Looking for slicer with the best support generation

[BusyBotz]

Opinions on the slicer with the best printed support? I am using slic3r (A1 and MM 1.5+) and skeinforge (ReplicatorG/Replicator). Printed support is the limiting factor on a few recent jobs, creating difficult and time consuming support removal and rough surface finish. Lately it seems that support is the number 1 obstacle. 

Most models on Thingiverse are carefully crafted with an understanding of support. Designers from outside our 3D printing communities are seemingly unaware of support concerns, and the resulting models are very difficult to print cleanly.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. It would be great to hear of a comparison of support from say slic3r to KISSlicer, Netfabb,  Repetier, Cura, etc. I also saw a new one the other day but can't recall the name. Imagine parts where you can hardly see anything due to the amount of support, that is what I am dealing with. Many of these are quite large, and the the A1 has the capacity, but support is a big problem.

-Mitch

[Rick Zehr]

KISSlicer does better and more easily removable supports than Slic3r - you can control them to some degree, and can see what you are getting in the Paths view without printing.

[hellphish]

I haven't tried the supports in simplify3d, but they look pretty nice. You can interactively move them around to get support right where you want it.

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[John D]

Another vote for KISS - supports are much better than slic3r in my opinion.  Creator is nice, and it handy if you've already printed a model and know where you need supports...

[BusyBotz]

Simplify3d is the one I was thinking of, thanks for jarring my memory. The ability to control each support pillar seems ideal.  Has anyone tried it yet?

[John D]

Yeah, but was not able to find enough justification for the price tag.  The manual support is cool - if you've already printed the model and know where you want to put a manual one. 

[BusyBotz]

Thanks John. The new support interface options in slic3r look promising.

-Mitch

[hellphish]

I bought a copy of Simplify3d Creator. It really is lighting fast, but does seem a little lacking in features. One thing I like about it is the "glide" function, which stops the extruder motor a set distance before the end of a thread. 

[Dave]

On Friday, August 23, 2013 11:03:44 PM UTC-5, John D wrote:

Another vote for KISS - supports are much better than slic3r in my opinion.  Creator is nice, and it handy if you've already printed a model and know where you need supports...

I just did my first supported KISS model this weekend.  It turned out pretty well for a first pass, and there were lots of options available.  Reviewing paths was also pretty easy. 

Dave

[J S]

I am becoming a huge fan of S3dCreator (see other posts for things about it in general). While it's $125, and probably the most expensive I can remember buying personally for software (yes, I've seen my company pay $25,000 for ONE licence for a program, but that's not me), but remember - we spent $2000 ish for these, and they're worthless without software!

The manual support generation works great. There are still bugs to be worked out, but the positive thing is you actually get REAL feedback from the creators who actually add feature requests in a reasonable amount of time! (Not naming names, but opposite of what most of us have experienced with our printers). 

Specifically you can define specific support areas, create manual pillars, and then add more or less support automatically. Additionally, you can set different heights where you want support printed; I did a model where I wanted support just for the first 4 mm and then wanted the rest of the flask to stay hollow, and it worked great! You can define how ever many transitions of that that you may want.

I will absolutely admit it is hard to get over the price tag, but it was just as hard for me to get over the price tag of buying $1 apps for my iPad. If you don't pay some money, you really can't take full advantage of things.

I think the actual feedback and implementation of suggestions/wants could really be worth it. Feel free to email/message/repost if you want some examples from it. They do have a free trial for 2 weeks if you email them. (And check out my and other posts for other features).

I did try KiSS, and it did ok, but it's really not on the same level as this software.