Thick wall or solid part of an otherwise medium-fill part

Question

I'm trying to design a camera handle, which will be around 8" long and will have a brass camera thread insert in the end, where the camera will be mounted. (That way, I don't have to screw the camera thread into plastic which will wear out faster.)

If I print the handle normally, the end of the handle won't be solid so I can't solidly put that brass fitting in. If I set the fill in Cura to 100%, the print will take a very long time and will be unnecessarily solid. I only need a centimeter or two at the end to be solid.

Is there a way to get one particular wall in Cura to be very thick (1-2cm) without affecting the other walls? Is there some other way to get a solid chunk in the end of the part?

Answer 1

I'd suggest creating a hollow tube with ~1 to 1.5 mm walls. Then to increase the strength design your own internal structure rather than relying on the slicer to fill the part. This takes longer to model but you can design the strength of your part much better.

Something like this

If you were to then print this with 60 % infill you'll have the strength and also use less material. If you happen to know specifically how your part would be loaded, you could then change the dimensions on that internal cross structure to take the loads better.

Answer 2

I think you are approaching this wrong. Sounds like you need to design it to have a hollow wall. That said to answer your question no you cannot have your slicer modify prints like that. But it bears mentioning you can set all shells to what ever you want have have a very sparse infill. To you can set vertical shells to 3 or so. Top to 3 bottom to 2 and infill to 7-15% so it will be 93% hollow not counting the 3 layers of solid skin.

Post pics of your design. Or let me know what else I can add. Check out my answer to this other stack overflow question

Answer 3

There is a way to do this in Cura 2:

1. Load in a cube.
2. Place it over the location where you need 100% infill.

3. In the per-object settings (tool on the left of the screen):

   • enable Infill Mesh, and;
   • set Infill density to 100 %, and;
   • Wall Thickness to 0 mm.

Answer 4

I believe the solution is to use more walls in Cura.

Here is a 50mm cylinder with a 20mm hole. I specified 10 walls in Cura.

This should give extra plastic for the screw to bit into, but not take all day to print!