Different supports - touch area

Feature Requests & Ideas
1

One on the left shows nowadays supports. For my prints is veeeery tricky not to damage print after removing them. 5-10% of supports make a hole in surface of the print : /
One on the right is just an idea. Green part is also part of the support. The sizes might be different but I hope that you will understand what I’m trying to sugest. Let the support crack (red colour) just above the surface. I can easly polish it later. It is much easier to polish something small like that little pyramid, than polishing whole surface to remove a hole.

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2

I use pin and dip it into resin and fill the holes and put it back into curebox. for a few minutes then file it smooth

3

95% of my prints are coin - shaped (cylinders) prints with supports all around the sides of project. So there would be a loads of filling/ curing - litlle turn - filling, curing etc.
But thanks! We will try that for easier parts.

4

Your proposal would guarantee that there is material left on the part after support removal, which is what Formlabs is trying to avoid I guess.

If you have material missing after removing the supports you should try a set of quality flush cutters ( I use something like this ). Removing the supports after the IPA bath and before post-curing also helps as this is when the support points are at their weakest.

I personally never have material missing on my parts unless I tear off supports without much care after post-curing, and even then it’s only a small percentage. That depends on the parts geometry of course and the location of the support points.

5

Thanks for reply!
We will try to remove supports before uv light. We’ll see.
Sometimes the supports are so close to eachother that they kinda ‘stick’ together and you have 1 massive support that is created from 4-7 supports. Removing it is very tricky. We have chance of 50/50 to damage / not damage the printed surface in that exact spot. For those we polish it with the polishing machines with fast moving sandpaper, but sometimes beceause of vibrations the supports pop out how they want.
I hope that uncured in uv supports will be easier to remove.

6

For critical parts I always inspect the model in preform to spot such occurrences, it’s pretty easy to correct and to spot especially if you work with models that are geometrically similar to each other and you orient them the same way. Either move the points manually or just replace them with smaller points :wink:

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