Support removal

[crisson]

I just printed a car model and needed to use supports so the body would be above the wheels. My question is: what is the best way to remove the supports? I tried using wire cutters and needle nosed pliers but didn't have much success with either. Is there a trick to this? Thanks.

Jim

[Mjolinor]

Support and the removal of it is one of the things that you have to do a lot of messing to get your best solution. For sure the most important part is what slicer you are using and are you letting the slicer decide where to support. The best solution is to design your own supports into you model but that will double the time it takes to draw your model if you want to do a good job of it.

If you are using a dual extruder printer then you can do support with a different extruder and use a plastic that will dissolve in something but leave the model plastic untouched. This gives the best results but you use loads more plastic for everything you print.

It's a proper big can of worms that takes a lot of sorting. I think generally most people try to avoid it. It is a lot less work to print a car without wheels then print the wheels separately and add them to the printed model.

[crisson]

Thanks for the reply Mjolinor. I am real new to this 3d printing stuff and just wanted to try to use supports. I let Slic3r generate the supports since, right now, I don't know how to generate my own. I can sure see why most people avoid using them…a real pain to remove. Thanks again.

Jim