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I was looking at the fishing reels (amazing BTW) there is a number of patterns that I have seen used on the spool, and was wondering if there is a way to use the triangles or circles or what ever infill as the actual faces of the part instead of having to have solid tops and bottoms....

can you do zero top and bottom layers? just wondering if there is a shortcut or if it has to be drawn in the STL file..

Tom C

Yes you can use 0 top and bottom layers and you will obtain what you think.

But i do not think the reels were designed like that.


But dont forget that setting, not nice when you do a 20 hour part that lacks all of the horizontal layers on top.

I used Slic3r with zero bottom layers, and set the honeycomb infill at 25%-ish for the back face of the spool holder and the outer face of the spool. I had the vertical perimeter layers set at ten or eleven.

Thanks Stonewater - teoman got it - use 0 top and bottom layers. The reels were partly designed like that! The open ports obviously were not but the mesh like areas are exposed infill.
It is tricky to print exposed infill, you have perfect 1st layer height, go slow on the first layer and a good "sticky" surface like PEI.

mhackney wrote:Thanks Stonewater - teoman got it - use 0 top and bottom layers. The reels were partly designed like that! The open ports obviously were not but the mesh like areas are exposed infill.
It is tricky to print exposed infill, you have perfect 1st layer height, go slow on the first layer and a good "sticky" surface like PEI.

You also use Kisslicer for that, right?

Yes, KISS is the only slicer that has the Round infill style that looks like a woven mesh. I really like that (no pun intended) on my reels.

thanks guys, I thought the patterns looked familiar.... so I can design the part as normal, and then use the infill with no top or bottom!! pretty cool!!

I have some hex shaped parts I want to be able to stack to change the width of the part, a rotor (its for a pulse motor) and depending upon the magnet width I will be stacking parts on a half inch shaft. so if it is only 2 inches wide it will use the same pieces with the bottom layers on 4 or 6 and then zero on top, sandwiched together. if I have more width say 4 or 6 inches I am going to nest one inch thick piece, then it will be honeycomb. mattercontrol now has the honeycomb infill which I was using on a timing disc to lighten it up but keep it strong. like you said mke, the bottom layer is so important, especially when you are soing a bunch of small holes that hold little neo pencil lead size magnets.

Tom C

so here is a pic with 11 perimeters, 50% infill... this is a new .5 nozzle... looks like I am having either a Z height issue or an extrusion multiplier issue, any comment would be helpful!! extruder is calibrated the quick way by measuring 100 mm extruded at the Bowden tube. I will use less perimeters next time. the layers look really good on the edge of this thing, actually never have done a print that looks this nice on the edge.

one thing I am seeing on the first layer, when it prints the very first small set of holes, out of 10 of the holes 2 of them do not complete before it retracts and moves.

240 extruder temp
90 bed temp
abs
12 mm first layer speed
20 mm print speed
extrusion multiplier at 1

retract 6mm at 100 mm... when it was set to 200 it would push out too much and cause too much material to come out at the beginning of the next print after move.



Tom C