Raft without a raft

[Fedgar]

Greetings!

I have a makerbot replicator gen 5. It has worked out alright so far, my biggest issue has been print warping on large wide prints. I have tried the helper disks on the makerware software, to no avail.

I have an aftermarket build plate now (Its one of those flexible ones that has pretty good adhesion (better than tape) and removing prints is very easy.)

So here is my question:
I was thinking that if I printed the large thick raft base layer as the base of my part, I think it would adhere really well, but I have no idea how to do that in the software.
The raft always seems to stick just fine, the part will pull up off the raft (or the layers of the raft de-laminate) so my idea is if the entire base was made of thick extruded base layer, it would adhere well, and it might even help with making the base more sturdy (generally not a problem)


Any ideas?
--Frank

[TOLprinter]

You could try tweaking the raft settings so that the raft is the exact same size as the base, and place the raft's top layer/object's bottom layer so close that they will fuse like making a normal layer.

I haven't tried Makerbot's newer slicer, but in Makerbot Desktop you can tweak raft settings. I imagine it would be similar. For Makerbot Desktop you would go into the raft settings and try changing the raft to model spacing to 0. Then set raft margin to 0. This should make the model print right on top of the raft, and give you a raft that is the same size as the base.

You could also try simply decreasing the gap between the raft and the object's base so that it sticks a little more to the raft. That might help minimize the warping.

These are just some suggestions you could try. Other than that if you're looking for more help, you'll probably want to include your setup and settings you're using for printing.

[Fedgar]

Okay. I can try a print like that this weekend when I get home.
So I am looking at the settings on my laptop, and this is what I am thinking about setting things to (See photo)
raft_settings.jpg

What I am hoping to accomplish is to have the entire base layer, be like the base layer on the raft (With the large extrusions) but I would like the entire bottom to be solid obviously.
I am honestly not sure that I can even do this with the makerbot software, so if I have to use another software to make this happen I am fine with that. I figured I would ask some folks that might know what they are doing.

[TOLprinter]

I see what you mean. There isn't a feature to tell Makerbot's slicer to do something like "only print the base layer with fat lines". You'll have to do a little experimenting with the raft settings to get Makerbot's slicer to do what you have in mind. I think it's possible, but you'll have to find the right values for the relevant settings to pull it off.

You're going in the right direction for what you want to do though. Besides the "Base Layers" section, further down the list, you may want to try "0" for "Number of Surface Layer Shells", "Number of Surface Layers", and "Number of Interface Layers".

Come to think of it though, I heard folks have only recently developed a slicer that lets you do variable width printing during the printing process.

Well good luck and have fun.