I figured I'd experiment.
The only thing I can add from my time doing "serious" 3D printing is that the two things that matter most are:
- Print layer orientation (as it compares/relates to object geometry)
- The location of "peaks" and "valleys"
1 - When you print something, the final layering should be parallel to the longest axis of the object being printed, meaning that these objects should be printed "wide" and not "tall" since the largest surfaces should be as parallel to the bed as possible. The only time this doesn't really apply is when you are deliberately trying to force the grain to go in a specific direction for some reason (shear resistance, tricky cleanup, whatever). Additionally, the model should be placed so that as many angles as possible should be "pure," by which I mean as close to vertical, horizontal, or one of the most even divisions of those (30, 45, 60, etc). If you're going to print them on edge like that, the final tip should probably be as close to perfectly vertical as possible. In fact, All the final top tips should be as close to vertical as you can get, if possible. So if you can't build them flat on the bed because you don't want the cleanup chore for whichever face was pointing down, you might try something like this orientation:
The idea here is that, not only is the tip of the blade as close to vertical as you can get, but so are the points at the tops of the finger grooves and the quillon, and so on. Neither one is perfectly vertical, but the orientation is such that as many of them are as close to vertical as possible, or else they are as close to horizontal as possible (like the tip of the pommel).
2 - Peaks and valleys and "filed" notches (like the ones on the back of the hilt and in the thumb groove) are your bane, though. Because none of them can come out of nothing, they have to be individually supported until they "grow" enough to join the main body. Perfectly vertical peaks/valleys can be terminally printed with no additional
lateral support, they just need some kind of vertical support. They can even be printed a bit off-angle so long as the angle they are off by isn't more than the angle of the side of the peak (i.e., the more acute the angle of the peak, the less leeway you have). That's why I say you have some leeway to rock the entire piece more vertical or more horizontal a bit if the terminal peaks of your finger grooves and blade tip aren't pointing in exactly the same directions. Any, and I mean
ANY projection from the workpiece that terminates in any kind of downward angle OR which "bottoms out" without resting on the main body (think like a power line) has to grow from an independent support that touches the table,
no exceptions. So the other struggle when orienting your workpiece is that you are trying to find an orientation that minimizes the number of faces/angles that are more than 90 degrees off vertical in
any direction. You can easily 3D print a letter "Y" because the two upper arms "grow" from the central stem, meaning that they have support (assuming they don't get too long). You can print the letter "H" because the two legs get joined together when the center bar gets printed. You can even print an "R" or "K" because even though the diagonal leg of each is at a downward angle, it is anchored to the table and provides its own support for when it finally joins the rest of the letter. But you can't print, say, a question mark "?" or dollar sign "$" vertically because the tip of each top hook hangs down and is completely unsupported when you try to build the letter from the bottom up out of horizontal layers.
Figuring out the optimal orientation of the printed piece and choosing which points will need support is the 3D printing equivalent of the old photography saying of, "You should endeavor to do as much of your image editing/correction as possible
before you click the shutter."
--Patrick
But I'd never paint it lol
