TL;DW: A fairly automatic postprocessing script to convert your print’s walls to brick layers to attempt to achieve more tensile strength in the Z axis, i.e. against layer separation. Some brief description of the current patent clusterfuck, and an observation that the new patent in question (which is probably void anyway) has not been filed in Europe…
Link to the author’s github for this: https://github.com/TengerTechnologies/Bricklayers
It seems from the github issues report that this is not 100% perfect, but it appears to be at least mostly functional for those of us who would like to mess with this and not have to do it manually.
Note, I am not the author of this.
Let me preface this by saying that I haven’t watched the entire video yet, but have read the python code.
I find no mentions of support material in the code. I already have a bit of an issue with layer adhesion in one line thick support structures, and this technique seems to get the added strength from interlocking by having multiple line thick walls.
Does anybody have experience with thin walls and brick layers?
I’m definitely excited for this technology to start getting into slicers. In the meantime, I might have occasion to want so much strength in a part that I’d go to the trouble of using a script.
I currently use Cura, but I’m disgusted with Cura and looking to switch to PrusaSlicer. Cura’s a great slicer, but a terrible program. I use Raspberry Pis as desktop systems frequently. Cura used to work on ARM, but doesn’t any more. I’m also switching my main x86_64 box to Gentoo. It seems like they’ve added just tons of ridiculous libraries as dependencies to Cura that make it so hard to build Cura, the Gentoo devs have given up trying. Cura also doesn’t play nice with Wayland. And it will only run on an old version of Python, which makes getting it to run on a modern system challenging. In short, the slicing isn’t the problem. It’s getting it installed and running on your system of choice.
So, given that I’m probably switching to PrusaSlicer soon anyway, I’ll be in just the right place to start using scripts for PrusaSlicer/Orca/etc like this one. Hopefully this feature makes it into PrusaSlicer upstream soon as well.
(I do say I’m probably switching to PrusaSlicer. I don’t really have a good grasp on what features I’ve depended on in Cura are absent in Prusaslicer. Like, does it have tree supports? Support blocking? Top surface ironing? Not that all of those things are deal breakers, but some might end up being a big deal to me. And if so, I might have to go to the trouble of wrangling building Cura or holding off on switching to Gentoo or running Cura in Docker or something. We’ll see.)
Final thought:
If you’re thinking about switching to prusaslicer just make the jump to Orca Slicer. It’s a fork of Prusa and Bambu sliver and has awesome community support. Make sure you only get it from the GitHub, there are a bunch of sketchy websites trying to serve you less reputable versions.
I’ve been using Prusaslicer for a while and am quite happy with it. Why would I move to Orcaslicer?
Built in tuning for filaments and printers was what sold me
Prusa has tree (organic) supports, support blocking, and ironing. It does not have the combing option or anything that is quite exactly equivalent which is the only thing from Cura I really miss.
