Book Image

3D printing with RepRap Cookbook

By : Salinas
Book Image

3D printing with RepRap Cookbook

By: Salinas

Overview of this book

A systematic guide consisting of over 100 recipes which focus on helping you understand the process of 3D printing using RepRap machines. The book aims at providing professionals with a series of working recipes to help make their fuzzy notions into real, saleable projects/objects using 3D printing technology. This book is for novice designers and artists who own a RepRap-based 3D printer, have fundamental knowledge of its working, and who desire to gain better mastery of the printing process. For the more experienced user, it will provide a handy visual resource, with side-by-side comparisons of the two most popular slicers, Skeinforge and Slic3r. A basic understanding of designing and modeling principles and elementary knowledge of digital modeling would be a plus.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
13
Index

Creating support with Meshmixer

Many complex models will have a structure consisting of areas that have sharp angles and layers, which have little or no contact with the build platform surface. We can see this illustrated in the following jellyfish shape.

By printing this model in several different positions, there would be issues with drooping filaments in the areas marked as 1 in the following image. There would be insufficient surface contact on the build platform in areas marked as 2.

Creating support with Meshmixer

Let's look at another model that we made in this chapter. In the following image, we can easily see that severe support issues would occur. There is minimal surface contact, and there are areas where print layers would print in open space without underlying support.

Creating support with Meshmixer

In this recipe, we'll learn how to use Meshmixer to create a temporary support structure for these models.

Getting ready

Open Meshmixer and import the starfish/handle model.

How to do it…

We will proceed as follows:

  1. From the toolbar...