Designing To Remove Supports

If you want to 3D print arbitrary shapes with an FDM printer, you often find you need supports. If you have dissolvable support material, that might not be a big issue, but if you use the same material for support as you print in, removing it can be difficult, depending on the location of the support and your slicer. At the very least, it is going to require more time and filament to print and at least some post-processing. [Slant 3D] asserts that you can always redesign the part using chamfers and fillets to avoid needing support to start with. Watch the video, below.

Of course, sometimes you just need to flip the part around. For example, the part in question — which is just an example — could just be rotated to avoid support, but that isn’t the point, of course. A fillet, however, still might need support, so you wind up having to do a double fillet to really avoid support.

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