Perhaps one of the most contentious issues in 3D printing is that of supports, both because they’re an uncomfortable reminder of how gravity affects our prints and because the very idea of there being ‘one right way’ is bound to get you into some spirited discussions. That said, [Matthew Trahan] figured that neither regular grid supports nor organic tree supports are the answer here, and that the better answer is found in fins.
The problem with existing support approaches especially with FDM prints is that they can be fairly wasteful in terms of material, and they can leave serious marks on the printed object’s surface that require post-processing. These fins on the other hand are designed to require as little material as possible and snap off as cleanly as possible. The tool, developed with the assistance of Claude, can either run locally or be accessed via printfins.com.
Currently the idea is that these fins are baked directly into the STL model so that it’s a one-time thing, but it may eventually become available as a slicer plugin. The basic concept was pitched by [Slant3D], who gets credited in the video below, although in their approach they used CAD software to add the fin supports manually.
The fins are there to provide the support base, while small tines can be added to reinforce the connection to the model. These do make it it less easy to snap off with minimal scarring, of course. Conceivably these fins could be made even more light-weight by adding gaps, but that probably would add to the print time.