My buddy has a cold plunge and this filter started cracking. After looking at it you can tell it’s definitely 3d printed (and well)

On the left you can see my first attempt. I just cut rectangular holes in CAD and it’s pretty close but not pretty. Printed in PETG on a K1 Max

Is there a way to do this in the slicer instead? I played around with 0 walls and different infill types but that didn’t work out

  • Remy Rose@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    What if you printed it flat as a rectangle and then rolled it up and sealed the edges? Seems like it’d print better that way, no retractions, no bridging, no fragile areas of like ten 1mm-width layers stacked on top each other.

  • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    That’s a lot of retractions. What is this filtering? Maybe you could print a more open structure and line it in mesh?

    Also, where is this part in relation to chlorine? I can’t imagine a printed part would hold up very well in high chlorine concentrations, but PETG is fairly inert…

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      I might be tempted to try turning on ‘fuzzy skin’ printing above a layer height, for Prusaslicer, if you have a fairly large gap and wide skin thickness it can create an almost-open-weave to it. I used that for some grow baskets for aeroponic racks as well as a lamp shade. The trick there is to print in spiral mode as well.

      but I think given the bottom profile, it would have to be done in separate parts- a cylinder for the actual filter, and a cap on either end. ( you can also turn on a skirt for adhesion, which is also useful as a flange for securing it into a cap. basically, there’s a recess that it fits in, then a threaded ring screws into that recess.)

      edit: here’s a screen grab of a quick mock up in prusa… using a calibration cube (20x20x50mm) using a layer height change to turn off perimeters, infill and turn on fuzzy skin with a point-distance of .6 and a tickness of 1mm. (default .4mm nozzle. yes, that makes a difference on the skin.) It creates a realtively ‘open’ structure where the layers intersect somewhat randomly while jogging back and forth (think of it as being like a wicker basket,)

      it’s important to remember when replicating things that they don’t have to be necessarily exactly what your replacing. really it just needs to fit in the same space and do the same job.