3D printing Multiple bodies

[ianpmitchell]

I am not sure if this is a Fusion issue or Cura.

I am trying a print a 2 coloured plaque on a single extruder printer by printing the letters first, change filament colour and print the base.

My work flow is :-

Create design in Fusion - The base and each of the letters are separate bodies within a component

File:3D Print: select the component, (which means all the bodies are exported), send directly to Cura.

This is where the fun starts, sometimes the file is imported into Cura as a single body in the object list, (not what I want), and other times the separate bodies are available in the object list, (which is what I want).

If it arrives as separate bodies, I delete the base from the object list, print the letters and then reload the whole model, delete all the letters and print the base in the second colour.

What I can't figure out is what I am doing different between a single model or separate bodies arriving in Cura.

Interestingly if the model loads as a single body it is placed in the middle of the bed, when it is separate bodies the model lands just off the side of the bed.

[etfrench]

What happens when you use 'Save as Mesh' from the context menu?

[ianpmitchell]

I tired three times, once all 9 bodies were visible in Cura, twice it was a single body called Plaque Mesh V1.stl

[Drewpan]

Hi,

Pretty sure this is a Cura problem and also don't think it will work out of the box the way you think it will.

Cura takes into consideration the actual hardware you are printing on and this included things like clearances for the

actual extruder. If you print part of your model and then print another part of the model and Cura doesn't think one

part is there then it may cause a crash of the extruder into the already printed part. I think this will happen when the

extruder head tries to print the edges near the pre-printed part. It will not have proper clearance.

I think you might have to print each part separately and then use a manual joint to connect them together. Either

that or make friends with someone with a dual extruder machine.😎

Cheers

Andrew

[ianpmitchell]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the thoughts. I am still not convinced that the issue is not Fusion. I know nothing about the structure of .STL files but I would have expected so see something that indicates different bodies with the model in the .STL file. I looked at one file using notepad, (that didn't split in Cura), and I couldn't see anything that identified the separate bodies. I normal open Cura directly from Fusion so do not have access to those .STL files.

Just for info, the workflow I described does work, see below. (this model was from one of the times separate bodies were available in Cura). There is a setting in a lot of slicers call Z-hop that lifts the nozzle when transiting open spaces. The letter layer is 0.4mm high and the z-hop in this case was 0.5mm. Not the best print but not bad.