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In Creality slicer, which settings would you change to reduce the amount of surface area from the supporting structure that makes contact with overhangs on the model you are printing.

For example, if you are printing the object pictured below, and the green area is the support structure, and the red area is the overhang that requires supporting, how would you decrease the amount of green that touched the red?

enter image description here

I'm asking about dialing back the surface area contact on "any" style of support, not choosing between different styles of support

Aaargh Zombies
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2 Answers2

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Creality's slicer is forked from Ultimakers Cura slicer and afterwards further developed as a minimalistic slicer.

If the options are similar, you can look at Cura slicer support options.

The amount of support is controlled by the option called Support density in Cura, the lower the percentage, the lower the amount of support.

enter image description here This model has triangle support with three different densities: 15 %, 30 % and 45 %

Looking at a Creality slicer screenshot from 2021:

enter image description here

You might want to look into Fill amount (%).

0scar
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This sounds like an x-y problem.

You are probably looking for easier separation or a nicer surface on your red area, and what you are actually asking for does the opposite of that. (Probably. It's complicated.)

For tower-like supports, you will have a structure similar to infill used to get to the right height, then an interface layer (kind of like a raft), then the print supported on top of that.

You think (I assume) that you could have fewer points of contact, and this would mean the printed surface is more perfect. That's mostly wrong. With fewer points of contact, the hot strands are more likely to droop and fuse with the support. It's kind of like the trick where a person lies down on a bed of nails: more points of contact means less pressure, which means a cleaner surface.

What you can do instead is play with the interface layer (the "roof"). IIRC, it will only allow multiples of your layer height, so you don't have that much granularity. That's fine. try bumping it up one layer and see if that gives you better separation. You can also try making the roof a little beefier, so it snaps off as a single piece more often.

If for some reason you really, truly do want fewer points of contact, disable the support roof (or set it to height zero and turn support density down. I do not recommend this unless you have something specific and weird going on.

fectin
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  • One of the problems that I'm having is that when you remove the supports it rips the surface layer off with it. Leaving holes. It's too firmly attached. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 11 '22 at 11:38
  • @AaarghZombies then, as I said, you do not want to have fewer points of contact. – fectin Dec 11 '22 at 18:25
  • Then smaller areas of contact? Whichever way, the supports are fixed too well to the model, they don't remove cleanly. – Aaargh Zombies Dec 14 '22 at 19:52