I was wondering how people deal with removing internal supports generated by PreForm?
I was looking at the supports PreForm proposes for a Voroni chess piece
there’s clearly supported need internally, but once it’s done printing, how do you successfully remove them?
small burr with a flex shaft
Tweezers, flush angle cutters, needle-nose pliers, picks, probes, stainless steel chopsticks, shaking, and patience.
I always try turning off the internal supports (checkbox) and see if they are even needed. Often you can get away with either no internal supports or just a few internal supports,
This. being smart with orientation and a bit bold with the red (support needed) warnings can go a long way toward avoiding internal supports, especially on parts like these.
I have been experimenting with lattices recently and have encountered cases where PreForm would light up a model in red despite it being self-supported… it seems that the fine lattice (composed of short rods a bit less than 1mm in Ø) wasn’t considered as sufficient to support the rest of the geometry. Parts still printed fine and are very rigid even on the Z axis so the warning wasn’t really necessary.