing some explorations lately too, and I'm finding I can make remarkably good filter structures by setting my top and bottom thickness to zero, and playing with infill settings and wall thicknesses. It's remarkably accurate.
Yeah, filter medium is a great use case for infill only structures!
@@MakersMuse do you adjust the X/Y or Z offset settings?
@@danbrunermer4295 I did not, I've always used defaults. The bambulab tree supports might benefit, but I feel they won't support the part if they're made to be further away.
I bought PC parts from microcenter yesterday and built a new rig. Super easy and within $20 of the best prices I could find online. Love it there
IdeaMaker you can add manual supports to specifically cradle and support sharp points like the one in your maker coin.
Excellent overview man and I really love that you encourage people to create designs that don't need support when they can at the end. Its a good habit to get into especially when you start getting more and more into running production/ batches with your machines. 💪🏼
Thank you for everything you do for the 3D Printing community Angus.
Great video and I appreciate your dive into the different slicers! I really enjoy using Bambu studio for generating tree supports. At 14:13, it shows your Top Z-distance set to 0 mm. As of course you're aware, increasing this distance even slightly will allow you to remove the support material more easily instead of directly fusing it to the support layer. 0.2mm is the default distance and allows removal. If you want the 0mm distance, a support-specific print material such as Bambu's Support W (printing with multi-filament such as Bambu's AMS) is a great option as it does not lend itself easily to weld to the printed PLA.
I appreciate all of your videos for help, as for this one I feel that the settings don't translate exactly to cura 1 to 1 so as a beginner it's hard to know what to change, it would be cool to have a short video going into the settings of each slicer showing what to change.. again love the videos thank you for all your help!
Been using Cura trees for a while, and when you play with density and size to get light support. And good interface with the part.
Success with supports for quality and ease of removal relies partially on layer height of the print and the z height gap between the print and the model. There's a ton of power in Cura for playing with this and some tuning with z distance, support interface density, and even x y distance can save a ton of print time, material, and cleanup effort. It seems like you talked about tuning in Prusaslicer but didn't bother to tune the support settings in Cura causing your supports to be more difficult to remove with Cura than it needed to. There's also plugins like manual cylindrical supports that can target the areas specifically needing supports too.
I've always been lazy and just use simplify 3D as much as version 5 craziness angered me version 4 just works 99% of the time
Can’t imagine paying for a slicer nowadays tbh (for consumer/prosumer machines).
@@LeftJoystick I wouldn’t pay for a new license but did pay for the upgrade to v5, though I still prefer v4. I’ve used it forever and is the slicer that got me printing successfully.
Always used S3D v4 at work for years, does the job perfectly. When the v5 came out, i got pissed off to pay for BS and switched to Ideamaker which is more efficient with a bit of tuning. S3D v4 > Ideamaker > S3D v5 for me. Never used Cura, or Slic3r.
@@LeftJoystick payed for it years ago
@@radish6691 go ask for a refund, i did and got a refund. the upgrade doesn't let you have two instances of s3d v5, you can have one s3d v4 instance on one oc and one s3d v5 on another, they never mentioned that anywhere in the purchasing process, and in the refund request they told me it is mentioned, I checked again and couldn't find any mention of this change so I just refunded and I'm using cura now, much better honestly than s3d v4 or even s3d v5.
Very nice!
It remembers me the old days of 3D printing, when you could find models with "baked in supports".
It was a life saver as most support generation was really disastrous back then.
If you can use soluble support then a trick you can use to cut down the cost (soluble is very expensive) is to print your model in the base filament and only print the interface layers with soluble.
This has a side benefit of speeding up your print because you are not doing head changes for every layer.
Another option I almost always change in PrusaSlicer when I need support is Style: Grid to Snug. I find this support generation to create less waste, is easier to remove, and fails less often.
I've been splitting PLA models in my slicer to prevent use of supports, then using dichloromethane to weld them together. The joints are very, very strong and you need microscopic amounts of solvent so it's not a hazard.
There is an option (gradual support infill steps) in Cura to makes the support more dense a few millimeters below it touches the model. It gives much better results without wasting too much material or time.
Im new to printing but ive been using paint on supports with great success so far
Since this is all needed regardless of gravity orientation (or gravity at all), I'd suggest that it's not a support at all, but a platform. Maybe you'd call it semantics, but a support is to resist gravity, where as a platform provides a surface to print against, which sounds like it's more technically correct. The best kind of correct.
Designing parts that don't need support is a challenge I enjoy.
Especially TPU when you can use its flexibility to create living hinges in the print, giving it some origami traits.
One of my designs needed support so I made the pieces myself and put them into the design because I didn't trust the slicers to make them. It works well, the 3 support pieces easily snap off after printing, helping ensure the end users get perfect prints each time.
I have been using IdeaMaker for a little over a year now and its supports have been the best compared when I used Cura and Prusa Slicer.
Have you tried PrusaSlicer's Snug supports? It's basically the same support columns, but they keep the supports a lot closer to the model and the interface layer is more cradle-like. I've gotten better surface finish with it and often it's easier to remove. Also, the Cura, PrusaSlicer 2.6 (when it comes out), and probably Bambu Slicer* all base their supports off a fork of Cura's tree supports. Thomas Rahm forked Cura, did a bunch of the work, the Cura and Prusa teams ended up working with them on the supports and are integrating it into their own slicers. Prusa said that their team came down with flu/*vid/etc. late December and they wouldn't get an alpha out in time. *Bambu indicated they found the supports from Cura, so I assume they are also using the same support setup, maybe with different set of settings.
I'm just getting back into 3-D printing after a bit of a hiatus, So videos like these are incredibly helpful!
At the 8:30 mark you have a circle all the way around the outside. I assume it's primary purpose is to ensure filimint is flowing well or to mark an area. For some reason I'm using Cura 5.2.1 and it makes that outer circle attach to my actual model. I assume it's purpose is to ensure the model is easy to remove. Should I let it continue fill that in and if it's a waste of material is there a setting I am missing to make it stop doing that?
It's called a skirt if its separated from the part and indeed does help start the flow of plastic reliably, but if it's touching the part it's called a brim and it can help hold thin parts down to the print bed more reliably.
@@MakersMuse It is annoying to trim off of everything I'm printing. Now that I know the name hopefully I can find a setting to remove it.
@@MakersMuse Thanks, I found the setting and changed it from brim to skirt and it's helped a ton. No more insane cleanup
I have been playing with Cura's tree supports in the alpha release. I had quite a few failures until i realised that it doesn;t cap off the supports by default. So you can end up with a tall support building up fine but because there was no top on it the thing it was meant to be supporting fails. There is the option to include a top but you need to make sure there is some infil in the supports otherwise there is nothign to build the top on.
That's a useful overview, Angus! Amount of flags and sliders may repel from exploring, especially if you only see the results in 3 hours. Knowing whats important and what can you achieve helps a lot
back when I was using ideamaker I remember that the big "selling point" was the amount of manual control you had over the print result. So I think it's fair to assume ideamaker is designed in a way that it assumes the user will place manual supports as the UI for them is pretty well made.
in cura to make the surface cleaner you have to play with the support z distance a bit for traditional supports
And support interface density. That really helps with the quality. I use 90%
I think it's important to know that the major thing that controls the angle of overhang that can be printed unsupported is the ratio of the layer height to the line width (nozzle size) Use a 0.8 nozzle with a 0.08 layer height, you'd be shocked now much hang-out you can get away with. I regularly choose thinner layer heights when I want to avoid using supports.
Great video. Ideamaker allows you to manually add custom supports which might address that downward pointy part.
Omg hello Angus. Fellow Aussie here. Huge fan of ur vids and really find ur advice helpful. Thank you so much for providing these videos. They help me with my prints a lot.
Just finished a print right now lol. It was the Steinmetz Bicylinder you showed a while back.
When I print D&D minis, I still use MeshMixer, its supports work very well for them. For everything else, I'm still wrestling with Cura to find something that works for most of my models...
I've always been impressed with the support material in the Zortrax Z-Suite slicer. It seems to leave the nicest surfaces of the slicers I've used while still being easy to remove.
Using tree supports on the Bambo X1 work incredibly in my opinion. Had the X1 for just a few weeks, but I will probably never use any other support on this printer. I thought the tree supports in their slicer were one of the greatest benefits!
maybe the tree support for bambuslicer is tuned to the accuracy of the bambu printer so when it's used for an ender 3 the tolerance is too small
@@aronseptianto8142 the accuracy is crazy on the Bambu, I imagine it would be fused on other printers
Been using tree supports in cura and cheap enders for quite a while. 🤷
@@aronseptianto8142 Work fine on my enders. 🤷
@@whopperlover1772 It's no more accurate than any other printer that's been dialed in properly. 🤷
Check out the “snug” support option in PrusaSlicer. Way better than their original supports. I’m surprised they have not made it the default.
I agree. I haven't found a reason to turn it off.
I'll have to check that out. I get way better prints with prusa slicer, but supports always suck...
Yes, "snug" is much easier to remove and less wasteful. I would prefer it the default option as well. Maybe not best for all purposes but especially good when supporting a detail over another layer.
Do any of these slicers offer a “manual mode” or manual override, say, were you could draw a polygon on the baseplate and force support generation in that area? For instance, let the auto algorithm do most of the work, but ensure you had something under the point of the “M”?
Great video! Another thing that helps a lot is the "snug" setting for PrusaSlicer, it saves a lot of print time and material. (Perfect timing 2.6 alfa is released the same weekend as this video😂)
What does snug do?
As an end user, I feel like the Voron team has mastered the "design your parts with no supports" philosophy, going as far as designing built-in brides and parts that are meant to break away or be cut away after the print is done. Truly one of my best printing experience
I bought my first printer ( Anet A8 ) after seeing your video ( many moon ago )
I bought Simplified 3D after seeing your video
iI now have S3D v 5.01 and i wont change because i can easily predict my result everytime
I think that you should have include it into your test !
I've used Cura's standard supports in conjunction with the support enforcer/blocker mod (one of them is official Cura, the other isn't, I forget which) mainly through a process of elimination. The dual extrusion printer we have _really_ doesn't like the GCode from Slic3r lineage programs for some reason, and IdeaMaker's supports were just _awful._
I've had some pretty decent results (as in, the workshop said "Yep we can use this in production") when I used the breakaway support material E3D sold a while back but is now discontinued. It stuck to ABS _just_ enough to support it, but it wouldn't weld to it like HIPS would if it's set to the same distance. It's a total pain when it's encased by the model, of course, and I've reminded the CAD guys on a few occasions to not do that.
We have a couple of Markforged Onyx Ones now, and although I wish Eiger had more features and avoided stupid things like creating tiny support towers, it's a really solid package. Sometimes you get these slinky or accordion like things when you peel off the supports.
These are my favorite types of video, your other common slicer settings video has saved me so much time
Congratulation for 1MILION Subscribers. Keep it up man.
One thing that drives me crazy is how some slicers use the support degrees values % differently. 30% vs 70%
Yeah I mixed the cura ones up 😩 will revisit
i do love the xmas alpha cura trees.... its been wonderful for me so far with lots of tweaking
i'm finding as i dig more into these settings, is that there's so many it becomes tough to keep things straight. well i did this, now i should do this, this should be done etc. checklists, discussions on what exactly effects what, 4etc, things like that. do you have any things that you have put together like that? a flow-chart of sorts? i had my printer pretty tuned in for printing a specific voxel model with a bunch of tiny over hangs etc, and it still needs to have the profile tuned a little more to perfect it, but i'm at the point where when i change this setting or that setting, it's enough to screw up the prints again. hopefully i'm making sense and if you know of a resource, i would appreciate being pointed twoards it! you have a great day sir!
did you try the other settings for tree supports on Bambu slicer? I think it could help a lot.
I'd love to see this with a wider selection of slicers. I use MatterControl for a lot of my printing, for example, and there are some other popular options out there. I'd love to know for the slicers how much they cost, how wide a variety of printers they work with, AND how well they perform.
Me too. I have not had much luck with MatterControl's supports and I wonder how it compares.
Haircut looks great, Angus!
For me Cura has the best supports. I really tried using Prusa/SuperSlicer because everybody is superhyped about those. They are good but not for me I think. Cura's standard settings for supports are bad. With little tweaking the regular tree support is ok (sometimes doing crazy stuff) but the new christmass beta is amazing without any adjustment.
curas support interface gap is tied to layer height too. makes it hard to get supports to both support the print and release well. PrusaSlicer's supports are definitely my preference.
Autodesk Fusion 360 actually has some pretty interesting support features. They might be more suited to SLA than FFF, but it's worth a look.
Nice. I need to make my video of my support system. All I will say is I had to print an item which was 969 grams, and CURA wanted to use over 350 grams of support, (I only wanted to use 1 x 1KG spool) and I did supports in 32 grams and had better results.
as someone new to 3d printing supports have been my biggest headache, so many times ive given up on printing something ive tried to do like 5x times only for the supports to weld onto the print or just impossible to break off regardless of what settings ive tried.
i must admit i still think simplify 3d has some of the best supports for customizing though i hate what they have just done with v5 i will stick with the older version. i hated cura supports i could never get the room sorted on the top of there supports it would always bond with the models. but again i was using an older version but again i never use it.
What issues do you have with the new version?
@@pennyfpv new version of cura or new version of s3d
no issues with latest cura as i have not installed it. latest version of s3d. that they charge for the update already paid for the software once. not paying for what should been a free update. but older version still works great. also with cura when i try to install it. it wants to to delete my moia version of cura so not letting that happen :)
By far, the absolute best support I have ever seen for fdm is the tree supports in the flashforge oem slicer. I really don't know how they do it, but they come out better than any other fdm tree supports I have seen
Amazing video again Angus. What a wonderful guide. Loved it. Thanks for putting it together!
That Cura support thing is a default for the Ender 3 standard profile, but if you make a new profile for a custom machine, it won't do this. It's kinda like the sheath setting on Prusa Slicer like you showed and I've always wanted to remove the setting, but just can't figure out how. It's annoying as heck to remove compared to the non sheathed ones I use on my machine.
Another thing I don't understand is why tree supports keep like 2 or more layers separated from the print unlike normal supports that are 1 layer away, supporting well but still being removable.
A slightly unrelated thing I would say is that when using soluble support, if you can physically remove the support from the part (say, it's not buried inside), use the soluble support material only on the interface layers. That way you get the benefit of the cheaper (usually, that is...) part material and the advantage of the soluble support to not leave marks on the part and print as if it was a top surface. It's pretty incredible how the parts end up.
Dang, I was hoping you'd cover Crealty's slicer since you are using an Ender 3 as the test machine, I just bought an Ender 3 V2 NEO, and am having a hard time getting the supports in the Creality's slicer working properly. I either get too much interface which pulls off layers of print, or not enough which gives a really bad print surface,
I had access to a Form2 resin printer for many years. I mastered the supports in their software, but that slicer does not translate to an FDM printer.
I’m surprised no slicer is using local adaptive layer height to increase the printable overhang angle. It shouldn’t be that difficult to have it print the outer edge in two or more layers, and then the rest of the layer at ”normal” layer height. That way you can get away with really steep angles.
Re: the tree support in cura I had the same issue with single point contacts and pushed the 'Support floor density' up to 50% and used the support mod to add traditional support towers with the tree support
Have you done any testing with the x1c AMS and using the different materials for the support interface on the breakaway supports? I've had really good luck with the Polymaker support materials for PA12 and PLA prints and some 3dxtech HIPS as breakaway interface on my ABS prints. It's a world of difference in bottom surface quality, especially if you reduce the top/bottom z distance. I could even turn the z distance down to 0 for my HIPS/ABS prints and got pretty much flawless overhangs with minimal struggle removing the support material.
PrusaSlicer 2.6a1 was released just before your video was published, of course :)
I KNEW IT 😂
It has been shown, but no public release (github, blog). Do you have a link?
@@kimmotoivanen No, I also can't find it.
Alpha 2 is out today; alpha 1 apparently was not public.
Nice to see someone include ideamaker. I like the approach in this slicer, although they probably need more feedback from big makers to improve what they have.
I think the Bambu print's supports actually resulted in a better quality final model once you pried it all off. The lines and integrity of the coin surface looked a lot better. I don't mind putting a little work into cleaning it up if it makes the end model better.
I find Prusaslicer calculates heights wrong when I combine raft and supports which is usually for first couple of hundred layers of a segmented hydrofoil with leading edge pointed downwards. The supports start mashes into the raft layer. I still get great wing prints though.
I have always had terrible experiences with support interface across several versions of cura (4.1-5.2) with several printers (ultimaker S5, ender 3, tenlog d3)
The support interface never pulls off right away, has to be scraped or pulled off in small parts, leaves horrible marks and requires surface quality, it only helps stability of several close tall roses at that final layer
I have never had any issues with default support without the interface, everything is supported, the supports come away easily, surface quality is clean and doesn’t droop
Congratulations on achieving 1M subscribers. It's amazing. Well done.
I would like to see more about the ankermake m5 and it's slicer. I personally have found the support defaults to be quite poor at least for now.
Microcenter is an unbelievable place that is so widely unknown still it seems like. I am so grateful i live 20 minutes away from one. It's heaven on earth
I have been using bambu tree supports for a few prints now and have not had the issue in this video. If anything they have been easiest supports to remove and have required very light tug to remove them. maybe they work better on bambu printers
Angus is adorable. What a smile :)
Meshmixer's tree supports reign supreme still. What an unrealized gem. On average uses half the material and they come off so nicely.
No discussion on SNUG vs standard supports in PrusaSlicer? SNUG supports are a game changer 😮
I've recently started using the Organic supports in PrusaSlicer (and the support painter) and think they are a game changer. They seem equally effective (in my VERY FEW test cases) but seem easier to print they and use less material. While my strong preference is to figure out how to avoid needing supports completely, in the future if I need supports I'm going to at least look at using Organic.
Hey, Angus I just saw a belt Z for Ender 3. So, it does away with the screws, are these recommended?
I can't really see any benefit, plus if your steppers power down after a print the gantry will crash into the print!
How about a video about designed supports? Support that you design as part of the model. How do you design the support shape and what does the interface to the desired part need to.look like to break away easily yet still give adequate support?
You need to create a short just for the "Print a stand" tip as it is a great bit of lateral thinking.
Congrats on 1,000,000 subscribers! 🥳
It seems like you probably had the Bambu Studio tree support settings on the "Tree slim" profile that it suggests to you when you turn on tree supports. This generates tree supports with *no interface layers*, which I've found to be pretty worthless because then the supports fuse to the print and are very hard to get off, exactly as demonstrated in the video. If you decline the "Tree slim" suggestion pop-up, you get better support with regular interface layers that pull away much easier.
Oh hey I also printed that Egyptian cat statue. But I printed it on its side with supports because I knew I was gonna file it afterwards to make it look like stone. Worked really well though!
New haircut? Looks great. Good supports are critical for almost every form of 3D printing - thanks!
Good grief! The support for the cat looked like a figure attending the cat!
NOTE: the extra print time doesn't apply for SLA printing. Most of the rest works for both FDM and SLA.
Hey dude, I am new in 3D printing and watch your video's, they are great and really helpful, besides that your a great guy, have a nice day 🙂
Love the video Angus. It would be awesome with your new partnership with Microcenter to test the real differences between their PLA, PLA Plus, PLA Pro, Tough PLA, etc. They have unfortunately saturated their own lineup with confusing products without a clear indication of the actual differences beyond marketing buzzwords. Even their PETG has PETG Plus and no clear distinction in the description.
I've used your link for designing support into the model many times. Not just designing the support in, but also adding it later in the program of choice. It's become a regular answer for me to post to StackExchange's 3D printing section. I'll have to add a suggestion for readers to the SE to subscribe and get you over the million subscriber mark.
Bro Microcenter is THE BEST, you wanna buy everything(mainly 3d printing stuff for me), their staff is really great and helpful, and their filament is REALLY good! That’s the only filament I use base pla for
I would squish a bit those 3 surface layers on themselves to give on the top of the head of that cat a bit of smoothness. I can't use prusa slicer or cura as I'm using an old printer that's not open source but I've done that tweaking and gave me a bit more surface finish
Congrats on the 1,000,000 subs!!!