Hello,
I am a beginner with printing and have a question. I have a monoprice printer, using tpu...all is good except that the support sticks waaaaay
to strong to the piece. 
Any advice would be appreciated.

Roger74

Getting supports off TPU printed items will always be a bit of challenge due to the elasticity of that type of filament. I find a good pair of small needle nose pliers or side cutters along with some pure brute force to literally rip the supports away usually does the job quite well.

You can try reducing the support distance / interface gap between the supports and the part or changing the support type / the way supports are printed depending on the slicer you are using. Keep in mind that the bigger the gap or more sparse the supports are the less perfect the resulting print might be where it has to print on top of the supports. It will all involve a bit of trial and error to find out what is the best compromise.

I just go to town snipping away with something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08SQBNCK...V9kZXRhaWw

Playing with piece orientation and INCREASING the gap by 1mm is my normal process, with any material that has support issues. Yes, TPU is about the most difficult.

I use XURON semi-flush side cutters sold for model railway track cutting.

There are direct Chinese sourced similar (Doniu, etc)   BUT I have found they are over hardened and prone to fracture spitting metal, even cutting hard plastic, so I now avoid.

Example source only:-

https://www.heamar.co.uk/cutters/41773-x...01858.html

WEAR EYE PROTECTION!!!!

One of my favorite tricks is to just figure out how to print something without needing any supports at all. Try tilting your part around in the slicer to see if there's some orientation where nothing hangs out too far. Also, you could try manually painting supports on if your slicer supports that. (Prusa Slicer has that.)

Thank you for all the suggestions.
I was hoping to figure out
which parameter kept the support a little further from the piece when it first starts printing and not allowing it to attach so strongly.

I have been using various forms of razor/utility knives but it still leaves a terrible looking surface.

The printing is good everywhere except where the support touches.

here is a photo of printing the same piece horizontal and vertical. The support attaches itself to the piece and almost becomes
part of it.

I'm not super experienced with 3D printing yet, but by your image, the first thing I'd try is reducing my extruder temperature. Increment down 5-10 degrees at a time with a small test piece and see if it gets better. Lower temps help with parts sagging and keeps features from bleeding together as much. Just don't go too far as it will compromise the layer adhesion.

(18-Nov-2022, 03:50 PM)Suros Wrote: I'm not super experienced with 3D printing yet, but by your image, the first thing I'd try is reducing my extruder temperature. Increment down 5-10 degrees at a time with a small test piece and see if it gets better. Lower temps help with parts sagging and keeps features from bleeding together as much. Just don't go too far as it will compromise the layer adhesion.

I'll give that a try. Thanks