3D Printing Forum

It's been many years since I learned CAD (and some CAM) and at that time 3D printers were far, far away from common. Now I have started to play with it again, mostly for fun and not really for profit.

So do you have any good links to things related to how you can optimize:

• Your 3D-models for printing on an FDM printer.
• The way you place them in the printer to have optimal strength etc.
• Any other good tips.

I guess many times you need to make compromises depending on things like overhang etc. And that is one thing I would like to learn more about.

3DVerkstan has two really good guides on their website that are a good start:
Getting better prints
A visual Ultimaker troubleshooting guide

Great, I will start with them and see where it takes me

I would say the most important things to keep in mind are:

- Try to avoid designs that need support, meaning avoid long bridges and avoid more than ~45 degree overhangs.

- Avoid sharp corners in the X-Y-direction. Keep in mind that each printed layer cools and thereby shrinks which means a sharp 90 degree corner will see a lot of stress.

- Don't spend time trying to predict how much your printed object shrinks. Just add like 2% to the dimensions instead, do a test print, measure the printed object and adjust the dimensions accordingly for the next print.

- The printed object will always be much stronger in the X-Y-direction than in the Z-direction, keep this in mind when designing for heavy loads.

- It is often easier to "start from zero" when you design your models for 3D-printing as adding material is the costly thing. This makes design for 3D-printing fundamentally different from design for CNC-machining, where one would normally start with a large solid piece and cut away material in the design process.

Thanks for those pointers

As for optimisation in printing orientation and such:

In SpaceClaim, I usually save all the individual parts as separate files and put them together as "includes" in the assembly. When I open up the component, I rotate it the way I want it to be in the printer. This makes it easy to see overhangs and places where I need to put chamfers and printing optimisations.

There are professional tools for printing optimisation, too. SpaceClaim offers an STL 3D printing module (very pricey though) that has a "shrinkwrap" function for polygon reduction and fixing surface errors. I tested it with the evaluation license, but decided I don't need that (in addition to, I can't pay for it anyways) because I just design my parts without errors