Organic supports are my main support choice now for any complex object. Unless there’s a particularly square object that might benefit from snug or grid. I never found grid ever removed well and so everything has been printed with organics since it was available and I’ve not had a single failure or difficult removal.

My favorite part of organic supports is that they turn models into Lovecraftian nightmares.

I generally try to design my stuff to not need support, but the paint on organic worked really well when I needed it.

I love how Organic supports can get into a recess to help support it. On a recent print I had an angled hollow tub and it was able to stretch up and support the roof of the tube. Also: In prusaslicer 2.6 alpha 6 in the gcode viewer mode you can click the individual types of print material up in the info box in the top left to show or hide them. Would make showing off the support material a little easier in some cases because you can completely hide the main model that way.

No comments about how the different support systems vary with speed. Organic can be a lifesaver for support print time.

I always use organic now. It’s really good. However, one thing I would’ve liked to have seen you go over with each support like you did with the first one is changing your angles. I find that organic works best if you almost said it to 5% to 10% because it’ll only worry about the most extreme angles and overhangs. In fact I’ve noticed if you said it to zero, it will build a bed on top of the supports and then put your item on top of it like a little platform. I’ve actually integrated this technique into some designs just to have cool looking organic feet underneath of it and I don’t detach it or just put a drop of glue and reattach it.

Excellent video, Angus! I've been using PrusaSlicer 2.6-alpha, and I love how you show that while often awesome, there are some models where other types of supports actually work better. One tip from the early release notes -- when using organic supports, it is usually best to turn off the top interface layers.

Great overview Angus 🙌 Done a number of LARGE (think 36cm ^3 volumes) prints now with Organic supports and I absolutely love them. Material savings is substantial and release like a dream. Still a long way to go with tuning / optimization settings but its a fantastic start and a huge win on certain models.

Glad you covered this topic

Firstly, I love the channel, awesome delivery, and always a new exciting insider tip. Secondly, I can't wait for the Microcenter to open here in Indianapolis. Thanks for the heads up, I will definitely be shopping there.

The vid i was searching! Thx!

Cura has a new version of tree supports that are effectively the same as prusa's organic supports. I've been using them for everything lately. Works great, and almost always saves a ton of filament over traditional supports.

One thing you didn't touch on is the automatic painting under paint on supports. If you do that for organic and then use support on enforcer only you get a more efficient support where the slicer tries to compute the minimum amount of contact points! If you leave it on everywhere you will get support on a lot of spots which probably works without, especially with organic!

Ive used the organic supports for really tall parts, they didnt have any overhangs, but having the trees sort of "hug" the sides when painted on has significantly helped the tall parts finish and not look wobbly towards the top.

If you’re printing a model where there are a lot of branches from the organic support all on the same layer, you *_need_* to have z-hop enabled. Otherwise you’ll just knock over the support branches and most likely fail the print

I’ve started exclusively using organic supports in bambu slicer. The strong tree support variant has an option to enable a feature which adds a few traditional style interface layers on top of the tree support branches to better support large flat overhangs. Combines the strengths of both support types update: recently I’ve been using the traditional support type for PLA, but with the PETG for the interface layers and zero interface spacing. This gives perfect surface finish on large overhangs and bridges, and releases incredibly easily. It works so well that I’ve started changing my modeling style to allow for more overhangs and bridges

Re: Organic supports, I've always loved that style of support. Resin slicers have used the technique of building supports at an angle forever, and Cura's tree supports have been very similar to this, and showed up years ago. It's about time Prusa caught up. I'm glad to see this introduced to PrusaSlicer.

No support is the best support. 😁 If that's not possible I reorient the print to use the least support possible if print requirements allow which is almost the case for printing statues and miniatures. For these organic is often great. Functional prints benefit more from the two other types. In the end the choice relies much on experience and requirements. There's no one for all. 😋

I always learn something new by watching your videos. Keep up the good work!

Just here to congratulate you Angus on your 1 million subscriber milestone. You deserve it mate. Keep up the awesome work.

I want to share! I love the Prusa 2.6!!!! I just printed a fan duct for an Ender 3 Mircroswiss direct drive and used support Organic it worked amazingly! I can't say enough! ! ! !

So excited for Micro Center to open in Indy this summer! Living in the Indianapolis area, I was really bummed last year when they kept having those Ender 3 sales and the nearest stores were in Chicago and Cincinnati, both at least 3 hours away. The new store will be less than a 20 minute drive from my house.

Useful stuff. Thanks, Angus.

Two more advantages of organic support: in a lot of cases they print faster and save time, compared to grid and also I personally often keep them around because they look cool

Way brilliant another great video, thank you Angus. Having configured my snug supports to come off easily I quite like them, but once prusa slicer 2.6.0 a6 was out and i tried organics I realised how useful they are because they are much more compact giving support to the specific area, you save filament and they have less points of contact so less cleanup/finishing work is needed and with their reduced contact surface on the bed you do lose some adhesion "aid" which is a bonus of snug supports that are beneficial to prevent warping or models with not a lot of surface area on the bed. There are some prints i will do with snugs over organics thought depending on the model dimensions and weight as the snugs help with adhesion on the bed in some cases i think. Having organics in prusa is a really nice additional feature as some models just need al ittle bit of support to prevent the bottom layers from drooping and wit hthe reduced contact surface you aren't spending a lot of time cleaning up with a hot blade or whatever method you would use for snug supports. (I've not yet used the other support type so i can't comment on its capabilities) I wonder if in future prusa might support the capacity to use multiple support types if you paint them on, as for some models i love the snug supports yet like in the video you don't want these towers that grid and snug form as they increase surface contact on areas where you dont want it whereas organic supports avoid them areas and put the support where it needs to be.

I’ve found that I sometimes need to increase the minimum branch diameter when printing silk PLAs as even a slight bump from the nozzle will snap the branch if they’re allowed to get too thin

Love the Organic supports!

Good stuff to pay attention to when setting up the print.

Love your videos very informative

I've been enjoying creating designs that avoid the need for support, leading me to come up with new ways of mounting small parts on quadcopters, and by working 'with the grain' of how the TPU part will be printed with the typical 0.2mm layer height & 0.4mm nozzle has meant more compact & robust designs, making them quicker & easier to print.

I'm been using organic supports since first alpha release. They work great, I use most for small figures and statues that normally need to be cut for succesfull print. Now I can use SLA or SLS full figure insted of FDM pre-cut model.

Great video as always Very interesting subject Thanks for sharing your experiences with all of us 🙂

I am in love with the organic stuff. As we speak i am printing (parts of a) 400mm dia hollowed out burgerbun, so the support material is almost 200mm high to support the top, it is perfect. I did 3/4 so far and did not have one problem with it.

Been using the new organic on large prints lately and not only am I getting cleaner prints I'm actual saving on filament and print time.

That's an *unbelievably* cursed thumbnail. Organic supports have no place in *this* God Fearing household.

Damn, Angus is pumping these out. Really great info in here thanks!

I love organic/tree supports. I've been using them even before they were available in the slicers. I.E. creating tree supports in Chitubox and saving the file as a stl and then printing on an FDM printer with great sucess. Cura and Prusa latest are fantastic. Though Prusa's default needs some tweaking as they are a bit too thin. But that said too, I absolutely agree that one has to use the right support for the job. For large flat surfaces/overhangs, a grid support will just have a better surface.

Due to my printer being kinda wonky (I hade a wrong preset for it in cura) i avoided supports like plague. My thought process for the longest time was "if there's supports, then i am not printing it, or i am cutting my hands up while removing them". One or two updates later the organic supports were updated. This was a literal miracle. I never had any support come off this easily before. This update is literally a life savior

Thanks so much for the overview. I haven't tried branching supports yet, but they look nice. Ok, actually they look scary yet functional.

I was actually wondering when they would finally add supports like the one in cura today. Excited for 2.6 now!

Absolutely love the organic supports except for it trying to support little areas that aren't required. I usually just paint "do not support" areas to fix that (though sometimes I've been unable to get rid of a non required support because of something I can't find. I've been using the organic supports almost all the time now 👍

About the same way you described and sometimes I add a sacrificial part close to facilitate... with that said... try to avoid if possible. Great vidy, Ty.

Thank you Angus for being so enjoyable :)

Congrats on 1M 🥳🥳🥳

You can optimise a print to maximise strength and surface finish by angling it and using organic supports. Like a frisbee printed on an angle. It has been life changing. I use snug supports as it has a smaller foot print as well.

I have found that Snug support benefits from having "with sheath around support" ticked

To prevent the nozzle from hitting branches, add about 0.20mm of travel lift. It does make a difference.

I printed large and complex figurine parts with organic support and it work perfectly

Thank you!

i just printed a fairly large and detailed model, and ive gotta tell you. its really good, if you dont have really small and delicate details. The branches easily stick to them so it was a pain to remove. For the larger details it was great tho.

I am not an experienced 3d printer user, but I had bad experience with grid support. That could be related to type of prints i did run, but I always selected snug support, and it did work for me.

I've found that when I am doing large prints with organic supports I get the most success when I increase the support density and add a raft with a 4-5 spread so it really grips to the bed.

I've found the organic supports to be AMAZING - I'm printing minis for our D&D group with only an Ender 3 Pro - no resin printer - and I've tweaked and fine-tuned my settings to perfection in Cura, but the supports always fail. 4 failed prints in I made the switch to Prusaslicer and, I'm not sure what exactly is making it work this time around, but THEY WORK, BEAUTIFULLY. Cura's tree supports tend to generate weirdly and seemingly nonsensical sometimes, thin towers or awkward angles are generated that get knocked over and into the print, and often missing sections which clearly need support meaning I'll have to block in custom supports, but I've had no issues like this in Prusaslicer They're super light and easy to remove, whilst also being well supported at the base and they just always seem to work so well!

Organic supports would look so cool and work so well as arms into hands into fingers, the human hand is possibly the ultimate holding device.

I'm quite late to the game, so 2.6 alpha has been there for me almost since I started. I'm still trying to design without supports, but that's not always possible as you say. As for which type of support, it depends: if there are only a few high up points that need support: organic. Large flats: regular and snug in tight spaces. I sometimes wish you could combine types. Things you didn't mention: with organic supports automatic layer height doesn't work anymore. And the BIG feature from 2.6 for me is automatic support painting

I had something to do with a time crunch and ran out of the Bambu breakaway support stuff.... so I subbed in using PETG interface on PLA supports on a PLA print. While there were one or two bits that didn't hold (it was a large print) the majority (the other 50+ connection points) were completely fine and it just basically pulled away with a tiny amount of effort. There were a few places where it was fused into teh layer so the white PLA and the lime green PETG wa sa bit obvious but nothing a sanding wouldn't take off or cover.

If you have CAD: I make support arches in cad around my print as a platform for normal support to add on top of the arches. This saves a lot of material. Don't be limited by the slicer program.

This is really helpful! I have a Mau5head model I've made and really wanted to know what supports would mostly work, I might try the tree/organic supports whenever I get to 3D printing the shell part and then same for the ears, i plan on getting the Kobra Max for it, I'll check out more videos here!

3D printed a model car chassis using organic supports. TBH, I did not expect it to be a successful print, but it was. It came out perfectly fine. I chose PLA over PETG for this print.

Are you ever cover the auto support painting in 2.6?

I love Organic Supports!!!

I've just printed 4 spools worth of models with nearly full build plate footprints on my prusa mk3 and the organic supports occasionally generate inside each other or off the build plate when printing multiple parts which requires some manual work in the slicer to fix. Other than that it works great and I havent had any reliability issues.

Love organic supports. Switched from cura to prusa just to try them out and haven't gone back. The weak link when using them is if you have a large flat area they get numerous and hard to remove.

My first run with organic was very good. Came off easy, but was on a small overhang on a round base. Still plan to try a more complex model.

I was a big fan of tree supports in Cura but hated that I'd have to block areas where it wasn't needed using clunky support blocking cubes or bricks. The ability to just paint where I want the organic supports to go is game changing.

I like the trick at 4'30" to print the model above the plate !

Saw a really interesting new method to print severe overhangs, by printing 2 parts pausing, and inserting the first into the seconds print to finish printing over the top and integrating the first into the second part. Would love to see more videos on out of the box and clever techniques to print objects, and overcome limitations in printing geometry!

We need hybrid supports. A single support type isn't always well-suited to different regions of a single model. Being able to paint on areas for different support types for specific features in a model would be a big improvement.

Great video! It would've been cool if you showed the amount of support material being used with the different techniques, though. :) Thanks!

I have to admit, I'm actually quite a fan of organic (tree) supports as they don't build on the model and actually save quite a bit of wasted material. Obviously, you have to choose the best support for the type of print you are doing, but I do use them when possible.. Not only that, but they're like artwork in themselves. Lol

I use Organic or a tight grid depending on the situation. And I use a .4mm separation from the model for both.

ye I struggled to use prusa for so long.. years because supports were so bad. I learned in those years to just design my stuff so it does not need a support or if it does I design myself like 0.3 mm thick walls built in support myself. I used to use simplify 3d.. but its so out of date I have not touched it for two years.. but it did had the best tool pathing and avoid holes and supports .. hopefully this new feature will come to regular version of prusa slicer soon, as well as scale and ruler option

I use tree supports a lot in cura. this has allowed me to FDM print a lot of models originally designed for resin printing. but there is a lot to it and they often require a lot of tweaking to get just right.

Don't forget another support coming out. Check out the SuperPleccer slicer, based on Prusa slicer and including organic supports as well!

organic support is great! i've been using it sinds alpha 4 and it has worked flawless on my prusa mini. the only thing I find a bit annoying is the fact that you can't force the support on to the bed. I had to print a part that only just fit on the buildplate and I had to spend an houre with the support brush to make sure there were no support outside the build area. there was just bare buildplate on the inside of the part where it could build the supports but it kept building them on the outside of the part and the outside of the buildplate. this is an issue with any support stucture, but because of the wide base of the organic support evenmore so.

Even if organic supports works well, I still really like the classic grid support for mechanical parts, clips, brackets (what I print the most) because the supported parts are more accurate and the support itself remove very cleanly, even if printed on top of the object. And with the current presets in prusa slicer (for the MK3 at least) there are almost no traces left, just a satisfying pop when you remove the support !

The organic support "trees" coming out of the cat's eyes and nose is pure nightmare fuel, my friend. When the 3D printed cat comes for me, I'll be crying in the corner.

Tree supports are awesome, or "oganic support" in Prusa speech. I have used theses organic supports for a missing piece (the explosives container) of my DM51 hand grenade. There is a very small labyrinth like shape at the end which needs supports and any other way of support generation would have taken me waaaay longer to print and is really difficult to remove. Really happy with the result. Great supports structures are also provided by S3D, but the software is basically dead.

I just tried the Organic support in 2.6 Alpha 5, and it's cool, but it's still not perfect. Part of that is probably my printer needs a bit of work, but it didn't seem to support the underside of my model as well as regular support did. What I would really like to see in a future version of the slicer is the ability to MIX the types of supports for different areas of the model. I don't think one support material can fit all needs.

It's just nicer to not have to remove so much support material. Some objects just need it, and there isn't much you can do. The light touch of branching organic supports has been so nice. I rarely need to support 100% of an overhang, but with the old method I didn't see much of a choice besides painstakingly paiting. With organic it can be supported in smaller sections, and usually that's all I need.

I’d expect we should be able to use all 3 if required. But it rarely should be tbh. Having the dense blocks of normal / snug alongside the option to paint a tree support would be handy. I prefer Raise3d’s Ideamaker software for supports. 👍🏼

I pretty much don't use standard supports anymore, I use tree supports whenever I need supports, once I get a multifiliment extruder system I will probably run PETG and PLA due to the plastics not binding at all.

Where did you get the massive fan in the background? That looks cool

I figured out that the support in Cura is mich better then PrusaSlicr. Especially when it comes to soluble meterial with 0 distance. In PrusaSlicr you can't set the xy-distance to 0 without touching the model on the sides and organic support don't make big interface to support the whole overhang. PrusaSlicer has to learn here a lot.

Thank you very much “ORGANIC”

My most difficult support situation was when I needed supports INSIDE a long recess on two sides of an object that another piece would slide into like a drawer. (An Ender 3 mobo enclosure) HUGE HUGE pain getting the supports out especially since they printed way too close to the real surface.

Man simplify3d really really screwed up. Easily my fav slicer for supports but even with their v4 release it’s not as good as prusas new Organic supports. I still prefer the visual placement in s3D but Prusa snug supports or organic is great (paint on). Side note I always have to tweak Prusa contact settings as the defaults are damn near impossible to remove

I've had the organic Prusaslicer supports snap due to nozzle collisions multiple times. Maybe it's just an alpha feature issue, the only other collision issues I've ever had were from warping materials.

Organic with automatic support painting is amazing

so far i've found grid is best if there's an overhanging slope that has to entirely rest on supports. it prevents it from moving during the print. like if the support acts as a "boat". otherwise use organic. I think organic does a better job than snug. Snug was just a less painful grid for when grid is hard to pull off.

That organic supports give big fma vibe. Equivalent exchange

I noticed often with your 3D printed that you print with support, it doesn’t matter what kind you have used, the supports seem to come off effortlessly. My experience so far in printing supports has been like trying to remove superglue off of your fingers. Can you provide any insight as to what you do differently to get the wonderful results you do?

I use tree supports for most prints I do it seems to work best for my applications

My biggest issue with organic supports is that multi-color prints the support frequently collapses on me especially when they are really narrow. I don't know if it's a silk pla vs pla thing or what. But I had a couple of times where I couldn't get it, so I went back to snug. But I use organic as much as I can. I think flat areas don't work well. I end up with a crap ton of tiny supports that just aren't strong. It would be nice if you could use both. Paint on snug, paint on organic, paint on no support.

My biggest growing pain going from cura to prusaslicer was with supports. I experienced frequent failures until i tuned in a lot more support strength... meaning that they were awful to remove.

I would keep the supports on that cat looks badass😂

I've been at an impasse for a while. With mods, Cura could use organic, which is IMO the only viable option for complex animal models with delicate legs, digits, and other bits. But Prusa is otherwise superior (UI, preview, Arachne, variable layer height) so I have been holding off on printing many things waiting for Prusa to finally get a modern support system so I could start to print natural looking animals freely. I am massively looking forward to using Prusa with this system, as it is undoubtedly the best free arrangement for printing what I want to print - at least of the popular free options I've tried.

Organic works great for tall skinny prints to help keep them from getting wobbly.

Being a Cura user, I have been using tree supports, what you call 'organic supports', almost exclusively for some time now. Without special support material, it seems to be the only choice for clean models.