Polyjet technology uses liquid resins as printing material, as these allow a much finer layer thickness. During the printing process, the individual layers of the object are printed from bottom to top. A layer of material is applied and then cured with UV light. This means that the printer cannot print anything to which no drops of resin can "adhere". Support material is automatically printed at these points, on which the print material layer can be applied. In order to obtain a smooth construction surface, an additional layer of supporting material is produced before the model is printed on it.

Every part of the object that comes into contact with the support material appears matt after washing. Thus, the underside of each printed object is always matt, as is any negative slope and any spot vertically below a negative slope.

A hard edge can be seen at the transition from a negative gradient to a positive gradient, i.e. the area with support material to the rest of the object. At fluid transitions, such as an egg, it is particularly prominent. With a pyramid, however, the edge coincides with an edge of the object, which is why it is not noticeable.

If you select the 'Matt' option, a thin layer of support material is printed on each positive slope, so that no edge is created anywhere and the entire object becomes matt. However, this is associated with increased material consumption.

If you select the 'Glossy' option, the described edges appear at the transitions. If your object has an orientation in which this edge coincides with the edges of the object and you wish this, you can specify this orientation. However, a different orientation may also result in higher consumption of support material.

The pure support material is gelatinous and no longer very stable in larger quantities. To ensure stability, a fine grid of printing material is printed into the support material. The thickness of this grid is selectable, as the printing material used for the grid is more expensive than the pure support material. However, the finer it is, the more unstable the support structure becomes with larger quantities of support material. Thin parts of the object resting on a fine grid may deform during printing.

The grid thickness can only be set uniformly for each object.

For example, if you want to print a cube, it is relatively stable. It is not necessary to print it massively, but the printer does this if it only finds the outside of the cube in the STL file. However, a support structure inside the cube is important to allow the liquid resin to settle properly. To save material costs, you have two options.

You can add an inside of the cube when modeling your object. The remaining interior is then recognized as air and automatically filled with support material. However, you should pay attention to a suitable wall thickness.

The second option is an option provided by the printer software. It calculates exactly what you would have to do manually in the first option and this with the desired wall thickness. However, this option is not free of errors.