For years the easiest way to put manual supports on a 3D print was to use Simplify3D slicer but
it's like $150. Well Prusa Slicer, which is free, just came out with a way to literally paint them
on, paint them on the print, and you don't have to have a prusa printer you can do it on an
Ender 3 or any 3D printer. Let me show you how it works. It's so cool. On today's Filament Friday.
Filament Friday is brought to you every week by the generous donations of these patreon
supporters. To demonstrate supports I'm going to use the iron man shooting 3D print from user melic
on thingiverse. I brought it into Simplify3D and I set it to 50% of its original size.
Now let's add supports. You go up to the tools menu, custom support structure,
and here's all the settings you can do including generate automatic supports which is easy.
But where it really separates from other slicers was the manual supports. I can come
into this model twist in here so you can see where I'm going to place them, and I add new
support structures which are just these long pillars that I place where I want supports.
You just slide over and click and there's your supports. Let's go back to the hand.
I'll twist it around here and I'm going to put pillars on the hands where I want it so it's
going to take three of these pillars. So let me go to the back here so I can get the back fingers
and once I get these positioned where I want then I just slice it. I come into the support menu,
generate support is checked, so I'll get out of here and then just prepare to print. It's going to
slice it and then it's going to make the supports just like that. So here it is up close I'll zoom
down so you can see how the supports look. It covers the hand and covers the arm when this
gets to closer to the top. For many people this was one of the main features that made them spend $150
for a slicer and I didn't really see other slicers reproducing this very well. I did release a video
showing how to do manual supports in cura but it requires a plug-in and that plug-in is the custom
supports plug-in and once you install that there's a little menu on the left custom supports. You
click on that and now you place blocks where you want supports which is similar to what simplify
3d was offering. But it's not quite as easy because you place these blocks and then you have to resize
them. I guess you could put multiple blocks but the easiest way is to just resize them and reposition
them. So this was cura's answer to it and it works pretty well. I've used it quite a bit and
then when you slice it it only puts supports where you want them instead of the whole print.
And cura offers more settings for the supports. There's more things you can do to separate
it from the print and the shape of the the supports. There's just so many extra settings
that i really like this in cura and that made me use it more than simplify 3d for things like
you know printing iron man here with supports. But simplify 3d still was a little bit easier to place
supports and then prusa slicer came out with version 2.3.0 alpha. This isn't a beta, this is an alpha.
So this is really really early release. Prusa slicer didn't copy the simplify3d supports,
they made them better. Watch this. You click on the model and you go over here to the menu FDM
supports. With the left mouse button you can add supports. The right mouse button you block supports.
And all the other settings are similar to simplify 3d. But watch what you do. I'll tilt the model and
then clicking the right mouse button i just drag it across and I literally paint on the model where
I want supports. Down here at the hand just drag it around where I want supports, just paint the whole
hand blue and this thing is ready. So then when I go to the slicing menu over here on the right for
supports I just select for support enforcers only. And then I slice this guy and once it's sliced
this thing will make the supports right where I painted. Look at this. There's the manual supports.
This is so much easier than any other slicer I've used. And the quality of the supports is
equal to simplify 3d or even better. Now there's not as many things to adjust as cura offers
but it's got some nice built-in features. Like it puts a little island there for the print to
land on including the little shield for his hand. It'll do it again up at his arm and you can set a
bigger gap between the support and the print to make it break away easier but cura definitely
wins when you want more settings. But overall I think painting on supports that prusa offers here
is just above and beyond anything else out there. And the print quality of this alpha
is as good or equal to what i'm getting on my Ender three with my CHEP cura profiles.
And this was printed as 0.2 layer height and I used a 0.3 gap between the support
and the print and the supports broke away easily. Didn't stick to the print. It came out pretty nice.
I have seen this before in the canvas software for painting your models to use with their
multi-filament feeder that goes into your 3d printer. But the prusa, that's the first time I've
seen it in an open source slicer. Another feature offered in this alpha is the fact you can paint
where you want a seam or don't want a seam on your print. I'm playing with that right now so I'll
save that for a future video. But just the fact that you can paint on your STL file and the slicer
will read it and know what you want. That is huge. Can you imagine I can just like paint his head
and tell it that I want that to be printed in a certain color and the rest of the body painted
in a different color? Or a different layer height or a different infill just by taking the mouse
and marking where I want things to be done. If this painting technique expands across all slicers,
to me slicing is going to be so much easier for the beginner. So I think this isn't a home run
by prusa, this is a grand slam. And doing it with with the supports, that's a great place to start.
I don't know. Simplify3d has not kept up. I don't know how you can justify $150 when I get a free
slicer to do this. This is fantastic. I'll put a link to the slicer in the description below so
download it and try it. It is just an alpha. It's still buggy. So don't make it your main slicer but
try out this painting technique and let me know what you think of it in the comments below. If
you like what i'm doing here maybe check out some of the videos that are popping up. And if nothing
else, click on that CHEP logo and subscribe. I'll see you next time right here at Filament Friday.