I have been building parts with detail on both sides, but on one side I get a lot of distortion on the face with the support structure. What is the best way to orientate models? Should I stand them UP? Or lay them down?
If I stand them up the print session takes hours (Cost of electric, wear and tear on the Formlabs 3+)
If I lay them down for more time saving, poorer quality prints. Is is more efficient in time and cost to use the Auto-Orient setup? See screenshots attached. If I auto-orientate exactly the two parts exactly why doesn’t the software set them up the same? All the very best Chris
Hi @chrisjdraw,
Thanks for getting in touch! For general recommendations, I would advise looking over Model orientation best practices for SLA printing. There will always be a tradeoff with SLA printing in terms of surface quality of supported surfaces. If there are specific surfaces of your model you’d like to preserve, facing them away from the build platform would be ideal. Support marks can be sanded down, but this does generally result in a loss of quality. Angling supported models at a shallow horizontal angle is generally best for printability, but standing them up more vertically could preserve surface quality of the long surfaces.
