When printing with SLA machines like the B9 Creator and Form 1+ you can spend a lot of time on generating and perfecting the supports, as it has a big impact on the quality of your print. Today Formlabs announced a new release of their Support Structure Design in the PreForm software (info/download). Looking at the pictures it seems they have reduced the material required quite drastically and added more powerfull controls for editing the supports.

What is your experience with SLA and supports? Has anyone tried the new PreForm supports already?

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Hi Brian,
can I use this software for makerbot replicator 2 use ??

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Hey Franky, I don’t think so but you could give it a try… @Robin3D what do you think?

Hi Franky,

I’m afraid that the Formlabs software PreForm only saves as .FORM and not as .STL so your Makerbot won’t know what to do with the file. But to be honest, even if it was able to load the model with generated supports from PreForm, I’m afraid the supports would have to be quite a bit thicker for your FDM type printer to succesfully print them.

But as an alternative I would recommend checking out Meshmixer which might just do the trick for you, the way it handles supports is fairly similar to the new PreForm method.

Best,

Robin

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No, because the supports are too small in diameter and will clog your Replicator. However you should look into Autodesk Meshmixer which can generate similar support structure. Check out this post to learn more: 3D Printing Ninja : Free Help Guide to Master 3D Printing: MeshMixer Automatic Supports

The software continues to improve and I love it but as I’m now waiting for my printer to be replaced/repaired for the fifth time I would really like to see some improved hardware reliability!

Looks like an implementation of a truss system. Nice.