Customized Part Orientation for Improved 3D Printing Control

Posted By Hannah Bensoussan on Nov 22, 2016 | 0 comments

With 3D printing, the orientation of your part matters. Because the object is manufactured layer by layer, it might be of importance to you how your part is positioned in the 3D printer. We had already enabled batch orders to control their part orientation, and now we extend this feature to all expert users. Read on to learn:

• Why part orientation is important
• How to customize your orientation
• What qualifies as a batch order, and which advantages it brings
• And who qualifies as an expert user, and which advantages it brings

Why part orientation matters for your 3D printing

Part orientation matters for the aspect of your 3D printed object

Our finishes (polishing, smoothing beautifier, varnishing, dyeing, painting), our 60μ printing resolution option for white polyamide, and cutting edge technologies like Carbon CLIP allow to reduce the visibility of the 3D printing layers. But 3D printing remains an additive manufacturing technique, and the layers will be visible with very meticulous examination. Choosing your 3D printing orientation means choosing where and how the layers will be most visible, and the orientation of those layers.

This image shows the difference between the raw and polished finish. Even though the layers are less visible on the polished object, they still can be seen and felt. Changing the orientation of your part will change the orientation of these visible layers.

The layers are even less visible with our finish the smoothing beautifier (on the left)

In batch control, part orientation can reduce your 3D printing price

Another use of customizing your part orientation is the price of your batch order. The height of your 3D print has an impact on its price. When you 3D print several iterations of the same objects together, the way you orientate them makes the batch more or less high, and might decrease the 3D printing price.  

As always with our interface, your 3D printing price will be calculated automatically as soon as you make a change.

How do you customize your orientation

Once you’ve uploaded your file onto our platform and chosen all of your options (material, color, layer thickness, finish, scale and quantity), click on the “Optimize” tab (the one in the middle).

The advantage of a 3D printing service: choose your orientation, we take care of everything

This adds just one more advantage to using a 3D printing service: you can experiment with the effect of orientation on your part, and still have the guarantee that your part will be just as well 3D printed, for the same price (or lower).

This feature is open to expert users and batch orders because it takes some experience of 3D printing before being sensible to part orientation and to its effect on the visibility of your object’s layers.

What’s batch control

We created the batch control option to acknowledge that 3D printing is now a real alternative to traditional manufacturing techniques like plastic injection. It allows to reduce price (by up to 80%) and to increase control for any order of more than 20 copies of the same 3D model.

To read everything about Batch control, click here. 

Who qualifies as an expert user

To qualify as an expert user, you only need to have passed 5 successful orders with us. Once you’ve made these 5 successful orders, your expert user status is displayed in your Account page.

The Expert User status gives access to two specific features: “Print it Anyway” and, as of today, Orientation customization.

The Print it Anyway option allows you to bypass our solidity check and take the risk to print a part that our interface finds too fragile to be 3D printed. It enables you to experiment with the limits of 3D printing.

To read everything about the Expert User status, click here. 

And to read everything about our Print it Anyway feature, click here.