I had PETG, PLA and CoPE (a new filament type between PETG & PLA, sold by Polymakers Panachroma brand and printing similar to PLA) in CMS and needed to check which support and filament I will need to use for an upcoming project.
I created a small test print (
SupportTest.stl (4,5 KB)
) and wanted to print it with no secondary support interface and with secondary support interface (which mens that the isupport interface is printed with another support filament type than the main model).
THe settings I used for the model with no extra support filament were:
And the one with support interface from other filament was:
I did totally 7 prints, 3 with the base filament only:
PETG (elegoo rapid) is white, PLA (elegoo rapid) is black, CoPE is grey. The outside of the model was best on CoPE (and it felt to be the smoothest and ‘warmest’).
The I printed PETG with PLA as support and also PLA with PETG and CoPE as well as CoPE with PLA as upport:
The above is from left to right: PETG+PLA support, PETG only, PLA only
Here PLA+PetG support, PLA+CoPE support and CoPE with PLA support and CoPE only.
The first print was the PETG+PLA which took ~45 minutes and I reduced the size of the model afterwards to have a faster test. Those prints without other support material took ~19 minutes and the ones with other support ~26 minutes. The extra support was using also (together) +40% more filament on this small print because of the two filament changes per print.
With secondary support I tested no gap between support and the model, with the others I used the normal 0.2mm gap.
I removed the support only with pliers to see how hard it is and how much cleaning you need to do afterwards.
My personal conclusion (for my project I have to print) is: I do not need to use other filament for support unless it is necessary to have a (much) smoother surface on the supported area.
What worked best was PLA as support interface for PETG, all others I would not use on support areas which you cannot reach to clean up afterwards.
p.s.: CP6 has serious bugs on the support (settings) therefore you should never use the ‘default’ settings for Tree support in CP6!