Support Reduction

How to use…

The Support Reduction can be activated for every optimisation scenario separately under the Design Rules entry. Three different Support Reduction Modes (low, medium & high) can be chosen.

Build direction

The build direction is the z-direction of the Principal Coordinate System. For each scenario the Build Direction can be easily rotated and is then used for the Design Rules as well as material properties.

The only exception to this are symmetrical optimisations. In this case, the build direction shouldn’t be normal to a symmetry plane and has to be considered during the model setup. If all three symmetry planes are active, the Support Reduction shouldn’t be used.

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General Explanation

For different applications there are different priorities and for some the manufacturability is specially high. Therefore, it would be nice to push designs in a direction where the manufacturing gets easier without costing too much performance regarding the efficient design and material allocation.

For this use case a Support Reduction function is implemented which takes the needed support for additive manufacturing into account while optimising the part. The function got three different strategies which could be used. The three different strategies are:

• low

• medium

• high

The influence of the Support Reduction on the design increases from low to high.

Low has less impact and the design is close to an optimisation run without Support Reduction. In critical areas the support amount gets reduced. Medium and high have more impact on the design and reduce the needed support amount significantly.

By default an overhang surface is determined if the angle falls below 45° in relation to the baseplate. The overhang angle can be changed with the Advanced User Settings.

In the next images an example part is used to display the difference between results of the strategies.

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View with the corresponding support structures in Simufact Additive:

In the following graph the influence of the strategies is illustrated. It can be saved up to 80% of support volume with activated Support Reduction. As a trade off the mass of the part increases. Because more material is used the part gets a little bit stiffer.

Note that this is only one example that illustrates how the support reduction could look like, but this differs between different parts and tasks. Feel motivated to try the different strategies to find the ideal one for your specific part.

You might also be interested in this tutorial:

• Support Reduction - Gripper