alt Hacker NewsNaive/uninformed question: does 3D printing produce any cleavage issues (like you’d get with a crystal) along the directions of printing, and does it ever make sense to change the orientation to help with that?
Naive/uninformed question: does 3D printing produce any cleavage issues (like you’d get with a crystal) along the directions of printing, and does it ever make sense to change the orientation to help with that?
Of course it does! Inter-layer adhesion is lower than the adhesion within the same layer, so it's often recommended to orient the print in a way that maximizes strength - especially for tensile loads. Sometimes it even makes sense to split the part so that you can print each of them optimally (flat side on the print bed) and get the best strength for the dominant load directions. That applies to functional prints - for decorative stuff you use the direction that gets you the cleanest print.