First print Failure

Support & Troubleshooting
1

I can see from the forum that there are all types of print failures occurring so I thought I would throw this one in the mix.

It’s a predator bust that I downloaded, PreForm said the mesh had errors and attempted a repair (I have looked at the mesh and the errors appear to be at random parts of the model - not just where the print failed so I don’t think they are responsible). This is my very 1st print out of the box and I am really happy with the actual quality as I printed at the lowest resolution, it’s just the gaping hole that let it down!

Any thoughts would be welcome.

2

You used the internal supports didn’t you?

Print it without them and it will be a success.

3

Thanks for that. I printed a different model without internal supports and got a much better result (I did get two holes which I have filled - looking back at the original mesh there was some internal structure that  had breached the external structure, thus causing the holes - I think!)

I do have one query you may be able to help with though - why did it not print the internal walls - I expected the space between external and internal surface to fill completely but it didn’t; might this be due to the intersection of internal/external geometry?

Thanks!

4

Hi Jason. Glad it worked out.

The reason that the internal supports are not a good idea on some models is, because they create voids in the model and during printing those voids create huge hair bubbles in the liquid resin that don’t always pop on time. They end up destroying the print, or a wall of the print, or the supports themselves.

I only use the internal supports if I must and only on “open models”.  If that makes sense. If you must have a support inside your closed model, you are better off modeling something in there manually.

Hope that helps.

5

Oh and the space between the walls did not fill because most likely your model had integrity issues. You need to make sure your model is optimized for 3d printing. PreForm detects problems and fixes them sometimes, but I found that sometimes that just adds extra geometry in a sloppy way.

6

Emil / Jason - Would you guys mind sending us some of the models you are having issues with to support@formlabs.com? It is helpful for us to examine files that are causing PreForm to act strangely so we can push fixes for the next release.

Jory