> If you are new to 3D printing and/or CAD for 3D printing, this is not the right article for you.
I feel like I would have been fine with this article about a week into my 3d printing journey.
I always find it hard to determine what audience is appropriate for what I write. In this case I specifically didn't want to spend time on explaining what I consider basic terminology, and as deep as I am into 3D printing it can be hard to know what is at what level.
│││││││
│││││││
│││││││
│││││││ Inside of the object
│││││││ is here
│││││││
│││││││
│││││││
┌────
└─────┐
┌─────┘
└─────┐ Inside of the object
┌─────┘ is here
└─────┐
┌─────┘
└─────
┌────
└─────┐
┌─────┘
└───── <-- Print head moves up here
┌─────┘
└─────┐
┌─────┘
└─────
I'm also curious what it would do for part strength. If you offset the zig-zags from layer to layer it will not be as pretty obviously, but it should act like offset bricks in a brick wall. Worth exploring (but I don't have the equipment to test part strength).
One effect of this would be to make the print dramatically slower though, you would never get up to max speed due to all the cornering.
You could do this sort of pattern already while modelling (though that offset version would be very fiddly). Less practical than the slicer but useful for a quick proof of concept.
Thinking about it some more, this is not that far from the existing fuzzy skin pattern already in slicers, and I believe that the relatively obscure slicer IdeaMaker does allow to apply arbitrary textures as height maps on the sides of parts. That could be another way to explore this.
I am not sure, but "fuzzy skin" seems to intentionally sacrifice some adherence to the object's exact shape? "folded outline" would not do that. If the printer prints it exactly, the print would match the object just as precisely as a normal outline.
The IdeaMaker repo on GitHub says it is abandoned. Maybe there are other options? An open source slicer written in Python without dependencies that works on the command line would be my favorite starting point. If there is none, writing a new one might also be feasible?
You could consider writing a post processing script, or perhaps experimenting with https://github.com/FullControlXYZ/fullcontrol (not a slicer but a toolkit for generating gcode from python). I suspect that a full on slicer in pure python would be rather slow though.
I don't think IdeaMaker is abandoned, but it is closed source freeware.
I just started 3D printing a few weeks ago. I already realized that I need to write my own CAD software. None of the existing ones are the way I want to design objects. That will probably take a few months. Then I will probably want to control the prints down to the gcode level and look into the situation then.
It would probably just be a slightly less random fuzzy skin effect.
This is an interesting idea but I suspect print times would put most people off.
https://makerworld.com/it/models/99219-olivetti-style-vase-m...
You can create fast to print objects consuming very little filament, however to have some kind of texture on the surfaces is absolutely needed for strength.
If you have questions related to the blog post, feel free ask.
https://www.printables.com/model/324102-vase-mode-parametric...
That is a neat design. From what I can tell though, the split base/top is overly complex. You can simply set (in PrusaSlicer at least) the number of layers to print normally before switching to vase mode.
Other than that, it seems to deriving strength from having sides that are not flat (same reason a rolled up paper is stiffer than a flat pice of paper), a fairly common trick when working with thin flat material of any kind (e.g. bent metal or cardboard have the same concerns). No "unusual" vase mode tricks that I can see.