Support up!
Well, I had the first setback. The body of the robot failed to print. Looks like there wasn’t enough supports to hold the body to the build plate. The upside is that the legs printed.
Most slicers let you pick what size supports you want to use; small, medium, or large. They act as a scaffolding that ensures good contact with the build plate is maintained. Small supports are good because they leave less clean up and use less resin. They aren’t very strong, though, so a large file can break free of them. Large supports are strong but require more clean-up and can impair the finer details of the model. If you aren’t familiar, support clean-up of a 3D printed object is similar to sanding down sprue connection points on a traditional model kit. There’s just a lot more of them.
I went in light for the first print trying to save a few pennies and lost the print. Lesson learned. As you can see in the screenshot, for the second attempt I’ve added large supports with some light ones on more detailed areas. I also changed the orientation of the print to a more horizontal position. This should spread the load across the supports more. This also lowers the print time because the printer works one horizontal layer at a time. The shorter the z-axis, the less layers to print.
Three more hours left on the print. A watched file never prints… I’m going for a hike.
Modeling and Storytelling 