So the newer versions of slic3r seem to be very aggressive in building support

3D Printing
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So the newer versions of slic3r seem to be very aggressive in building support material. Specifically, the support columns seem to get positioned right up against the surface of the printed part, whereas earlier versions (specifically 0.9.10b) seem to have left a much more substantial gap. Do any slic3r users know of any good way to control the distance between slic3r’s support material and unsupported surfaces? The only thing I can think of trying is to drastically cut the extrusion width of support material, but this seems hacky…

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I had a lot of trouble with that at first, but reverting the support settings that I had put so much effort into for 0.9.10b and dropping the extrusion width to a little under the nozzle diameter seems to have helped.

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supports never work right for me, I usually just try to eliminate them whenever possible.

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@Whosa_whatsis : Did you drop the extrusion width across the board, or just for the support?

@Will_Dent : Funny you should say that. I just tried printing a tricky to support (for slic3r) object without any support in ABS and it came out much better than I expected. If ABS is always this forgiving, I can understand why people who start with it find switching to PLA annoying.

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Only for the support. The extrusion width for the actual print should never be smaller than the nozzle.

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@Michael_Hohensee : I actually started with ABS and I now use PLA because I find it way more user friendly. I always had bed adhesion problems with ABS. As long as I use a fan shroud around the extruder to blow air on the print, overhangs and bridges work really well in PLA.

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I too had adhesion problems with ABS. You might try printing it on your PLA. All my recent attempts with ABS have been on the same 5x5 cm by 1 mm PLA plate.