Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mdorazio 2073 days ago
Disagree, and I used to run a company that did FDM printing. If you look at this design it's packed with tons of overhangs regardless of printing orientation, and a particularly nasty undercut ending in a sharp point (see right side view). This is actually a great example of where FDM is a bad solution and the part should be redesigned (ex. split it into multiple pieces or find a way to re-engineer it so it can be printed in some good orientation) or you should pick a different method. Yes, you could FDM print this, but the end quality would be garbage, the tolerances would be poor, and you'd end up with a lot of support material cleanup and probably failed/unacceptable prints.
1 comments

If you print this angled so the curved side is down and the two sides are at 45 degrees to horizontal, it should print more or less fine without any support whatsoever.