3D-Printing Plates without “Support”

When printing a plate (or dish) by an FDM 3D printer, the process normally requires support material, which causes several problems. This paper proposes a method for forming thin plates without using wasteful support material. This method requires several extraordinary parameter values when slicing plates. The experiments show that the plates can, for the most part, be successfully formed using a conventional slicer and a 3D printer; however, seams between layers spoil them and the quality of printed objects strongly depends on the slicer.