Unable to remove the internal supports

Although I deselect the internal supports preform keeps generating them. Is preform unable to recognize in and outside of the model in this case? How would you setup this print?

Place the supports yourself?

well I can remove the internal supports one by one but this shouldn’t be necessary. This model was shown off by formlabs itself and I am wondering which settings they used for it ( density, etc. ).

True. It’s a pain but I have come across models that I have had to place supports myself as the supports provided just wouldn’t work (Nasa spanner being one)

I see you were the one who linked us to this tool: http://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/wrench-mis

Thank you Gary! Whats the problem on this one and how did you place the supports if I may ask :smile:

No bother. The issue with this one was getting the internal parts supported correctly without leaving support pieces rattling around inside. It was designed for an FDM printer (planning on getting one at some point) and so the supports had to be carefully placed to make sure everything printed correctly. It took around an hour or so to set up and check each layer.

While looking at this model I asked myself if the gaps between the parts have enough distance to each other. I remember a print on which I had multiple parts sticking together. Is there a rule for the form1+ how the distance needs to be? I think an example for a similar case where its important is the gyro cube but it has much wider gaps.

Not sure if you now this or not but under the support edit option you can use the slider to cut a section up and down. you can cut half way up and look from the bottom and see all the internal supports to click and remove… it would be nice if there was a window select option to remove supports

I’m not sure of the rules — but PreForm isn’t interpreting those supports as ‘internal’, because the STL is open. You have a few options: I’ve printed the part as @Thomas_Judy describes — you can also play with the support settings (reducing the density) and auto-generate and see if you get lucky.

A symmetrical, well-supported part like that, though, is not so difficult to manually place supports for — just make sure all of the lowest points are adequately supported and go from there!

I’ve printed this part quite a few times. Because it is a very light mesh, you can get away with few supports. First off, I turn slope factor down all the way to 0.25. I expect you can even drop the density a bit as well. You’ll still get a few supports on the inside of the model, but not as many, and you go in manually to remove them.

I believe in PreForm ‘Internal Supports’ refers to the ones that have their base attached to the model. If that helps to understand PreForm better. I know that doesn’t solve your issue.

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Thank you guys :smile: I decided to print the goldberg Sphere instead but its a similar behaviour. 11 hours later I am very happy with the result. This was more like a test print after I got my printer replaced recently. I hope this success will last forever :wink:

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