MAGMA, a fork of OrcaSlicer with a new infill type and G-code generation for Z-axis reinforcement in FDM 3D prints.

I do quite a bit of 3d printing of functional parts and am trying to understand how this would fundamentally differ from printing at 100% infill? What type of part requirements are causing failures when something is just solid? Just curious what problem space this is targeting?

This re-thinks the entire 3D printing paradigm. Whether this specific idea works or not, I'm sure that this will lead 3D printing research in interesting directions - and the defensive publication is a massive help.

I doubt that filling a long thin channel will ever work. The heat + pressure will always collapse the thin infill walls.In general infills does not provide much strength to a part, it is way better to have stronger walls.And z-direction does not need to be more stable than the other directions so there is no need for long continuous strands anyway.Maybe it would work better with smaller, less tall, slots at the inside of the walls.Lets say 2-3 layer heights tall, continuously filled slots, which are then interleaved with each other. More like bricks less like columns. The outer wall layers would provide stability to prevent collapse. And over spill or bulging would occur towards the inside of the part.

I came across a method of printing that attempts to make the extrusion of two adjacent layers overlap each other by 50%, with the goal of creating stronger layer adhesion. They called it HexWAM and it seemed more likely to work than this one. There were also some test prints available. The website with the full description seems to be down and archive.org unfortunately didn't get the images. Incidentally the person doing this also had an Ender 3, so OP may be able to try out their gcode example directly.https://www.printables.com/model/438863-supper-strong-layers...https://www.printables.com/model/437584-qualitative-layer-ad...https://web.archive.org/web/20251008223152/https://bcarvercr...

Hmm, I wonder if a simpler room-temp alternative would be to fill a low-infill print with 2-part resin. In a way that would be a bit like casting, except you wouldn't ever remove "the mold".

Interlocking layers is an interesting idea, but I don't see how this is supposed to work.You can't use the nozzle to inject that much filament into a large cavity because it will cool and solidify right out of the nozzle. Anyone who has ever cleaned blobs of filament off of a nozzle after a print failure can tell you what happens when you try to pump hot filament into empty space. Filament cools below the melt temperature quickly, especially when it comes into contact with your print.At least the README admits that it doesn't work:> What’s NOT yet working: the physical print. On my Ender, same-material plastic injected into freshly-printed cells melts the cell walls before they can seal. The math says this should work; the materials science is the open question.I like seeing experimentation, but this is a lot of software work dedicated to something that couldn't possibly work. I'm curious about "the math says this should work" combined with the large number of em-dashes and other LLM tells. Was this experiment largely driven by an LLM?There is some interesting work on the topic of staggered interlocking layers: https://github.com/OrcaSlicer/OrcaSlicer/pull/8181Reading any of the research on that should make it obvious that you can't "inject" molten plastic into larger cavities, though.

I've seen this technique a lot, but mostly as a post-processing technique where resin, fiber, or some other type of plastic is injected into the channels after printing is completed. It would be interesting to see this done during the normal printing process.I am a little skeptical on the technique though. FDM printed walls are known to not handle pressure well, especially during printing when its past its glass-transition temperature. This process essentially uses the pressure from the extruder to inject a channel with molten plastic. Will this pressure could cause the walls to delaminate from each other or deform?And how does this affect plastic that tends to warp significantly during printing? The molten plastic is injected into insulated channels that will not receive any active cooling. You're also parking the nozzle at the injection points, which will cause a lot of uneven cooling at the surface as well. For high-warping plastics like ABS, that could cause a lot of issues.So I guess the underlying question should be, does this actually work? What is the measured difference in tension strength between parts printed normally vs with MAGMA infills? Specifically when using the same amount of plastic. There's no data or even pictures that indicate this is working.

Why do you think this is better than the old practice of filling straight holes a few layers deep?

Instead of one large channel throughout the whole print, why not multiple small 2-4 layer bridges?