Looking for advice to prevent warping in an isolation section of my latest print.
A section of one of the edges flared out a couple millimeters near the support points. That whole edge of the model came out a bit messy.
Ordinarily I would attribute this to lack of supports, but as you can see this model is supported to kingdom come (Preform really goes nuts on supports with Tough). I used only very minor tweaks to the default settings when generating the supports, although I did move several a bit in order to have a flush surface for the metal inserts. After moving them around, I worked my way up the slice previews to validate I didn’t leave any unsupported “orphan islands” where new areas of the model start to cure (I wish there was a way to have Preform check that automatically).
Due to the density of supports and large point size (~0.8mm for Tough) it was exceedingly difficult removing the support structure. I’m wondering if maybe I had too much support and bent things a little when working the part out of the scaffolding, although I’m not convinced that was the cause. Note the warped portion is not flimsy.
I didn’t notice the issue on a print I did in standard resin (with slightly different orientation and less dense support structure, of course). I don’t have as much experience printing Tough and thought I’d see if anyone here can say “Ah, right, seen that before, easy to solve, just do this…”
Note it’s in Tough V1 and was printed on a Form 2.
I also noticed some styration in a different section of my model.
Here’s my .form file if anyone wants it, and photos below.
You did a pretty awesome job documenting this and all of the pictures are a big help.
Tough V1 does have a bit of flex to it so angling and supporting things as to mitigate warping is important. Making your angles a bit steeper will more evenly distribute internal forces and shouldn’t significant increase the number of support structures. Post-curing on supports also helps a bit as parts that are fully post-cured shouldn’t warp further.
@KenCitron That’s a great question. It was warped before curing. I’m not 100% sure it was warped before removing from the supports. My gut feeling is it was, but I wasn’t scientific about it since I didn’t suspect a problem yet at that point.
@Sparkwire Yeah my eyeballs popped out when I saw what Preform generated for me. I didn’t want to reduce things too much since I figured there’s a reason it was doing that.
@Frew Thanks for the great tips. I’m limited on how much I can adjust angles - the part just barely fits in the build envelope, to the point where I had to move a couple supports at the corners to make it fit. But I’ll do what I can.
If your getting warping as it is printed then the part must really be under stress when printing. I haven’t seen that before. I would try what Frew suggested in angling the part more.
I’ve had similar problems with warping (I asked a question about this issue on the forum a few days ago). The worst I’ve seen was a rectangular box I printed with one open side. The walls (about 70x70mm) on the open side warped outward similar to what you’re seeing. Over time it got worse, eventually warping outward by a couple of centimeters. It seems that quite a bit of tension builds up internally as the resin cures differentially, and this pulls flat, thin expanses out of shape.
That was with Black resin. From my experience with Tough V1, it is more pliable and thus more liable to this kind of warping. I’d consider switching to Tough V3, which cures to a much stiffer final product.
That said, large, flat, thin expanses seem to warp. One option would be to make the walls thicker, though yours seem to be about 3mm thick already. Another, if possible: break up the solid expanses with cross-hatching/honeycombing/etc. Maybe consider breaking up the model into smaller sections so you can print at the “ideal” orientation to reduce the internal forces, and re-assembling after curing.
