3D Printing Ferris

[JordanP-Dev]

Hi:

For the most part, your current model works not bad for 3D printing. I only made small modifications to the eyes to make the eye dots or the separate eye pieces.

I think the main thing would be to have some flat surface area on the bottom of the feet so they are better supported while printing.

One small thing that would be good for the slicers is if the eyes and tongue had fully-enclosed meshes. Cura highlights those features if you load the model in, because they are not manifold, and won't slice it correctly.

One other thing that might be good for the current model is if the rear legs were a little thicker where they attach to the body. They're a little bit weaker and they broke off on one print when it got dropped.

An alternate pose that might be nice is if you could have Ferris lying down, with his claws fully flat on the ground. From the picture, you can see it isn't very smooth where the supports are, at least on my printer. With a lying down pose, you might be able to print without supports, depending on how the angles work out for the arms and legs.

[RayMarch]

@JordanP-Dev thank you for printing it and putting the effort in! it looks great!
I compiled a little todo list from your post to make a "better-for-printing" version which i plan to add to this repository.

• lack of support structure while printing:
  • option A: cut off part of feet/hands at the bottom
  • option B: print ferris lying down on face
• tongue not watertight
• eyes not watertight
• eye highlight as separate mesh
• leg/body connection too thin (especially back legs)
  • this should be changed in the non-print model as well, as it looks weird
• default subdivision level too low, polygons visible

feel free to correct me if i misunderstood some things.
I will work on these issues once i find time.

wrt the alternate pose, do you mean the pose as it is shown in the bottom-most picture where ferris is lying on the face? Or a pose that will actually be different visually when finished printing?

[JordanP-Dev]

Yeah, that's mostly correct.

For the first point, the current orientation is fine. The second picture was just to show the legs / bottom of the print. You wouldn't want that rough texture from the supports on the face. You may only need to give the feet a larger bottom surface area. The claw will have supports, so shouldn't fall over. To give you an idea of how it gets printed:

The red, green, and white are part of the model. The blue is the support structure. Anything that is too close to horizontal needs supports. Anything that needs the supports will look a little rougher. I think 3D resin printers are better with quality in supported areas, but I don't have one to test with.

I meant a visually different pose that you might be able to print without supports, as an second option. Sort of like this:

If the bottom of the body is on the ground with a larger flat surface, you might be able to avoid needing supports there. Same, with the legs. Right now, the bottoms of the upper legs are almost horizontal, and this would give them some vertical angle. And you could rest the claws horizontally on the ground. I tried to play around with this a little bit, but I couldn't figure out if I could rotate his claws independently of where they are.

The STL export seems to use the viewport subdivision setting, so I accidentally was printing a lower poly model.

[JordanP-Dev]

I played with it a bit more and got the claws roughly where I was trying to put them. Here is a small test print that was done without supports.

[RayMarch]

Thank you for making all these versions and sharing the support structure view.
I am not too comfortable with modifying the pose too much just to avoid the support structure, and i love your earlier prints where ferris is actually standing without the head touching the floor.

in your latest print, did you tilt the head back to avoid support structure on the eyes? I think that might be a good tradeoff, but compressing the legs/arms into the body feels too cramped.
That being said i am glad you printed this version, it makes it very clear what the tradeoffs are, and it probably took a considerable amount of time 🙏

I think i will focus on fixing the watertightness issues and getting the precise eye-highlight separation first, as well as reinforcing the head/leg-connection. Finding the right pose feels like a lot of trial & error.

[JordanP-Dev]

I agree the original pose looks better.

I didn't tilt it. I think the bottom of the eyes didn't necessarily need the supports. The slicer will add them based on the degree threshold you set. You can see in the slicer picture that it only added support under the one eye.

For the eye-highlight, I think you could make supports less neccessary by making it sort of cone shaped, like this:

On the other hand, if I shift the threshold by 5 degrees, it doesn't need the supports for cylinder shaped eye highlight I made, either.

[Stausssi]

Hi @JordanP-Dev, your printed models look amazing! Could you please share the 3D models for your first print with separate eyes?

[LeoniePhiline]

Any version of the STL files would be super awesome! @JordanP-Dev in case you see this. ❤️🦀