Printing Support material

[cbatty]

I have a question about support material. I have a design that relies on the support material in being a part of my design and, not knowing much about the printers process and slicing software I am curious as to how the peachy generates the support material.

So my question would be, does the peachy printer use the same support material structure as an FDM printer? so will it create it at each layer, and will it use just as much material?

for example I have a cube, with the top and bottom removed. The cube then has an offest roof. will the peachy printer want to build support material underneith the roof, does it need to? and will it do it in the same way as an FDM printer? second to this. could you control the support material area. could I tell the printer where I want the support material to be and change the density by percentage?

Thank you
-Chris

[Anuvin]

So my question would be, does the peachy printer use the same support material structure as an FDM printer? so will it create it at each layer, and will it use just as much material?

for example I have a cube, with the top and bottom removed. The cube then has an offest roof. will the peachy printer want to build support material underneith the roof, does it need to? and will it do it in the same way as an FDM printer? second to this. could you control the support material area. could I tell the printer where I want the support material to be and change the density by percentage?

Hey Chris, welcome to the board.

In the scenario you describe, yes, the peachy will need, and will capably print, supports for your roof. Blender is more responsible for the printing of supports than any of the peachy software though. Should work the same for FDM. I don't have an FDM though, so I am not sure!

[harpo99999]

from my understanding the support material IS water ie the support for the LIQUID resin that is incrementally raised up the print, and as the resin is very slightly less dense than the salt water being used the resin floats on the water, so no extra resin (other than enclosed volumes which will tend to become SOLID resin after curing in sunlight for a period BUT if there is a hole in the bottom of the print then water can enter the enclosed space and result in less resin needed)

[Anuvin]

This is true harpo, but for something that literally floats in space, you still need some kind of support. I have no idea why you would print something in such a way that it required support materials, but the peachy is happy to point a laser at resin for whatever reason.

[cbatty]

ok, so what input does the Peachy printer take? could I slice my STL file on Makerware or another slicing software, and then convert it for peachy printer with the support material generated?

[bovalis2037]

^^^ No..cbatty. You will need to import an .stl file into blender. There it is sliced. Im pretty sure only if you mod rylans software can you slice a part differently

[Feign]

From the P28 instructions page:

The workflow is as follows:
3D model > .STL file > .gcode file > .gcode to .WAV > .WAV to printer
[...]
Note: We are
working on getting gcode to come straight out of Blender, but until then we'll have to use Cura.

So apparently they're still working on the Blender Plugin that takes the model straight from .stl to .wav.

Right now they have a .gcode to .wav, which is probably about 25% of the work right there. The rest of it is basically making a slicer program pretty much from scratch (which ought to be significant).