The idea of staggered (or brick) layers in FDM prints has become very popular the past few years, with now nightly builds of OrcaSlicer featuring the ‘Stagger Perimeters’ option to automate the process, as demonstrated by [Stefan] in a recent CNC Kitchen video. See the relevant OrcaSlicer GitHub thread for the exact details, and to obtain a build with this feature. After installing, slice the model as normal, after enabling this new parameter in the ‘Strength’ tab.
In the video, [Stefan] first tries out a regular and staggered perimeter print without further adjustments. This perhaps surprisingly results in the staggered version breaking before the regular print, which [Stefan] deduces to be the result of increasing voids within the print. After increasing the extrusion rate to 110% to fill up said voids, this does indeed result in the staggered part showing a massive boost in strength.
What’s perhaps more telling is that a similar positive effect is observed when the flow is increased with the non-staggered part, albeit with the staggered part still showing more of a strength increase. This makes it obvious that just staggering layers isn’t enough, but that the flowrate and possibly other parameters have to be adjusted as well to fully realize the potential of brick layers. That said, it’s encouraging to see this moving forward despite questionable patent claims.
And now for a dozen HaD commentators to explain that this is the wrong way to measure the strength of prints.
Why? Do you know something we don’t?
I think it was just a sarcastic comment, given the standard behavior in the comments around here.
Failure to use a 555….. :p
Cool but a little disappointing that the benefit is so low
It’s not really, this is an early prototype that offers benefits but hasn’t yet addressed several important issues. An alpha implementation with few major problems, but not a finished system.
So staggered layers is basically a way to over extrude parts whilst limiting the downside on dimensional accuracy. That’s pretty awesome!
Once it’s properly implemented with flow compensation and all other variables accounted for we’ll basically get a checkbox for 30% better layer adhesion at the cost of a bit more plastic! Nicely done!
Probably in the end going to be eliminating the dimensional accuracy problem of over extruding entirely (at least to the level FDM prints ever reach) – as its actually going to be pretty repeatable how much void between the layers there is to fill with the slightly offset filament at any given print settings. Also doesn’t actually have to applied to the outer perimeter at all – you could just over extrude all the staggered internal layers for added strength while leaving the surface layer as good as FDM can do.
So once folks have worked through that and created a few decent slicer optimisations for it FDM 3d prints are probably going to get a fair bit closer to isotropic, which will be huge for the practical use of FDM.
Given the voids are calculable, this can also be used as a structural infill strategy in addition to other patterning.
Why cant we just leave vertical hollow pathways and squirt those full afterwards?
In short a 3d printer extruder just isn’t an injection moulding machine or even close to the same magnitude of performance, and that sort concept ends up requiring behaviour rather like an injection moulding machine. Though done at a small enough scale that concept might just work.
I believe there was a project featured here a few months back that tried to do just that
Interesting. So are you suggest over-extrude between normal perimeters?
This is a family website!
Probaby because injecting molten plastic into the space between walls will cause the walls to heat up past their glass transition temperature.
Effectively melting them and blowing the sides of the print out like a sad balloon.
Perhaps you could get away with the walls being a high temp filament and the injected core could be a relatively low temp filament.
i like that this article put the ‘results’ slide showing the gains in the forefront instead of burying it at 3 separate frames spaced minutes apart in the video! that’s how it’s done! thank you!
i also appreciate that it’s upfront about the fact that the gains are marginal and that they’re swamped by the gains of overextruding, which is what i’ve been saying all along. layer interface is not the limiting factor for most prints, and can be compensated with by simply making thicker (or, in this case, denser) parts.
fwiw, i think this is just showcasing a calibration question. both times i’ve set up a printer, i’ve found that the default settings are under-extruded and i wind up with an extrusion multiplier around 1.1 (110%). i imagine there’s a zillion people out there underextruding on the reg without exploring this tuning possibility.