After learnig my rapid prototyping chops on an FDM machine for a about a year and a half, my upgrade to the Form1 finally arrived.
I started out by printing a few of my completed designs that were simply unworkable on the FDM machine. I used default settings, in both the examples pictured I did re-orient the parts a little from the auto-orient position to ensure that detail-critical areas didn’t get mucked up with supports. Not pictured (yet), several parts I’ve printed I used the auto-orient feature to great success.
A tip I’d provide to anyone having support-woes is to use the auto-orient feature first, and then if needed manually rotate the part to preserve your desired features, but be sure to preserve the general part-angle suggested by the auto-orientation. Just be sure to watch for overhangs, but so far this approach has worked like a charm.
Could not be happier!
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Those are some great printing tips! The auto-orient feature is good at catching all sorts of internal overhangs that you may have missed, but it doesn’t know what the part is for or how you’re going to use it. Keeping supports off the cosmetic faces (such as faces) and mating features is important. After you set up a few parts in PreForm and get the hang of the best orientations, it can be easier to just rotate manually. I tend to use one of the 6 orthographic views in the rotate tool (or faceplant) and then rotate by 30 or -30 degrees in X or Y as appropriate.
P.S awesome robot parts! I imagine it’s going to be quite big when complete if that’s its blaster!
Thanks! I’m actually having a challenge leveraging all of PreForm’s features because of the 3 machines I have access to, only one would run it, and it turns 95% of on screen text invisible. But even bashing in the dark, I’m getting great results, y’all are geniuses!
I’m actually working on a number of different projects, but the one full robot toy I’ve designed (and prototyped on my FDM) is about 7" tall, so reasonably big. Once I’m satisfied that I know what I’m doing, I’ll be printing masters of him on the Form1.
Love it, and I too am a former FDM user (the first Thing-O-Matic). The Form 1 is amazing so far!
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