Sharpie holder for support layer - Easythreed X1 Mini

thingiverse

https://youtu.be/kMV8VkHjgTE Originally, I had planned to use a sharpie with an internal push-push mechanism. However, I couldn't find any from Finland, so instead I went with the design you see above. If you're in a country with easy access to either Amazon or the sharpie, then I strongly recommend using that instead in combination with the plugin mentioned later in this description. ------- Due to my increasing lack of interest towards this project and other responsibilities, I'll post what I've managed to do so far and the effectively finished Cura plugin for cloning a section of gcode with offsets. I also included the .blend file which contains all the parts, hoping that it will help with further design if someone wants to give it a go. The push-push mechanism may at least be useful. Some issues exist. The part where you attach the pen is way too frail and will need some kind of mechanism for attaching the pen tightly. There is also too much wiggle room in the movements, which could be remedied with tighter tolerances. However, given the slightly inaccurate nature of fdm, I don't think that's the best solution. ------- The basic idea of the plugin is to enable "Support interface" on Cura and every time it prints (creates a comment), that section will be cloned with an offset. That final layer will now instead get painted with the marker and as a result you get the easily detachable supports. Here is post processing plugin script that will clone a section of gcode with the provided offsets: https://pastebin.com/cKRfWKEX Just drop it in "C:\Program Files\Ultimaker Cura 4.5\plugins\PostProcessingPlugin\scripts\" and it should work, if not the same fixes will apply as with other plugins so Google is probably your best friend (along with the error logs). The settings of the post processing plugin explained a bit "Section to look for" used is "TYPE:SUPPORT-INTERFACE", "X/Y/Z offset" prepend the numeric value of the offset of the tip of the pen at its extended position with an "n". Due to some reason, either Cura or something mishandled the floats when given as input. "Extruder offset" is unused currently, but was intended for reducing drooling. In the video I used the following before and after gcode: "G91-nG1 F1600 Z10-nG28 X-nG0 F1600 X50-nG0 F1600 X-50-nG0 F1600 Z-10-nG90" (goes into both of the fields) ------- The Prusa topic with the original idea (not by me), https://forum.prusaprinters.org/forum/english-forum-general-discussion-announcements-and-releases/new-method-of-printing-perfect-supports/