Friday, February 26, 2010

First collated print



Slice and Dice processes perimeters, infill and the raft separately as gcode.  Because of that, to create a print file of gcode I had to write a collation routine.  That was fairly straightforward.  Here is the first print of a test block with a cylindrical hole in it 2.5 mm thick with a cross-hatched infill.



The next task will be to write the code to put solid tops and bottoms on objects.  I'm processing a 5 mm thick version of this test block to give me enough layers to be able to do that without a lot of drama.

2 comments:

Erik de Bruijn said...

I think that since you've split outline and infill routines, you could decide to do them at different z-offsets. E.g. have twice as many outlines as infill. When you're pushing for print speed, having the nozzle orifice very low will require more pressure to extrude those very flat tracks, so you don't want to do the infill like this because it will slow down the plastic throughput and subsequently the build time. Still, the surface quality will be much better, without requiring much more time. Plus, a dynamic outline height would allow much nicer curved surfaces for the more organic designs.

Forrest Higgs said...

I certainly expect that that would improve matters. Right now, however, I'm just trying to get the app working reliably and debugged. Time enough later for making it more sophisticated. :-)