How to resize Mini rafts diameter?

Support & Troubleshooting
1

Hello,

I want to join mini rafts or resize the base diameter to join multiple mini-rafts, It is tedious and sticky to remove multiple adjacent unconnected mini-rafts.
Full raft will be great if I could remove the border.

I want a full raft layer of 0.4mm connecting all the supports.

How can I achieve this in preform ? (formlabs 3b+)

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

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2

I don’t think it’s possible as is. Or at least I did not find a way to do it exactly.

To me it seems you can either :

  1. Use a full raft, change the full raft height at 0.4 but still have the border
  2. Use multiple mini-raft and change density / slope multiplier to have a”full raft”

But it seems mini raft can’t be 0.4mm height so none of this solution seems to be exactly what you need.

3

Hi @glococo,

I’m a Product Manager for PreForm and I would love to understand a bit more about your workflow and use case.

I think I understand the want to join mini rafts together, to make it easier to remove from standard Build Platforms in one piece. Please correct me if I’m wrong. But could you elaborate a bit on what your current frustrations are with the border and what removing it could solve for you? And by border, are you referring to the raised lip on the raft?

4

Hi Henry and serret,

When I clone multiple small objects (object have supports and most of them are raft unconnected/alone), after printing those alone supports are sticky to remove.

I also would like to be able to go below 0.4mm raft thickness, even allow 0 raft, just the pin from the base. (I did this before on other projects and was faster to drain in some cases)
Maybe a “projected area raft” could simplify joining the mini rafts.

In my case, for speed up, I elevate just 2mm, not more, and fill as much as possible the buildbase with parts. If I use full raft, raft border collide with adjacent part.

5

I also could use this. I often print a lot of parts in an array, and I like the rafts to merge so the whole print can be removed in one piece. The lip around the edge of the raft is just wasted resin at this point. If I could make the mini raft “pads” large enough to merge, or toggle off the lip, it would be great. A ton of lips on small rafts holds a lot of wet resin that never quite drains.

1 Like
6

Got it, thanks for the info! I’ll pass on the feedback to the rest of the software team.

In the meantime, a janky solution from me (with the Formlabs hat off), you could import a thin rectangular prism or cylinder onto the build platform at the same thickness of the raft and just have it overlap with and merge all the mini rafts together. Probably won’t save much resin compared to the full raft with the lip, since it won’t be a projected outline of the models, but this way, the mini rafts will all come off the build platform in one piece.

1 Like