That shop owner told me to stop using 100% infill on my prints

I was doing 100% infill on every PLA part because I thought denser = stronger, but a guy who runs a print shop in Austin said I was just wasting filament and making parts more brittle under impact. He showed me how 20% gyroid infill actually lets the plastic flex and absorb force better, and my test parts stopped cracking at the layer lines. Anyone else get hit with a reality check on something they assumed was basic?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_wood13d ago

I gotta push back on the "more brittle" thing a little. 100% infill does make parts stiffer, sure, but that's not always bad. Like if you're printing a bracket that needs to hold a static load without any flex, you actually want that rigidity. 20% gyroid is great for impact stuff, but I've snapped plenty of high-infill parts that were just poorly designed from the start, bad layer adhesion or wrong orientation. The real trick is matching infill to what you're actually making not just copying a YouTuber's settings.

evan_morgan8112d ago

Honestly, people overthink settings just like they overthink every other tool they barely use.