This sequential bridging technique was invented by Nophead afaik, described in his blog post "Buried nuts and hanging holes", from 2014. His blog is a gold mine.
@@emanggitulah4319 You can't share links via the comments. You'll need to google using the words that @Lenbok provided above. It's everything you need for the proper search.
@@emanggitulah4319 I searched "nophead blog" and went to the site titled HydraRaptor. It gave me a mobile version which was impossible to navigate so at the bottom I clicked web version. That gave me access to the side menu where I clicked 2014, then march to find the article.
Kinda hard to really claim who invented anything (first) since the only data to go off for verification is the earliest example of documentation or production. I could figure out a concept and sit on it for ten years to have someone else come out and say to the world, I just invented this! Did I invent it? I thought of it first I just didn’t make it. So is it the problem solved by a persons creation that’s the invention or simply the manufacture and subsequent public exposure of the solution that’s being titled? We know from history that people have gotten credit for “inventing” things that were other people’s creations, they just rushed to build it first. At the end of the day I give an amount of admiration to people for their creativity but I give “invented” titles a grain of salt.
I'm a bit late on this, but here's an interesting suggestion that I've done a time or two for inverted details: Print the details separately, then insert them into the larger print the same as you'd insert a captive nut or bearing. For instance: I have a custom prusa print head that I designed myself, on prusa print heads they use the position of a steel ball to do filament out detection. I couldn't copy their ball holding system exactly so I made a captive channel. The back side printed fine, but the front side not only couldn't be printed due to overhanging but would have the ball in the way if I tried. So I printed the front side of the channel as it's own tiny print, then inserted the ball and the front side as a plug and just printed over it. Works like a charm. In this case, you could print what looks like a 2-4 layer thick washer, and insert it into a pocket in the main print so that it becomes the back of the hole.
It'll be like those brass heated inserts or those screw threads for wood furniture. That's an interesting idea, I think I'll keep that in my pocket now thanks.
Been forcing myself to learn fusion, but some of the tricks you shared in the last third of the video blew my mind. Fusion has too many features that nobody talks about. Thank you so much for sharing. I'll be exhibiting at Opensauce, Excited to see you there Angus!
I’ve also recently started “learning” Fusion360. Learning is in quotation’s because I watched 1 video on how to make a Lego brick, and then just went from there experimenting and making my own things. Only looking up how to do something that my mind says “shouldn’t this be possible” or “what if I tried this”. I literally am only learning it this way because my ADD gets me distracted. I’ve definitely enjoyed it but I know I’ve just barely scratched the surface, just like you said. It’s amazing the things you can do with it.
Thanks Angus! Great Example that is highly applicable to mass production. The reduction in translation errors (when sending to a manufacturer) and of post processing labor are huge factors when trying to mass produce a 3D Printed product profitably.
It's a great technique, but worth noting that since the extrude cuts used to manipulate the slicer into generating the bridging are tailored to the intended layer height, you still need to make sure the person slicing the files follows your print setting spec, same as you would if achieving this result through support material instead.
“Mass Produce 3D Printed Product” sounds like a losing game. Unless this definition of “mass produce” only applies to the scale a personal print farm can manage. Couple thousand a month or whatever.
Oh wow you taught me a new trick at 9 mins in. I'm new with 360 and cad in general, but I've been brute forcing the same style of using one sketch for complex parts by extruding new bodies from the same sketch multiple times, then moving them the appropriate distances, and finally combining them. I had no idea you could start the extrude from an object face!
G'day Angus m8.....id love to learn to cad so i can make my own stuff, but the software scares me seriously. Im 49 and have spent since 2018 living a shut in existence living with Anxierty, Deep depression and PTSD plus lower back issues. So most of my chat is done outside the home is done via digital services. It was you guys of the 3d printing community that helped partly by showing me how easy 3d printing was to do in 2020 and so it gave me a hobby and striving when i can to use them i have an ender 3v2 was my first printer and have done some light mods in the last 4 yrs. living with my condition is hard for me and i just get this weird anxierty when someone says " ahh i'll just fix it in cad"... cheers if you read this m8... all good if ya skip it too. cheers from brisbane
I think the sequential bridging should be implemented in slicers. It's a matter of 3D printing using FDM, not 3D modelling. The same goes for elephant's foot effect, I refuse to adjust my models with these details. Also, I think this should be doable in slicer in a single layer by first bridging one direction and then the other in the same layer.
Cura "initial layer horizontal expansion" for elephants foot. Not sure on other slicers Cura has every setting I'll ever need and then some so I've never used any others. Seems like the rest just copy Cura anyway with things like tree supports and arachne lol
I would suspect that printers with advanced bed leveling do deal with elephants foot, but printers that you level yourself are a bit too variable to predict, I would think. I don't get elephants foot on my on my prints (no auto bed level) so if there was any auto-adjustment, the changes might bevel the bottom of the print rather than keep it straight.
I see where you're coming from. But, design for any manufacturing process includes some details of the process, and not just an abstract ideal model. "Design for manufacturing" is a field for a reason. I do try to avoid overly depending on 3d printing in my models, but I don't go overboard.
If it is included as a slicer option, the modeler needs to know how the slicer implements the sequential bridging in order to account for the (in this case) changes in hole depth. That is, it will affect the accuracy of the hole depth and therefore the fit up of your parts.
@@michaelj3971 I guess that if this sequential bridging is ever implemented, this should be more like knowledge or tips you should apply for models that are supposed to be printed. I mean, "Add a 1mm more thickness to prevent the slicer to modify your accuracy if sequential-bridging". Personally I use a lot the trick of "water drop" like holes for holes that are printed vertically. The idea is fairly great. However I am not agree on how it is implemented on this video. I mean, the part should be nothing but the part. Once the design is done, another design should start from the previous one and that's when all the 3D design tips should be applied (Water-drop holes, sequential-bridgin, elephants foot chamfer, horizontal expansion... whatever) . I think that this allows you to design a part without thinking at all on the way of how it would be manufactured. If this tips are eventually included on the slicers, you can always send the "untouched" part instead of the FDM adapted one.
How you described your workflow is similar to how my Solidworks professor told us to do it. I forget if that program would even allow you to do it this way lol Tripped me up so many times because she'd come around to my computer and make me change it right away lol. So glad I'm done with that xD
@@miranda.cooper I think it's better to have multiple sketches (unless it's a very simple model), that way you can modify it more easily in the future when you have to modify the initial sketch. At least that's what I've been taught by other fusion360 tutorial videos.,
It is generally better to work from multiple smaller sketches, but this geometry is simple enough that one sketch will be easy to understand in the future when you need to make changes.
Thank you for your tips. I really like the sequential bridging idea. When it is possible, I just simply insert the nut (or any other metallic part) during the printing after I set a pause on the next layer in the slicing.
The real second best option is to enable the new, experimental feature in prusaslicer 2.6 to use "extra perimeters on overhangs". Still has some failure on the first layer of the bridge, but better than "just print it". For the 45 overhang, you could of course print a separate object to put on the bold before inserting.
Funny how Prusa Slicer is adding this feature, yet on SuperSlicer it already exists and we have "Simulate Prusa No Thick Bridge" to basically make it work like PrusaSlicer. I had having bridges that act as perimeters because the speed is dictate by the perimeter speed and not the bridge speed / flow / fan.
@@ChrizRockster isn’t super slicer the slicer that just undid it’s lifetime license and wants like 100 dollars for a slicer that’s missing a bunch of key features of the freebies?
@@JeronimoStilton14 , you're thinking of Simplify 3D. SuperSlicer is a fork of PrusaSlicer. Which is a fork of Slic3r. Bambu Labs also forked off of PS and reskinned it
I can't describe how happy I feel to learn that "Extrude from Object" is an "advanced" technique. I use it a lot, and since I basically learned how to use Fusion from your videos, it's like you just came and gave me a gold star. And since I live in Alberta and everything looks almost exactly like post-apocalyptic Caprica in the Battlestar Galactica reboot, I really, really needed that "good job" feeling. Because the smoke is so, so bad.
One approach I've used for rapidly doing a lot of these type of holes in onshape is to create form tools for this and then boolean them out. It with a point pattern is a real quick way to place holes. Going to have to add this to my library of tricks though.
I do the same for blender because it's so much more difficult to make precise parts there. But I can also see it being very useful for when you want to pattern a lot of more complex shapes like the solution presented here. Cause I image you could do this bridging with more than 4 cuts for even better hole precision and printing.
Ah! I get it! I had to go into Fusion 360 and follow along while rewatching your explanation. You're right, it is hard to describe. Your previous video on making sacrificial layers was an excellent tutorial also. Many thanks from this retired guy trying to teach himself Fusion 360!
The hardest part of my 3d printing experience was designing parts with machining in mind. I've worked in a CNC shop, programming and machining custom parts, eventually ending up doing a large run of parts for the aerospace industry (F16 and MIG21 upgrades). The design always stuck me as simple and elegant. Once I started to design my 3d printable parts with machining in mind I found out that they were a lot easier to print and in one case, it was an absolute joy going to mass production via injection molding. For people getting into this hobby/profession, I'd recommend reading books on technical drawing, machining basics and industrial design. Their are a Godsent and make learning CAD modelling a pleasant experience!
Thanks, I have a lot to learn, I'm sure this will come in handy eventually. Currently for parts like this I have no issues printing either side down with no supports, I didn't even realize this could be an issue, all my parts like this turned out fine.
Another trick you can do for the 45 degree overhang option is to print the difference between the part and the overhang part (in this case a hexagonal pyramid with a 6mm hole in the middle) as a separate part and glue it in afterwards Yes its more printer time and an additional step, but it makes the CAD easy and still gives you a flat bottom to the hole to tension a bolt
Great minds think a like I guess. Didn't even think to look 'til after I posted and then thought wait a second...SOMEBODY probably already thought of...dammit. LOL
You don't even need to glue it in, the nut/bolt will hold it ini like any washer! The major advantage of this vs bridging is that it doesn't make the model dependant on a certain layer height.
Whether said or not i think it is important to say that this would be most applicable for complicated shapes that demand to be printed in a way that a bore like is being exampled would be in the orientation that is being shared. Well done mate!
This is a *very* clever approach. When I'm doing extrusions like this, I typically extrude above and below the plane rather than from object, but I'll be adding this approach to my toolbox as well.
Thanks for this follow up video! I hadn't really understood sequential bridging from your last video, but this explanation makes it really clear how to do it! I'll try it out next time I need a curved overhang like this.
I just do the design and modeling for my parts and I send them to my print guy. I know enough about 3D printing to know about overhangs etc, so I always make the bottom face (the face touching the print bed) a different colour so he straight away knows the orientation I intended for it to be printed in. It's a small detail but is great for everyone to be on the same page in back n forth emails.
thanks man! I leaned a few new things. not only the techniques, but hte cad knowledge of extruding at angles and extruding starting at the surface of an object, two things I've been struggling with.
I use the conical relief approach for making knobs with embedded nuts. They print up to the top of the pocket for the nut, then the slicer pauses so I can put in the nut. The conical relief on the top keeps plastic from gumming up the threads. They tighten against the flat base, not the cone, so strength is not a problem.
One easy way to improve the 45 degree overhang approach is to simply print a matching insert as well. So, for a counter-bored hole where you use the 45 degree trick, just print a 45 degree cone (with a hole matching the smaller bore) that fits directly into that hole. I've seen significant improvements from this over using just the 45 degree trick, as the layer lines seem to mesh together, transferring the load much more directly than you'd expect for a simple 45-degree interface.
Even though I don't have F360, this was informative. I typically only make those types of holes with the third option, "chamfered bore." Then again, I use Blender for my modeling, all I know right now, outside of Nomad Sculpt.
That’s very interesting. One thing I have used with very good success has been Cura’s tree supports. With a low density of 2-3% and support interface, my large overhang prints for my Iron Man build have gone incredibly well.
Hey Angus, I like this trick for strengthening a part with metal or carbon fiber, and it would work for situations like this too. Pause the print, drop the strengthening object into it cavity, and resume the print.
I saw this a while ago in a hackaday article. Very useful technique. Especially useful for internal captive nuts, where you model a void for the nut, and you put in gcode to pause the print at the last layer before bridging, insert the nut, and then print over top of the nut.
Great video. As someone who prints for a commercial reason, and some fun prints. Sometimes I need to print holes/bores. I am a tinkercad user. And I can see how to incorporate this into my tinkercad designing, and orientation on the build plate. Cooling on most new 3D printers are good enough to support minor bridging. So adding it into the design can save filament and print time. Mixed with CHEP's Ender 3 profiles, this saves me much time and headache. Because of South Africa's power outage issue, I have to fit my prints into a timeslot, bacause, SHOCK! sometime print resume fails. Or it leaves a terrible missing layer line on the print surface. So, again, thank you for your videos. You, and other YT content creators makes my life so much easier with your educational videos. Or fun, watching you trying to balance a MK4 on a table that is a bit small for the purpose.
Angus, your description was a bit too quick to follow, but the idea is enough for me. Thank you. I like that you are very much like me, a "design to the process" kinda guy. I giggle whenever I see someone want to 3D scan an injection moulded car component, complete with ribs and bosses, and expect to 3D print an exact replica.
Excellent video!! Your CAD work explanation was fine by me. True, it is a "more advanced" use of the software, but if you already have a good understanding of Fusion, it made total sense!
Thank you for this! I have wanted to address this in a part or two and hearing you articulate it made it crystal clear. 'Got's lots of work to do now TYVM
With the 45° overhang roof on the bore, you could also print the positive version to insert before the nut. It should be an easy print, and distribute loads more evenly, and if the tolerances are just right you could actually have a stronger feature than with support material due to the increased number of perimeters...
Nice, thanks! Thats a neat way of creating overhangs, but specifically for nut and bolt fixings like that I like to pause the print, drop the nut into place and then continue the print. I didnt come up with that one myself, but this is mine: Pour wax into cavities with closed tops after pausing the print, let it set and then continue. The wax plugs easily drop out with a little warm water, but it only works with TPU or other plastics that stick to a cold print bed.
If you have the tapered bore, you can secondarily print a bunch of "tapers" that fill the void space, and trivially slot and glue them in. It's a bit more work, but trivially easy to post-process for anything that doesn't require mass manufacture. In fact, this strategy works in general if you can later ADD the nut insert to the design. This is not always desirable, but may be useful allowing the printing of a bunch of nut inserts, and then later gluing them into a part as needed. This simplifies the design, should yield faster print-times, and low post-process.
"Send it" This is sometimes a valid and often ignored option. I do this when I print helmets saving me TONS of support material. Leaves a couple funky layers on the inside but eventually rights itself and the outside come out fine.
I just started doing this from a video I found 3 years ago from @Maniacal Lab LLC. And for horizontal holes I use the method you showed in your print without supports video with a modification to the teardrop hole shape. I cut the top of the teardrop off so it has a flat edge. The printer can bridge that easily. Make the flat part at the same radius where the circle would be. Makes for a nice fitting hole if anything is supposed to fit inside since you’re now supported at the top as well. You only have two small bits of open air at like the 10:00 and 2:00 position.
I loved your explanation of the sequential bridging. I’m still new to fusion 360 but have some small amount of prior experience with auto cad and am trying to translate over my already limited knowledge pool to fusion so this explanation definitely helped a lot! Thank you so much!
I stumbled on this issue number of times, and usually I just print it without supports and then clean up. Just few days ago I talked with someone about this issue and expressed expectation that slicers can handle this in more or less same manner as in your example. 3D printers handle bridges quite good and that should be exploited by slicers. This idea of creating supports in model is interesting. I did not think of that and will try it. I believe it is OK until you have to do lots of holes. As I said, would expect slicer to be able to handle this. Now, another idea of handling supports. One may simply pause printing, insert actual nut and then continue printing. Also not applicable in all situations but may do the job sometimes.
I mostly use sacrificial layers. Benefit: it can be easily added to existing models directly in the slicer via adding a small 0.2mm thick disc shape. That would be a cool feature request to do automatic sacrificial layers for holes directly in the slicer
With my printer I'm sometimes pushing the 45 deg rule to 65 deg, which makes it way more usefull, if you have the proper cooling and knowledge to do so. I havn't tried many bolt holes yet but i'll definitelly keep the sequential layer trick in mind for when I need it 😁
This is the kind of great and helpful content that I subscribed for so many years ago. I love your full project ones too, but the ones you have done on how to solve specific issues are always my favorite! I'd love to see more music making content too. Love your music, and only about 2 years ago I started learning to make music with a DAW. But I know that stuff doesn't fit the channel as well.
6:50 - This bridging can be done in SuperSlicer automatically by basically turning on "Keep Only Bridges" in drop down box (Print Settings > Perimeters & Shell > Advanced - "No Perimeters on Bridge Areas"). But not so many bridges.
Membrane Trick for a Horizontal oriented bore I'll often have a thin 2 wall sacrificial membrane across horizontal holes. Usually inset so that any marring won't be visible after cutting/drilling it out The Purpose of doing this isn't for any support reasons, but to change the topology of the slice so that the outermost perimeter can be traced continuously across both sides of the hole. This avoids doing a separate Retraction and Seam for each side, evens out extruder flow, and associated artifacts that can occur on non-ideally calibrated printers.
Great idea. 3DSet's Landy Mini on Printables uses really cool thin bridge supports for the windows of the body. They bridge the whole window gap, then stay a mm away from the edges for a cm or so upwards, then have another small bridge, then print the window overhang. The bridge breaks away clean but easily holds a 90 degree overhang without ruining the vertical parts of the window.
Omg....I learnt something new today! And it wasn't such the sequential bridging, but I never knew that in Fusion 360 you could extrude from an object's surface! I've been jumping through hoops trying to get the same outcome and it was right there under my nose! 😂
2 methods I use. Foam plugs with a pause hex builds before it closes you pause and poke a plug in. It doesn't pull heat and supports the extrusion poke out with the hardware. Undersize badly which acts like support then use a screw and nut heated to red hot as a tool melt in pull out insert nut
This is exactly the sort of thing I wish slicers had an option to do automatically where possible considering most people currently don’t design this way.
If you need to take a higher load you might want to enable the option that increases infill over holes for a few layers, that way you can use lower infill in your parts and have them with a similar strength. In cura you can also set a block to like 80% infill for the whole column above the bolt if you need it to take a large load. Though you may want to add cones and/or pegs to locate and take some of the load. You can also use rubber from bike tubes if you want extra friction. If you have conductive filament you can use brass heat set inserts as plugs. It can make design simpler. But if you don't you can also use channels in which you put single strand wire that you bend to shape using a guide. You can do it either in 2 parts or by pausing the print and putting the wire inside.
for standard sizes and geometries, it can sometimes be as simple as using a wedge of wood, a metal nut, or something similar added to the print before the layers start printing that would need the support.
In some cases is available an “infill emulation” bridging. You can construct some bridges grids (more or less spaced) of lines (your nozzle define the measure), and then make the suspended layer. In the specific case you explained for the nuts with empty area on top, due to the inclined walls, if you want, you can print a solid with the empty volume shape (clearance calculated) and put it inside the hole, so the printed structure can be compressed, as a unique printed piece.
Thank you for your videos. Alway a view worthy. A last option you did not mention, maybe because it is a little out of topic, is to insert the nuts during printing. Then the nut will support the bridges.
This technique has one major short coming vs sacrificial bridging, and that is layer height dependence. Your print now must be printed at the thickness of your bridges or finer else you'll have print failure. You're also slightly reducing the amount of space available for the embedded nut or bolt head. It's an awesome technique that I've used many times, but it's not a magic panacea
Great tips. I'd extrude the half with the bore up from the sketch plane, and the hex and bridges down, so everything was relative to the sketch, but there'll be dozens of ways to skin this particular cat.
Great video, as always Markus. The only thing to improve when explaining sequential bridging would be to show section analysis in F360 after every step to make it clear which bridge you are adding.
For the sequential bridge in this case, you can make 3 segments on the first bridge. That will provide 1 and a half times the surface area for the nut to rest on.
I did this about a while ago, but I simplified it by starting a sketch on the surface that I wanted to have the sequential bridge, then I extruder every bridge by 0.2mm more than the last one. I was using it for a piece of wall art that I wanted to hang, but I didn't want it to be solid and waist material, but I didn't want to have to support the center. It came out great!
@@6moon.s yeah, I mean it's a cool way to get it all done in one sketch, but I don't think it's worth it. It makes it harder to remember what sketch had what feature of I pack too many in one.
It's completely fine using two sketches to make that part, they're just some basic extrude commands. One sketch is neat for organization and subsequent adjustments.
I used to extrude a 1 layer thick material in the hole. So it's just an overhang and usually doesn't need to drill out, the screw can be easily pushed through it.
I've just always done supports that I knock out with a bolt but, I've had multiple times where that support has been almost impossible to get out due to the design so having this under my belt will be useful
With the cone trick, you don't need bolts with coned shoulders - just print matching coned washers. Same trick works for stepped bridges under high loads - print washers with matching steps.
I would expect stepped bridges with matching washers to be stronger than conical with matching washers, but that's worth an experiment to confirm/refute.
An hexagonal bore ending on a tapered hole is a great way to do the same thing, as long as you have enough room to do so, and the axial efforts aren't huge.
Hi ! Thank you for this technique. I use another one, but not by modifying the modeling. I often make parts that require a molded nut, incorporated into the part. I program a print pause just before the layer that covers the nut's imprint, I place the nut directly in the printed part, and I restart the print. The nut supports the axle hole.
I actually "invented" this method for myself a few years ago and have been using it for a while, sometimes you can even get away with a square or rectangular hole and have it print without any overhang at all. Eventually I found someone on the internet using sacrificial bridging. Which I thought was pretty clever. And for the most part, I actually consider sacrificial bridging to be the better solution. It's quicker to design in CAD, when you use one layer sacrificial bridging like me, you can just clear the bridge by pushing a screw through. No extra work really. And it's the only way to have a flat surface, insuring the nut applies pressure to the printed part evenly. I don't think I ever used the chamfer version, but honestly I also don't think it's very useful. If you don't need something to be very tight, why use a nut in the first place?
I’m amazed that you still have to say that this is just a test piece and you know you can flip this specific piece. How many people actually miss the point that this is just an example piece to demonstrate the concept? It must be quite a few if you need to mention it in the video.
I did not know about the extude from object feature. The way I normally do it is to exude the different profiles above and below the sketch, but any more detail and I would have to create a new sketch. This will save me so much time :D
In some instances, a support blocker can be used to add an infill pattern that, counterintuitively, supports those floating layers from bores. It's a tried and tested method for me, and I'm printing a piece with such method as I write.
