I am making a large bracket that will have eight bolt holes in it. When the bracket is printed with Makerbot software, I will bolt it down to a tripod and bolt a part to it. I want to be able to make the area around the bolt holes stronger than the rest of the part. I could make infill = 100% for the whole part, but then it would take too long to print. Is there a way I can create denser regions around holes?
To get the best input, you should probably share a SKP or at least an image…
I don’t think there’s anything you can do within SketchUp with a single design. The key, I think, will be in your slicer. I’d look for a slicer that lets you specify infill differently for different parts of the model, but I have no clue as to whether such a slicer exists!
If you can’t find a more capable slicer, I’d investigate if there’s a way to do it by separating into two models, one with the normal fill, one focused only on the areas where you want increased fill. The trick will be combining these - perhaps AFTER slicing (get out your gcode editor) - probably not easy.
Another approach: Increase the wall thickness in your slicer. Since the holes have walls, this should serve to create stronger areas around the holes. Drawback: This wall thickness change will affect all walls, not just the ones around the holes.
Some times I will add geometry to a model that will for a slicer to put extra material in. If I want to reinforce a hole, for example, I might ad a series of very small perforations. If the perforations are small enough, filament will fill them in… Some thing like this:
Assuming that the perforations are smaller than the layer depth, it will not add holes to your final piece, but will add filament all around the hole.
Depending on the amount of load that you need to support, you may want to print with a higher infill… possible even 100%, iff the walls are not too thick…
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