About pre-supported minis

All the pre supported files I've printed have worked fine, sometimes people just need more exposure time

Ed Thüringen

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v539b6wzq2ijlpd/AABuNzCxrXXAvAVm4nOaSEkIa?dl=0 Here is the profile that we printed in the elegoo mars 2, if it helps you. It prints slower than the Anicubyc, but it is because the light source is much less powerful. But it should not give problems.

Last Sword Miniatures

To me, the supports as they presently exist just don't work with my set-up. I've messed with the settings on my Mars 2 Pro many times in many different ways and simply cannot get the minis to print remotely reliably no matter what I try. Even if I set the lift speed to a mere 30mm and increase the exposure time from my usual 2.5 all the way up to 5-7 seconds, blasting all detail off the mini in the process, they still will not print without failures. Considering other people have managed to do print them correctly, I suppose it is my fault for not being enough of a printing wizard to dial in the exact right settings that would make supporting miniatures with exclusively tiny light supports feasible, but either way the end result after all my attempts is that I still have to go support everything manually myself and end up with imperfect miniatures regardless. As such, I personally favor the minority opinion in this poll, as I'd happily pay a bit more per month to be able to reliably print these models without having to spend a lot of my free time supporting them myself.

Arienal

I disagree. What happens is that to save problems it is very easy to over support and that the machine prints if or if. if I put you 50 supports more, or those that are twice as thick, there will be no failure to stick to the fep. But the prints will be objectively worse. That's why this question. I know that most of the Patreons are over-supported, and I wanted to know how many of you have a problem with that. To try to find solutions. For example we are going to try to include tested profiles to see if it helps, as you suggested. If someone has printers that we don't include and wants to provide us with theirs, we would be very grateful. But if we talk about differences with other Patreons: Most Patreons are sculptors who only care about the stl creation. We are generating a lot of products on the back end, both physical and print, which are what really allow us to sustain... We are really stronger in physical sales, and it is a differential fact that we can't forget. And that conditions us. But the fact that we are not the same as the others also has many advantages for you. The Patreons usually work with 2 or 3 anatomical bases per month. This month we have made figures of 4 different races, with 7 different anatomical bases, 28 complete miniatures, without counting weapon variants and minimizing resources such as the mirror. We don't use Alphas when sculpting, which generate very nice textures in the render, but not very nice in the miniature. And our monsters are detailed at the same level as a small miniature, and of course that means 10 times more work on that figure... Others simply change the scale, use a few alpha's and spend the same time as any other miniature. I could go on, for example with the pieces. Each miniature cutting that we do is 2 hours of work. This month's miniatures have been more than 60 hours without counting the variants. But we consider that they help to make a much better prints. Or communication. In spite of our imprecise English. We spend a lot of time to listen to you and see what you think in many channels. And this survey is another example of that. I think few Patreons can dedicate the 3 or 4 hours a day that we dedicate here to talk to all of you. The one thing that is the same for everyone is time. We have 30 days in a month to make the best product we can. And we have to choose how to optimize it. By the way. We have already started to implement on the web the connection with Patreon. If everything goes well we will have in August the whole process automated, so you can keep your libraries. ;) And this is also your suggestion.

Last Sword Miniatures

Straight up - your supports aren't suitable as is for a public 'pre-supported' release. And to market them as such isn't really honest. Thankfully you've been really clear on that point. At this point I just assume I'm going to have to support any models I get from your team. Until you hire a support company or make your own user friendly supports... thats the deal. You keep saying things about why you can't do what everyone else is doing though... but everyone else is? So...

Jefferson Thacker

There are so many variables between each person/printer/resin that this is not a Last Sword problem vs an individual trial and error. There is no one fix all for this.

Jon Letham

I mean... we're talking 3D printing here. Everyone is using different printers, different resins, different settings, etc., and there are a dozen different mistakes that people can mistake that will result in failed prints, with or without "perfect" supports. And everyone has a different process. I tend to redo supports on a lot of my prints anyway, since I'll usually resize them or do some custom work in Blender. Maybe when you release pre-supported files, include a text file with the settings, printer and material you used for your tests. People can have a look, compare to their own settings, then make an educated guess as to whether or not it will work for them.

Jaron Widman

Nunca he tenido problema al imprimir las minis, ni las soportadas, ni las que vienen sin soporte. Por mi no os compliqueis la vida

I always fix files and finalize support

Evgeniy Efimenko

Do you share your settings somewhere, I find I get failures from you guys but my printer is dialled into my supports and my other patreons supports so I often just re-support your stuff anyway. If it's just a case of higher exposure time that's worth getting the info out to people so they know basically what you've said in your post.

Nick

agreed on lychee would be nice, I switched to it and as other mention even 3dprintingpro a big fan of chitu did. It is in general getting better for support options and chitu is moving toward the same pay model eventually anyway. He has a great video showing the pros and cons.

Philippe Tremblay

Users wouldn't need the paid version of Lychee to do most functions. I think there's only a few raft types and the advanced support editing mode that are unlocked along with removing the banner ad that shows when users are slicing. I agree Chitu offers a lot for free, though they've also now shifted to a much more expensive pro version option as well.

Overread

Can't remember having any issues on your supported prints. I aways expect the supports are placed so they have a low impact to the details of the models themselves. This usually does mean they're rather thin tipped that don't penetrate very deep into the model, hence i'll have to add a bit to my layer cures. I always wonder why people are so reluctant to increase layer curing times but throw the models for minutes in an UV chamber for curing afterwards... the 2nd one seems worse for details then the first 😅

niels poel

The files we are providing you already allow editing. Lychee does not make any sense. We are using many features that in Lychee are in the paid version. And for us it would not be a problem to pay the premium. But I don't think it's fair to force anyone to pay premium when chitubox has all those features for free. The only advantage of lychee is to be able to fatten all the supports at the same time, something not recommended in the supports that we give you.

Last Sword Miniatures

You can keep the current supports but as mentionned above a lys file would be great to easily edit the supports if needed.

As long as you provide the chitu or lychee file so that I can modify them I don't mind :) some guidance on what you look for during calibration would be helpful thought.

Will Reynolds

Keep your current supports, they are great.

Steve Howland

I agree with you. A lot of presupposes cater to the lowest common denominator and bad settings. When you get your printed tuned and dialed in, you don't need those giant supports

DustlessOrphan

A few thoughts: 1) I know that one or two other patreons - Eg Lord of the Print - release 2 versions of supports for their models. Regular and "beefed". The Beefed are simply thicker supports. This would allow you to continue as you are with your current supports and offer a second version with some thicker key supports to help those who might have different resins/printers or not perfectly adjusted settings. 2) Shift to using Lychee instead of Chitu for supports. This means that you can provide a lys file (default lychee save type) which keep the supports and model totally separate. This means that the end-user can edit and adjust the supports you provide directly. Chitu regular saves save the supports as part of the model so you can't edit them. There are Chitu Project saves which do keep the supports and model separate and thus could also be edited. I'd note a lot of the industry is shifting toward Lychee at present. Even Greg (a big supporter of Chitu) is now using Lychee; whlist Atlas (biggest of the presupport providers) also provide everything as lys files from Lychee. You would, of course, still have to provide a pre-supported STL when exporting from Lychee alongside the lys for those who don't use Lychee 2b) Note because a lychee lys file keeps supports separate from the model you could, in theory, provide just a lys file. Though this would then require all your users to use Lychee - which is free for most of its features and free users could easily export stls from it with the supports on their own

Overread

As you said, your internal supports require higher exposure times. I think being clear about that messaging would help a lot. "Customers should plan to deliberately overexpose Last Sword plates. Optimal exposures determined through other calibration tests are not applicable to these models." If you are going to develop anything extra, some sort of LS-specific calibration test in the Welcome Pack could work

Even