Text on a box lid

Hello to all. I have just got my new Crealty 20s up and running and it is printing very well. Amomg my many projects is printing custom electronics enclosures. To this end I downloaded a simple box with a lid from Thingiverse (designed as a container for ear buds) and printed it out. The box and the lid print separately with the closed side down. I want to put text and graphics on the lid. If I do this with raised text and graphics in the same orientation, the text and graphics would have to print first, followed by the solid part of the lid. The spaces between the text and graphics would have to be bridged by the printer and would require infill to support the solid part of the lid. I really don?t want infill mixing with the text and graphics. Otherwise I could reverse the orientation of the lid and print with the top (and text and graphics) up. This would require a lot of infill to hold the top of the lid up while printing. Not keen on that either. Waste a lot of PLA.

So is there a techique or trick to doing text and graphics on a flat surface?

easiest way would be to learn to use openscad, or any other design software, and design your own box with text and pics easy to add.

Basically you've hit the first hurdle of 3d printing. In order to make the stuff you want to make, you'll need to learn how to design your own things :-)
There's a lot of great stuff on thingiverse - but not always exactly what you want.


To add it to an stl from within a slicer is kind of tricky.
You can have it protuding from the lid, but you can't incise it into the lid, which is probably what you want to do.

if you only need a few words, search "Letter and numbers" there may be some out there.. Then print what you need and glue them on.. Learning the CAD software is definitely a requirement if you want to really do what you want to do. I went with onshape, but probably should have chosen fusion 365 as it seem to be more popular and in so you can find answers to more "How the heck do I do that" questions as you learn.
Good luck!

Sorry for being unclear on this problem. I am well versed in CAD and have lots of designs for my enclosures. The ear bud box was just a test to trial out my ideas. I am new to 3D printing (not CAD) and the issue of spanning open space such as that between letters on a box lid being printed face down are a mystery to me Using a grid between the letters would seem to be one option, if somewhat tedious to make. Maybe I could set up infill in a grid pattern in Cura on the base? Or would it be better to print face up? That would require an awful lot of infill for the inside of the lid. I can't be the only one to encounter this issue. How does everybody else do it?

Don

The slicer can create support to allow for things with over hangs. Normally you try and design the parts so this is not needed if you can.. Not sure what your lid looks like but you would want to refrain from having any of the box sides attached to it if you know what I mean,just a flat top.. maybe some tabs and a lip so it snaps on the box... This way it prints with the words on the top.

Hmmmmm. Right. Flat top, letters on top. Have to change a few things but I think that would work. Thanks for the re-think. 3D printing requires different brain cells than CNC.

Yes you are not removing you are adding .. so you have to build on top of something and if your part has thing with nothing under them then the slicer has to build some support under that area.. You have to consider orientation when printing as to which makes the most sense and which will produce the strongest part. Here is an artificial from the simplified 3d website that explains supports.. even if you are not using S3d there are many articles that may be helpful to you on their website.. BTW the current version of their software has been very broken since they updated it past 4.01.. Hope that helps

You know, I am still not sure I gave you the advice you were looking for.. can you post a picture of you lid design with letters?

No your idea was great. I am re-working my enclosure designs for a flat lid. It will work very well. Keen on getting printing but have to decide on circuit board sizes first. Thanks again.