Preform formlabs cup how to#
Preform formlabs cup manual#

However, I wanted to tilt it more parallel to the build plate to increase print speed. I had originally been printing parts with a higher tilt angle as shown highlighted in red. Rotating by a small angle won’t really change anything, but currently Preform will force you to repopulate supports.Īnother example is illustrated by these images. Especially, say if you are needing to rotate a part slightly in the X & Y due to a cup that Preform wasn’t detecting or something like that. I understand other rotations change the orientation and might need resetting the supports…but in many instances this isn’t true. For example, being able to select a face or drag select an area to populate with a given density of supports…or the ability to block erase or add supports with a paint brush would be amazing. More flexibility/tools/features for advanced users is what I would like. Totally understand that, but it would be nice if there were additional “advanced” features for power users like myself who can start with minimally supported parts and add supports where needed rather than going from a vastly over supported model and having to remove supports. Other rotations change the orientation of the part and so reset the supports. Also, on Preform 3.28, you should be able to rotate a part around the z-axis without losing the existing support net just use the ring on the part to turn the part. Hi does, by its coding, prioritize success over minimal supporting and I’m sure you’ve noted that you can remove some percentage of the supports and still have success- it’s preferable for most users that we offer print success over support minimization. If I print this with the right support settings, the supports will be very difficult to remove, more time required post-processing, and will result in significantly more resin consumed. Preform does not have any good ways of bulk editing supports manually, meaning I literally have to click hundreds of dots when preparing my prints I can’t go lower than 0.5 density…in fact, going from 1.0 to 0.5 doesn’t seem to have much of a difference even though you would expect the lowest density to have far less touch points If I rotate this item all the support locations are lost, meaning I have to go from the right image, to the left by manually clicking hundreds of times Some issues I face on a daily basis, especially on 3L parts are listed below. The right is Preforms auto generate with 0.5 density (the lowest I can go). The left is one that has supports manually placed by me for minimal post processing and material consumption, but that I know has printed successfully many times in the past. I want to show a concrete example of some things that could help for speeding up print processing.īelow are two parts.

Preform formlabs cup how to#

I’d really like Formlabs to start focusing on Preform - specifically on how to make support generation more efficient for us power users who know that default settings are very overkill…and also to maybe take a step back and re-evaluate whether the current supports algorithm is really going in the right direction…because lately it feels like it’s not (more print failures, higher densities required, more post-processing, more material consumed, etc.)

Preform formlabs cup manual#

There are also several other bulk manual editing features that could be added which would greatly improve the speed at which some of us generate print files, especially for large models on the 3L. I also notice that 0.5 is the lowest it can go. My recent experiences of changing density from 1.00 to 0.5 shows that it still doesn’t work as intended. I logged a bug in the past with support that showed changing the density multiplier didn’t do anything, but not sure if they have addressed it. I also wish that changing the density multiplier had more of an effect. It seems like the algorithm is super conservative now, more so than before. The same model that I know prints successfully in past versions is now flagged as having a printability issue in the new version. I’ve also raised concerns in the past about the new settings being more failure prone. I have logged several support tickets in the past concerning some issues and feature requests to make Preform much more efficient. However, are there any other power users on the forums who feel like the Preform support generation is moving backwards? I just want to start this by saying that my Formlabs machines have been, and still are, great workhorses for our business and are extremely reliable, especially because we have deep knowledge on optimal print settings, orientations, etc.