Hey guys, I never claim to be an expert on anything,
but I’m getting so many print related questions lately, I thought I’d do a quick, simple
guide to help answer many of these questions. It’s aimed mainly at beginners, but it might
be useful to even experienced printers. Hopefully what follows will help you get resin prints
that stick to the plate and, importantly, print well.
For me, resin printing is all about supports. Let’s start with something simple – a
sphere. Resin prints typically occur upside down,
forming layer upon layer from a build plate, suspended in the air. Gravity is doing it’s
best to stop us from doing this, so if we want our print to stick to the build plate,
we generally need to add supports. So let’s add some supports to our sphere.
That will stick well to the built plate, but will it print?
With this supported sphere in ChiTuBox, we can see that ChiTuBox has coloured this area
red because it’s telling us this area needs supporting.
Let’s ignore it for a moment and use these slide tools.
We can see the layers being added one at a time. But look here – at the bottom of the
sphere. It’s unsupported and trying to print in mid-air. There’s no connection to the
plate and it certainly can’t stick to fresh air, so it’s got no choice but to form an
ugly blob on the FEP. It’s a failed print. So it’s critical that the lowest point of
the print needs to be supported. In fact, with just one good support, this sphere may
potentially print perfectly. This is because it’s well anchored to the build plate, and
each layer can adhere to the one before it. Unfortunately, most things we print are not
as simple as a sphere. Look at this model from Archvillain Games. For the moment, let’s
imagine that I’ll try to print this model as it is, which isn’t ideal, but I’ll
come back to orientation in a moment. This guy’s got two perfectly good feet and
I could start with these on the build plate, right? That looks like plenty of support there
and the model should print. Or so you might think.
Using these slide tools again, we see the two feet appear to be doing a great job. But
hang on, what’s this…? You can see the bottom of his cape is trying
to print in mid-air. Again it’s an unsupported floating section. It’s not connected to
the plate and it can’t print on fresh air. The print will drop away here if we let it.
So this point must be supported otherwise the print will fail.
Now areas like this are called Islands and they’re surprisingly common. If you want
to produce good prints, you’ll need to start looking for them.
Here’s one… and another… actually there’s loads here.
Changing the camera angle and moving around will allow us to see even more Islands and
if we want a good print, this is time well spent.
Now to be fair, I’m using version 1.7.0 of ChiTuBox and enabling this little Eye icon
reveals these lines. These are the way ChiTuBox tells us we have a problem area that needs
supporting. And sure, we could use the Auto-Support feature and let ChiTuBox do the work. The
problem there is no Auto Support is perfect, so having a good understanding of WHY we need
these supports will help us do a better job than AutoSupport.
If we come back to the feet, we can also see support-suggesting indicators there too, and
that’s because, despite initial appearances, those feet aren’t actually flat against
the plate, and like it or not, feet themselves aren’t actually all that flat. And this
shows that maybe choosing a different orientation for the model would have been a better idea.
Not only that, a large cluster of islands like this would mean our model would be littered
with supports, and that mean lots of clipping and lots and sanding, which is time consuming
and can damage your print. To make printing easier, slicers like ChiTuBox
let us change the angle of our prints and vary the orientation.
Let’s take this strange shape as an example. It can’t lie flat and generally unless you
want a flat face to touch the build plate, it’s best to raise the print above the platform
by about 5mm or so. Now we could add supports to this flat area
here and this could work. But this can lead the sagging between the supports which misshapes
and ruins the print. So avoid flat edges adjacent to the build plate.
Doing this is easy enough. We can adjust angle of the print a few degrees.
But notice the colour. It’s still dark red. ChiTuBox is warning us we’ll need lots of
supports to make that work and at such a shallow angle, we could still get sagging.
But if we tilt the angle a little further, watch the colour now. It’s blue - with just
the tiniest hint of red on the lowest edge. ChiTuBox is happy with us because our print
is now at an angle that each layer can safely print on top of the previous layer without
need of support. This angle is generally around 45 degrees and depends a lot on the printer
and the resin being used. It’s possible to print steeper angles, but these overhangs
are weak points and can sag or even break. So it’s best to keep 45 degrees and under.
However, if we spin around this side, we’ve still got a who lot of red.
So this time, let’s go back and change the Y axis by 45 degrees.
Look now, there’s no red at all. By simply changing the orientation of our model on two
axis, we’ve made sure there are no islands and each layer can safely print on the previous
layer without the need for support and really, that’s the goal here… no islands and minimal
supports. Just like with the sphere, in theory one good
support in this corner and the whole thing should print. But several thin supports would
probably work better. So, adjusting the orientation of the print
will minimise islands and the number of supports required. It just takes a little patience
to spin the print and spot and ideal position, and remember, there’s potentially dozens
of good positions so look for those that suit your model best.
Let’s just pretend this model would print great from this angle – which is clearly
wouldn’t – but if we pretend it did, the supports will be going into the models head
and no matter how careful we are with clipping and sanding, that’s going to spoil our finished
print, so look for a combination of the best orientation and good support points.
Now I’m cheating here to save time… this model came pre-supported from Archvillain
Games and they already went to the trouble of getting the orientation right – or at
least as good as possible, as perfection isn’t always an option.
So all we need to do now is add supports… but there’s so many options… Light, Medium,
Heavy, Rafts, depths, and more. So what’s the best options?
Now here you’ll get lots of differing opinions, but for the absolute beginner, here’s my
advice. Firstly, always use a raft. It’s a nice,
large area that really helps the print stick to the plate. I tend to increase the size
of my raft up to 150% to really help the resin stick firmly.
For supports, keep the settings standard, at least until your experience grows. If you’ve
already fiddled, just reset to take everything back to factory settings.
Try to use Light supports wherever possible. These have a much smaller contact with the
print and consequently damage the surface least. But long Light supports go bendy when
printing, so Medium to Heavy are better over distances, and the weight of the print is
important. A large print will need a lot of Light supports or a fewer heavy ones.
A tip I will share with you is the lowest point. I try to make sure that the lowest
point always has at least one Heavy support. Remember, as the print grows, most of the
weight will fall upon this first support, particularly if the other supports aren’t
yet fully printed. So a good first support will save you many a lost print. And for that
reason, try to make sure the lowest point is an unimportant spot, such as the bottom
of a foot. Then look for a few boring spots on the print, nice flat areas with little
detail. Add some heavy supports here as well because this will really help your print stay
fixed and firm on the plate. The size of the print will determine how many you need, but
on something small like this, a couple is fine.
Next, look for your Islands. Use the slicer tool carefully to home in on the lowest point
and make sure you support these. Then look for those pink areas. These may not be islands,
but a little support will help. Make sure there’s a good gap between the
print and the support. If they’re too close, they can get meshed together. Remember, you
can reposition your supports and ChiTuBox doesn’t always choose the best spot.
A favourite trick of mine is to manually bond two, three or even more supports together.
That way I can combine Light supports and make a heavy support that will stand up over
a distance. This gives me a thicker, stronger trunk but a lighter tip, which means plenty
of support area with fewer downward supports. I also tend to over-support. Many criticise
me for this, but I don’t get many mis-prints so I don’t care. Adding one or two supports
even in an area that ChiTuBox doesn’t recommend can’t really do any harm.
In fact, I even support my supports sometimes, especially tall supports on a large print.
Yes, fewer supports is good, but a successful print with a little extra clean up is better
than a failed print, lost time and wasted resin.
So there you go… that’s about as much as I can think to say on the subject of Supports.
If you have a good level plate and you’ve dialled your resin setting in correctly, then
these simple tips should make sure your prints work every time. And through this video, I
hope I’ve answered most of the questions folks have been asking me lately.
Of course I’ve been talking about ChiTuBox throughout this video and Slicing software
can make a massive difference. ChiTuBox is good, but I think I’ve found a much better
and much simpler Slicer. But for that, you’ll have to tune in to my next video.
So if you have any questions or comments, as always, drop me a line.
Happy printing guys. Take care, and thanks for watching.