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Did you know that your 3d prints may be taking longer than they need to? Because your infill settings aren’t correct. Well, don’t worry. Because in this 3d printing 101 we’re going to be talking all about infill settings. Let’s get into it. Hello, my name is. Angus and welcome to 3d printing 101 here on makers Muse. So what are infill settings? Have you ever changed them in your slicer or you just leave them? As default changing your infill settings to match your 3d print can save you plastic as well as time and money. But how do you know what to choose? So let’s go through some great examples to see how you should choose your infill settings, depending on what your 3d printing but first some science. Fdm 3d printers are unique among 3d printing technologies and that they build parts line by line layer by layer from molten plastic in open-air. It’s this combined with the ability for these layers to overlap each other with 45 degrees or even steeper overhangs that allow FDM 3d prints to print with hollow cavities, for example, with this sphere where only the outside is printed, leaving us with a hollow ball. Even the world’s most expensive resin based 3d printing systems aren’t capable of doing this. You either end up with a ball, that’s solid or a ball. It’s full of support material that you need to drain out of an exit hole, which makes FDM 3d printing pretty unique because of this is become commonplace for 3d printers using FTM technology to print with an infill instead of printing solid. This not only saves you time because the print is laying down less plastic layer by layer, It also saves you money because you’re using less material for a given shape, but let’s take a moment to explore what different infill settings actually look like and why we would use them so here. I have some cubes printing with different infill settings out of simplified 3d You can see that once you get to 80% it’s almost essentially solid. You don’t need to really go any higher than that as you can see. 10% Is a very low infill setting for a part this size and an infill setting. This load will result in inferior top surfaces as the part starts to fill in the top of the cube on the other hand as you can see. The 80% is almost essentially completely solid and it’s using a lot more plastic. Then you actually really need to, but depending on the part you’re printing, you might be able to get away with. Eero infill. That’s right. You can actually print parts completely. Hollow and in some cases, you wouldn’t even know the difference. It can take a little bit of trial and error and experience to work out which files work well with no infill. You want to avoid things with top flat surfaces that may drip down Because I don’t have any support the best files that work well. I wanted gradual changes towards the top of the part. You also want to avoid parts which have interior details, which, for example, this inverted pyramid in this file would not print at all. If you’re trying to poop with no info. It simply has no way to build that pyramid as it gets to that part of the print. There’s nothing supporting it underneath. A great rule of thumb is to start at around 20% infill using the rectilinear preset. And if you’re using a slicer with a g-code preview, you can preview how the infill will look on the final part. If you’re using a sophisticated slicing engine like simplify 3d you may have access to different kinds of info, for example here. We have six different kinds of infill from civil fights ready, starting from rectilinear, which is the fastest to print, but not the best strength, ranging all the way up to a full honeycomb, which is very strong but does take longer and even decorative in fills like this wiggle, which is quite nice and looks very good. If you’re printing with translucent plastics like PLA. However, this is not going to be as strong as a full honeycomb infill thanks to its operations based slicing approach, simplify 3d actually allows you to set different infill settings to different areas of your 3d print, so you can get the best of both worlds. It also gives you the option to print sparse, infill every second layer or more, and if you’re printing at very low layer. Heights of 50 microns or even lower, this can greatly save on printing time. If you’re interested in these more advanced infill techniques, let me know in the comments and we’ll cover them in a future video, but what about at the other end of the scale? When would you want to print at a high infill, for example, at 80% or higher? Well, when I build parts of my combat robots, I need as much strength as possible and for these 3d printed parts, I print with a high info as well as increasing my outside perimeters or shells. This is the amount of times a nozzle will go around the outside of the shape before it does the infill. I also recommend increasing your top and bottom solid layers to match as this plays an important role in part strength as well. It’s worth noting that increasing your perimeter’s, top and bottom solid layers will not affect dimensions of your part as you can see here with two cubes are still exactly the same size, so don’t worry about that. But again it’s important to note that the higher info parts will take substantially longer than a low or no info part. And you’re going to use a lot more plastic. It’s also important to note when printing in plastics like. ABS, that a high infill part is more susceptible to warping because you’re putting down more plastic at one time, which means there’s more plastic needs to cool down, which means it can shrink a lot more than a part that’s got less infill personally, though. If you want something, that’s completely solid off a 3d printer. I would still print it hollow if you can, and then fill the part afterwards with a two-part epoxy or plaster that way, you can get a part that feels very dense, but still didn’t take very long to print, so thanks for watching. We combined with fast 3d printing speeds, course layer. Heights, the correct infill settings for your 3d print can greatly Save you time, money and plastic, so you can spend less time waiting for a 3d print to complete and more time creating. If you enjoy this video here on, make us miss, don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss any future 3d printing 101 videos here on makers. Muse, I’ll see you in the next one. Catch you later, you!