Hi ! I want to talk quickly about the orientation of parts to show the details and an interesting custom supports that I call wax tree style supports.

Orientation

The orientation of a part is important if you want to show more details, follows a small instance I printed on a FDM printer using a 45 degrees orientation to have the supports only at the back of this small figurine: it is PLA that was printed without any fan (so way too hot on small surfaces and the printer was struggling to print the overhangs), the front is superb and there is no support, but the back is not nice because I put too much clearance between the interface and the surface to be supported but is not a big deal to fix it. No post processing, I like raw prints, I just removed the supports and that's it, layers are 0.1mm.

Close up on the front overhangs (do not forget, no fan for cooling was used)

The back with supports, you can see all the struggle with the overhangs and too much clearance for supports

Wax tree style supports

I found an interesting video from Heavypoly that I want to share, it is about creating custom supports for small parts on a SLA 3D Printer.

I call this a wax tree style supports. People casting a lot of items using wax are building such kind of tree/branch structure to speed up the production in a foundry.

What is interesting about this video ?

• Use branch structures to attach support to the trunk of the tree: it enables to reuse material while providing strong supports for several parts.
• Printing several parts take less time on a SLA than an FDM, but it can help on FDM too because you reduce the amount of supports with respect to the number of parts you print.
• Maximize the volume of your 3DPrinter to maximize the production.

He designs such support structures manually using Blender, with the help of some plug-in.
The process is the following:

• He builds the trunk and the base, he adds the parts and he orients them to put the support on the "easiest" surface to post-process,
• Then he builds a tree of edges for all the surfaces that needs supports. Such edges are merging in branches that are then attached to the trunk.
• Then he extrudes such edges using a circle to create cylinders for supports,
• After he modifies the tips to create the conic shape on the supported surfaces.
• After he replicates as needed the parts/supports on the trunk to create levels.

Follows the link to the video with all the details:

Check out his channel too, he is having interesting content on Blender and 3D Printers: https://www.youtube.com/user/kakapoopie/featured