Organic Tray (With Slicer Tuning)

An elegant tray shaped in an organic style, modeled to take advantage of organic supports to generate three intriguing legs, and allowing for a color change (if desired) between the legs and the tray. Both the original “etched” version (as shown in the pictures) and a smooth version of the STLs are attached.

Printing notes

I printed in PLA with a .2 mm layer height and a .4 mm nozzle. I'm attaching the 3MF file I used to print the one shown in the pictures, so I'd recommend starting with that (assuming that you have access to PrusaSlicer version 2.6.0 or higher).

If you're interested in the result of my tinkering around with this very cool new feature in the slicer though, read on!

Slicing details

To achieve the look I was going for I used “Paint on supports” to paint just the bottom of the tray (using the “Smart fill" feature), and then also painted a negative area around just the inside edge where I wanted supports to be blocked (see screenshot below). This was important to create the look of the supports only appearing underneath the tray, while still providing sufficient support for the material on the bottom.

These are then the key parameters I adjusted in the slicer to get this look:

• Supports: For support enforcers only • Infill → Bottom fill pattern: Concentric (this one is particularly important) • Support material → Overhand threshold: 40 • Support material → Style: Organic • Support material → Top contact Z distance: 0 (soluble) • Support material → Pattern angle: 63 (set this to something random!) • Support material → Top interface layers: 0 (off) • Organic supports → Maximum Branch Angle: 45 • Organic supports → Preferred Branch Angle: 30 • Organic supports → Branch Diameter: 3 • Organic supports → Branch Diameter Angle: 8 • Organic supports → Tip Diameter: 2

For those that can use it, I've also attached the ‘gcode’ I used to print the one shown in the pictures on my Prusa Mini.

Design and description by squinn , licensed CC-BY.