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Overhangs

 

Overhangs are regions where due surface angle the material is printed in the air, this is an important limitation to consider for 3D printed footwear. To ensure the best quality for every shoe, we have guidance on where you need to check for overhangs on your model when submitting a design to Zellerfeld.

For checking yourself, please rotate together the shoe and the plane surface from the template file by the printing angle around the y-axis, to be in the printing position.

Printing Angles:

  • 120° - Traditional, Modern, Sneaker, Boot, Barefoot 
  • 100° - Slide, FlipFlop 

Excluding the shoe interior and collar region around the foot entrance, we check overhangs in 2 regions:

Above support-plane: outside shoe surface cannot have surface overhangs with more than than 45 degrees. 

Below support-plane: We don't print support material over the shoe material,  the supported region (below plane reference) should be free of hidden faces that are not exposed directly to the print bed.

Tolerances: regions with less than 10 mm² will be ignored.

[NEW]

Printing-in-Air: Some regions above the support region are not detected based on overhang angle,  however they start printing in the air. This regions are now detected as they compromise the final product quality.

 

OVERHANGS TIPS:

When designing for 3D printing, we highly recommend you to slice your model in Cura, Prusa (any slicer) at the printing position (120 degrees) to anticipate any overhangs or issues. Main overhangs issues:

  • The interior of the shoe does not follow the last.
  • The shoe has angular features that are free of overhangs but are not supported (print in the air).

OVERHANGS - FLIPFLOP

Due to the extraordinary nature of geometry in the sole, any overhangs presented in this region (red) should be automatically ignored by the Autocheck. 

 

FEEDBACK STLs

Autocheck exports the mesh faces from shoe with overhangs above and below the reference plane. 

  1. Above support plane:
    • right_overhang_above_plane.stl
    • left_overhang_above_plane.stl
  2. Below support plane (hidden faces):
    • right_overhang_below_plane.stl
    • left_overhang_below_plane.stl
  3. Printing in Air:
    • right_overhang_printing_in_air_faces.stl
    • left_overhang_printing_in_air_faces.stl