TESTING 3D printed INFILL PATTERNS for their STRENGTH

Let's crush some 3D printed infill pattern and test which is the strongest!

💚 Support me 💚
Join as a YouTube member!

🎙Check out my PODCAST with Tom Sanladerer

⚙ My gear (Affiliate Links):
🎥 CAMERAS & LENSES
🎙AUDIO
🔴 LIVE STREAMING

🏆 Do you want to help me cover my running costs? Send me a dollar or two over PayPal, it helps me a lot!
🌼 Even watching the ads before my videos helps me a lot!

[cubesandpi]

video: "Rectilinear is a good pattern, has good strength and low print times, and has a small distance between lines to improve top layers"
me: "yea but gyroid looks sick"

[msvru]

I am Russian and my knowlege of english so worst, but understanding german accent so easier than native english speech. I am glad I found this channel, because in russian wery little information about 3D printing. Thanks for your work. Спасибо!

[guywolf]

I can't belive someone would do that much reserch, way to go, you're saving everyone else tons of time and efort!

[PaulMurrayCanberra]

A test of bending strength might be interesting - print a beam and load it in the middle. This tests both tensile and compressive strength.

[calvin]

I'm glad you decided to do the test with some outside walls and not just pure infill. Thank you, as always, for your time and effort in making these videos.

[neoc]

Whenever I think, I wonder X about 3d printing across variables. I know CNC Kitchen will have a video about it.

[LMF]

I'm a huge fan of your videos. Really appreciate the scientific approach. Reminds me of my youth lol. Much of the work I did for my master's degree in mechanical engineering involved compressive strength tests of different formulations of Portland cement.

One trick I would suggest if you're reaching the force limit of your machine is to scale the sample down. If a 2cm cube failed at 350kg, a 1cm cube would fail at around 90kg. You could make all samples out of that so you can still compare. I would also suggest upping infill to 15-20 percent to emphasize more the infill differences and minimise the effect of the perimeters.

Since you asked at the end what we would like to see, I have some ideas. I would like to see a test of stiffness/rigidity (Young's modulus) of the different patterns. When I squeeze a part with rectilinear infill between my fingers I feel more flex/give than the same part with hexagonal/honeycomb infill. One way to test this would be to print a 2cm calibration cube and then press a 1cm cylinder into the center of the cube's faces (top and side faces) so that you're stressing the infill rather than the perimeters. Measure the stress, strain, and ultimate strength and the results should show which is more rigid.

Another test I'd like to see between rectilinear, grid and honeycomb is a simple 3-point bending test (x3 variations, them being with layers oriented in X, Y and Z directions), and lastly a cantilever test with one end of the beam clamped rigidly and the other end loaded with your tester to produce a force-displacement graph. Then just plot the results of all the patterns on the same graph and it will be easy to see which is the most and least flexible.

Hope some of this inspires your next video! Thank you for your work!

[gwyn.]

*Gyroids: Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.*

[AmaroqStarwind]

Gyroid Infill + Gradient Infill + Non-Planar Slicing would be a perfect combination in my opinion. I would also suggest doing some bending tests to simultaneously test tensile and compressive strength, as well as some shear strength tests.

It would be awesome if you could also use a hybrid infill that changes the infill pattern and ratio based on the location in the part and what kinds of stresses those locations would experience.

[belenhedderich]

Dear Stephan Really thank you for this technical videos, so far that I know off no one is doing or at least publishing results with different infills, walls, materials etc. In my humble opinion they are invaluable source of knowledge, work and information you are sharing with your followers. Keep the good work!!!

[ScullyScurl]

I'd love to see a comparison of these infill patterns with *flexible* Filament, especially in wheels where uniform dampening/strength of the pattern is important for smooth operation. The Gyroid pattern looks promising for that application

[rogerfroud]

My first printer is on order and I'm gathering as much useful information before I start. I had no idea that there would be such a large difference in print speed depending on the style of infill using the same about of material. Thanks for taking the time to do this, it's very helpful.

[blitzjon]

I appreciate your video; as always, very informative. One item to further discuss is paths crossing on infill patterns. They can potentially create buildup on the nozzle (I notice a lot with Triangular in S3D) whereas honeycomb the pathing never cross over each other on the same layer but alternate every other layer (similar to rectilinear).

[tinkerman-q]

Cubic is my default infill choice, speedwise is usually very similar to rectilinear. I only use rectilinear when the shape is not a good fit for cubic, like spherical parts. I am curious about what drive your choice of gyroid over cubic. Was it only aesthetics? What are the speed diffences? Which supports the top surfaces better? Which uses more filament (if you disregard the tuning to have same wight)?

[МаксимДорошин-ыу]

You should also test infill strength on 45° angle

[Robothut]

Wow. So much work too do the tests. Great job and thank you.

[mdandry]

I saw this video at the beginning of 2023 and I recently made some “art pieces” that display just the infill of my designs, inspired by what you did here. The most difficult of these pieces that I am *trying* to execute is an 8” sphere with 0 perimeters and .25% gyroid infill. It looks like a giant potato chip, on a raft lol. I have been unsuccessful with this one so far, but i will figure out the tuning eventually. Maybe you can pull it off 😅😉

Thank you for the great videos 🙌🏻

[Bruterce]

gyroid is my go-to infill for most of my usable things. It seems to have less "tears" in between layers as the extruder as the extruder moves over. And it looks pretty slick when printing ;)

[cayoford]

wow this is a lot more in depth and helpful than I was expecting. Thank you for making this. My only comment is that if one doesn't care about strength and wants to optimize for the look of top layers, what you suggested is good, but Cura's "lightning" infill is just better in my opinion. It generates infill basically just as supports put on the inside to make sure the top looks as good as possible while optimizing to use relatively tiny amounts of material. Not sure if a highly similar infill type is available on other slicers, but either way I hope it catches on and becomes a common(and more well explained in the slicer lol) option

[Swenthorian]

I like cubic subdivision the most -- you get the benefits of cubic, with less material in the middle of the part -- similar to your gradient infill, in concept.