This is everything I have always wanted to know about rafts, and didn’t know who to ask. Thank you so much for this video. It’s a fantastic tutorial!!!!!
These videos are excellent. I look at 3D printed stuff with my untrained eyes and it's good see these design tips. It a combination of what you can see intuitively, combined with practical experience.
My dude, you consistently arrive with great content on that seems perfectly synced with my journey into 3D printing as a career. When you start looking to expand your farm operation into Canada I want to be there to make it happen.
“Fondling settings for days” will forever be in my mind 😂 Thank you for this video! I’m not that advanced yet but I saved it. I really appreciate that you put out great content for experienced makers.
IMO A raft is never the best solution, to whatever problem you are trying to solve. Rafts waste material, and (comparatively) ruin the underside of the print.
I ALMOST agree with you I believe that if you need raft in most of your PRINTS, then what you really have is an adhesion problem, more related to your z offset or dirty bed or the bed itself. BUT, I stumble across some models I've designed which best printing orientation was on the side of the model which had 1mm 2 contact points, brims and raft are a life saver
I have always solved warp and adhesion issues with a simple brim And I separate the brim 0.3mm and peals off very easily while still helping the print. Skirts are good to avoid the first bits of tiny lines of the main print of comming off
You clearly do not print pure PA thats why you think so. For Some PA alloys we use 10mm solid PETG raft with zero gap to stop them from warping. This is on top of 85deg heating chamber and 6mm garolite build plate.
I found rafts to be useful on 3d printers that have first-layer issues. My ender 3's x-beam would sag because it wasn't supported from both sides. This caused the first few millimeters of the print to be squished and massively overextruded. A raft solved the issue. Very specific problem which I ended up solving by upgrading my z-axis, but still a good use of rafts.
Great video! I think this is a good approach on having the most control over the process.The thing is that warping affects not only the first layers, but every single one of them. While printing ABS, or PA, or PC you can suffer the consequences of thermal stress in various ways: warping, cracking or layer fragility. Raft only helps to maintain the geometry sticked to the plate, but it you don't warm you chamber or environment where you are printing, the stresses are going to make the print fail at other height. I print mostly with PA, gears and mechanical components, with at least 60C in the chamber. If the part edges wants to curl , and you put a (designed or not) raft to prevent it, the part will find a spot where the adhesion between layers is low, and break it. WITH ABS OR HIGHER Tg FILAMENTS, YOU NEED HEATED CHAMBER. It's just physics. Great video anyway!
This is awesome! I never thought about designing a custom raft. If a part absolutely needed one to work I'd either change the part or CAD in my own mouse ears/brim. I'll definitely be using these tips next time I need something like this.
That’s because you have a heated bed and/or heated chamber. Printing farms usually don’t use them for many reasons one of them is too much wasted power.
Try to print 650x480mm box on warm bed (warm, not hot). Small rafts on corners, plus some waffle-like structures are really appreciated. My 800x600 printer (no, not SVGA) consumes about 150W max instead of 1kW thanks to rafts designed into a model, plus very heavy polymer-based glue. Slant shows few other ideas that I want to try. Plus I don't need to fight thermal deformation problems with large bed.
great video! I had a print failure when scaling down a model that had a built in raft so I cut it off in the slicer and generated a new one so I guess that is one minor inconvenience of modeled rafts
I like this idea. I have several older printers without heated beds that would likely benefit from a modeled raft compared to the ones currently generated.
Lot to think about with this. I've been 3D printing for about 3 years now and designing objects for most of that. Bed adhesion/warping is the one thing I don't feel I 100% have a handle on. I like the idea of taking some of that out of the hands of the slicer.
Will have to keep these things in mind. I've never had a raft work right, it always sticks so badly to the part that the part is basically ruined. These techniques sound like they'll do a much better job.
Very usable tips even if you don't have adhesion problems. Sometimes you just MUST print some "balcony". Let'sclient wants a fancy case for their PCB and printing it 45 degrees to bed is not accepted.
So I have a question about those "struts" you recommend adding to link the part to the raft, how far apart should/could they be spaced? What logic could I use to determine that?
I am confused because my interpretation is that the cube is floating above the raft. In the case of the "1mm struts", those structs are obvious your support, but is infill used for the rest? There isn't just a gap is there? Same with the circle idea under the raft. Even a tiny gap is still a gap, and the printer would be printing in air, right? What am I not getting?
search "Improve Your Prints With Entirely Custom Supports" and watch it. Video is 8 years old but there is a good explanation about your question and still relevant
@@samchill3707 search "Improve Your Prints With Entirely Custom Supports" and watch it. Video is 8 years old but there is a good explanation about your question and still relevant
It is a tiny gap. The layer above will still print and stick to the raft, but less well due to the gap. This assists in removal of the prints. Slicers automatically generate this kind of interface layer with supports and such, so you have to model them in if you're doing this manually.
You have to remember that the extruder is laying round lines based on your nozzle diameter, so while it’s an air gap in the model, if you’re using a 0.4mm nozzle, that will allow 0.2mm descent where there enough of a touch to the raft surface but not enough for the larger part to be actually “floating on air”. But yes, you’re not getting perfectly smooth bottoms, but your bottoms should be no worse than other surfaces. However, since those are micro-touch points, struts will help in keeping your actual part in place so it doesn’t peel off or warp mid-print. (If you’ve ever done print in place designs, this is why you usually have to design in at least half the nozzle diameter distance between the parts.) As far as the concave-half-circle-surfaced rafts, they take advantage of the printer’s ability to bridge. As long as the distances are not too large (depending on printer’s cooling capability and filament), the printer can lay nearly perfect line segments in the air as long it has support points on both sides of the segment. The line is cooled as it’s extruded to harden enough that it doesn’t sag over its unsupported section.
I don't use rafts anymore since I moved from PLA to PETG. I always had trouble removing them especially with PETG. I now use tabs or mouse ears as they are sometimes called.
I have a large part with one large top surface at a 15 degree angle from the large lower surface. The top surface finish is critical so I print that horizontal to the build plate. Unfortunately that leaves a very large angled area requiring support. I tried forever tryingbto get settings reasonably close and best settings I came up with was similar to the last part of the video. The very top layer of support was jmpossible to remove from the part but lower portion removed cleanly. I hit the rough surface with some 40 grit sandpaper and covered the bottom with felt. Good enough fir my application but After seeing this video I want to try the part again and make the support myself to see if that would still work at a 15 degree angle.
I always wondered if you could reuse a raft instead of reprinting it every time. The purpose of the raft is to improve adhesion and compensate for unlevelness (and all the other things you mentioned). Since it's already doing those things, and adhered to the bed, why can't you just pull the part off leaving the raft in place and print subsequent parts on top of it?
In my seven years of 3D printing, I've never needed to use a raft. I don't understand why anyone would want to waste material and end up with a poor first layer finish.
Great video, but the lighting in your studio is causing a flickering in the video. I'm not sure if it is due to frame rate, compression, or what. I am watching at 1080p BTW.
One function I sooooo wish for but have not found in the slicers Im using (Cura mostly and a little bit of Prusaslicer) is to print the larger infill areas first BEFORE the walls wich would basically serve as a raft. As it is now I can only print the walls first and if there are small details like text (im making signs and coasters) it will then begin with those really small details and everything just comes loose and becomes a tangled mess for me because there is nothing for those small amounts of material to stick to and so as the machine changes direction all the time after just a few mm of travel it then just rips it loose. If i could print the larger areas of the part first the small details would then have something to stick to. Is there any slicer where this is implemented? I heard before somewhere Orca had an Infill first option. Is that so?
Isn't 0.2 typically one layer thick and not 0.5? 🤔 Interesting concepts though, will keep them in mind if I ever have the need in the future (I've already used the sprue idea in several designs and it usually works pretty well)
Exactly rafts aren't needed... unless you need them. I never need them and print very tight tolerances for linear rails etc. For the most part Rafts are outdated. Like a handicap for non tuned machines. The square should not need brimming. Mouse ears for Abs. Compensate elephant foot and adjust setting like first layer temp and speed. Has been excellent for me
This is great, one stumbling point has always been raft quality from slicer to slicer and printer to printer. What's the best way to ensure compatibility from CAD to delivered part? For instance layer height, "squish" factor, material properties (PLA to nylon to polypropylene to carbon fiber to wood etc) aren't captured in the CAD model. Would like a practial start-to-finish demonstration that best leverages your print farm. And where do UV resin technologies fit in this mix?
Some very interesting ideas, but how well will they work at a print farm with auto eject? Seems to me like no matter what it's going to cause a lot of human interaction, first to make sure the raft doesn't stay on the bed after ejection and then to manually remove the rafts from the parts later and sort them for post processing or recycling. That seems like the antithesis of automation to me, but I don't have experience in that so I could be way off base here. This could be good for designing a part for your own use, but IMO it's a boneheaded move for a hobbyist designer who wants to put his designs on a repository for anyone to buy, download and print. Unless they upload two, one with and one without the raft, much like designers for resin printing do with supported and non supported models.
These are all good tips but miss one of the primary functions of a raft: Compensating for an uneven build plate. On a good raft the first layer is deliberately over extruded fat lines so that they can fill down into valleys but it is spaced out so they don't squish together in places where the layer is thinner and push plastic upwards like and typical over extruded first layer. This ends up with the raft being a nice flat surface to print your part on even if the build plate is not flat. Designed rafts do not help with this problem at all. It has to be done as a gcode in the slicer. Luckily it's not a common problem to deal with anymore since most printers have nice flat beds and decent leveling, but it is still something we deal with on our very large format printer printing on a piece of plywood as a buildplate.
Almost every designer I've commented on, that their design could do with some better bed adhesion built-in, becomes defensive, and tells me off with a long lift of what I should be doing and that MY PROCESS is wrong, and their design is flawless. Usually parts that have a height-to-bed-contact-area ratio that's really poor. 🤦♂️
Two minutes in, still no mention of what a raft is, why someone would want to use it. I mean, I see 'the benefits' slide. But what is a raft? Are you talking about just the first layer of the print? A first layer that is a bed for the rest of the print? for what kind of prints would I need one? Update: watched the rest. I sort of understand how you suggest to design a raft. But still have no idea why I would want to use it on a print. - "Protect first layer". From what? the print bed? Maybe this has to do with that in a factory setting you don't want to wait for the bed to cool down? - "Compensate unlevel bed". I don't think I have that probem, but would that help? Would it not just offeset the unlevelness a couple of layers? - "Maintain tolerances". Between what? How would that raft help? - "Improve bed adhesion". So as a substitute to a brim or those mouse ear things? I guess I'll have to do some googling now to learn what a 'raft' is, so you then did make me learn something. I like these series of feedback, with feedback like this (explain the 'why' before the 'how') I hope you can make them even better.
Rafts were invented before mouse ears, brims etc. I have only ever needed it once out of thousands of prints. It was a poorly made stl of godzilla and the bottom surface was not level and flat. The raft solves that. Think of it as a baseplate for an ornament, trophy or figurine.
Why don't slicers do these things? If they are simple enough for consumers to do, surely programmers and engineers could add them to the slicers, right?
Sounds like someone is tired of failed prints with his business and is trying to get the word out that his customers need to do this before sending him more files. If I send someone my file to print then I expect them to print it, and they take the time to make it print properly.
Dumb. The more time they have to put into fixing your design the more they will charge you. It behooves you to do it yourself. He is providing a free tutorial service here for his own customers.
This is everything I have always wanted to know about rafts, and didn’t know who to ask. Thank you so much for this video. It’s a fantastic tutorial!!!!!
These videos are excellent. I look at 3D printed stuff with my untrained eyes and it's good see these design tips. It a combination of what you can see intuitively, combined with practical experience.
My dude, you consistently arrive with great content on that seems perfectly synced with my journey into 3D printing as a career.
When you start looking to expand your farm operation into Canada I want to be there to make it happen.
Great tips! Love your methodology of not relying on autogen.
“Fondling settings for days” will forever be in my mind 😂
Thank you for this video! I’m not that advanced yet but I saved it. I really appreciate that you put out great content for experienced makers.
Glad it was helpful!
IMO A raft is never the best solution, to whatever problem you are trying to solve. Rafts waste material, and (comparatively) ruin the underside of the print.
I ALMOST agree with you
I believe that if you need raft in most of your PRINTS, then what you really have is an adhesion problem, more related to your z offset or dirty bed or the bed itself.
BUT, I stumble across some models I've designed which best printing orientation was on the side of the model which had 1mm 2 contact points, brims and raft are a life saver
Raft is good for lithophane pains but that's about it
I have always solved warp and adhesion issues with a simple brim
And I separate the brim 0.3mm and peals off very easily while still helping the print.
Skirts are good to avoid the first bits of tiny lines of the main print of comming off
You clearly do not print pure PA thats why you think so. For Some PA alloys we use 10mm solid PETG raft with zero gap to stop them from warping. This is on top of 85deg heating chamber and 6mm garolite build plate.
I found rafts to be useful on 3d printers that have first-layer issues. My ender 3's x-beam would sag because it wasn't supported from both sides. This caused the first few millimeters of the print to be squished and massively overextruded. A raft solved the issue.
Very specific problem which I ended up solving by upgrading my z-axis, but still a good use of rafts.
Excellent video - the b-roll material is really good at showing exactly what you're talking about. Without it it'd have been totally baffled!
Great video! I think this is a good approach on having the most control over the process.The thing is that warping affects not only the first layers, but every single one of them. While printing ABS, or PA, or PC you can suffer the consequences of thermal stress in various ways: warping, cracking or layer fragility. Raft only helps to maintain the geometry sticked to the plate, but it you don't warm you chamber or environment where you are printing, the stresses are going to make the print fail at other height. I print mostly with PA, gears and mechanical components, with at least 60C in the chamber. If the part edges wants to curl , and you put a (designed or not) raft to prevent it, the part will find a spot where the adhesion between layers is low, and break it. WITH ABS OR HIGHER Tg FILAMENTS, YOU NEED HEATED CHAMBER. It's just physics. Great video anyway!
This is awesome! I never thought about designing a custom raft. If a part absolutely needed one to work I'd either change the part or CAD in my own mouse ears/brim. I'll definitely be using these tips next time I need something like this.
I haven’t used a raft in like 10 years
That’s because you have a heated bed and/or heated chamber. Printing farms usually don’t use them for many reasons one of them is too much wasted power.
That would be a nice info in the video. I never just one and always wonder when to use them.
Try to print 650x480mm box on warm bed (warm, not hot). Small rafts on corners, plus some waffle-like structures are really appreciated. My 800x600 printer (no, not SVGA) consumes about 150W max instead of 1kW thanks to rafts designed into a model, plus very heavy polymer-based glue. Slant shows few other ideas that I want to try. Plus I don't need to fight thermal deformation problems with large bed.
❤
I love this channel.
It tells me what I need to know. That I didn't know i was lacking. 😂
Please do a follow-up video about rafts, as you mentioned in this video - It is still quite mysterious
great video! I had a print failure when scaling down a model that had a built in raft so I cut it off in the slicer and generated a new one so I guess that is one minor inconvenience of modeled rafts
I like this idea. I have several older printers without heated beds that would likely benefit from a modeled raft compared to the ones currently generated.
Lot to think about with this. I've been 3D printing for about 3 years now and designing objects for most of that.
Bed adhesion/warping is the one thing I don't feel I 100% have a handle on. I like the idea of taking some of that out of the hands of the slicer.
This will come in super handy for my cube farm.
Will have to keep these things in mind. I've never had a raft work right, it always sticks so badly to the part that the part is basically ruined. These techniques sound like they'll do a much better job.
How the hell your vids have so few views! Thank you!
Very usable tips even if you don't have adhesion problems. Sometimes you just MUST print some "balcony". Let'sclient wants a fancy case for their PCB and printing it 45 degrees to bed is not accepted.
I don’t think I’ve ever used a raft. Great video but would love more explanations as to why I need a raft if I have a newer printer
Some good ideas, Like others have said, I rarely use them, but good to know.
So I have a question about those "struts" you recommend adding to link the part to the raft, how far apart should/could they be spaced? What logic could I use to determine that?
If you’re familiar with Gridfinity, I’d love to see your thoughts on preventing long bins from shrinking and pulling up from the bed.
I am confused because my interpretation is that the cube is floating above the raft. In the case of the "1mm struts", those structs are obvious your support, but is infill used for the rest? There isn't just a gap is there? Same with the circle idea under the raft. Even a tiny gap is still a gap, and the printer would be printing in air, right? What am I not getting?
I have the exact same question!
search "Improve Your Prints With Entirely Custom Supports" and watch it. Video is 8 years old but there is a good explanation about your question and still relevant
@@samchill3707 search "Improve Your Prints With Entirely Custom Supports" and watch it. Video is 8 years old but there is a good explanation about your question and still relevant
It is a tiny gap. The layer above will still print and stick to the raft, but less well due to the gap. This assists in removal of the prints. Slicers automatically generate this kind of interface layer with supports and such, so you have to model them in if you're doing this manually.
You have to remember that the extruder is laying round lines based on your nozzle diameter, so while it’s an air gap in the model, if you’re using a 0.4mm nozzle, that will allow 0.2mm descent where there enough of a touch to the raft surface but not enough for the larger part to be actually “floating on air”. But yes, you’re not getting perfectly smooth bottoms, but your bottoms should be no worse than other surfaces. However, since those are micro-touch points, struts will help in keeping your actual part in place so it doesn’t peel off or warp mid-print. (If you’ve ever done print in place designs, this is why you usually have to design in at least half the nozzle diameter distance between the parts.)
As far as the concave-half-circle-surfaced rafts, they take advantage of the printer’s ability to bridge. As long as the distances are not too large (depending on printer’s cooling capability and filament), the printer can lay nearly perfect line segments in the air as long it has support points on both sides of the segment. The line is cooled as it’s extruded to harden enough that it doesn’t sag over its unsupported section.
I don't use rafts anymore since I moved from PLA to PETG. I always had trouble removing them especially with PETG. I now use tabs or mouse ears as they are sometimes called.
I watch your channel almost 4-5 months and this is the first useful video for me finally, thanks a lot this is really helpful tricks here
What CAD software are you using, and/or what do you recommend?
This is excellent. Now I want slicers to include "fancy rafts". 😉
I have a large part with one large top surface at a 15 degree angle from the large lower surface. The top surface finish is critical so I print that horizontal to the build plate.
Unfortunately that leaves a very large angled area requiring support. I tried forever tryingbto get settings reasonably close and best settings I came up with was similar to the last part of the video. The very top layer of support was jmpossible to remove from the part but lower portion removed cleanly. I hit the rough surface with some 40 grit sandpaper and covered the bottom with felt. Good enough fir my application but After seeing this video I want to try the part again and make the support myself to see if that would still work at a 15 degree angle.
... don't end up fondling settings ...
🤣 so succinctly true.
I always wondered if you could reuse a raft instead of reprinting it every time. The purpose of the raft is to improve adhesion and compensate for unlevelness (and all the other things you mentioned). Since it's already doing those things, and adhered to the bed, why can't you just pull the part off leaving the raft in place and print subsequent parts on top of it?
In my seven years of 3D printing, I've never needed to use a raft. I don't understand why anyone would want to waste material and end up with a poor first layer finish.
I never use them either. To your second point though, the video literally (and quite verbosely) explains all of the reasons someone may want to.
Is the strut connected to the raft? or do you leave a gap?
I would like to see a better raft design, and especially, how to design for auto-ejection!
awesome! thank you
Great video, but the lighting in your studio is causing a flickering in the video. I'm not sure if it is due to frame rate, compression, or what. I am watching at 1080p BTW.
One function I sooooo wish for but have not found in the slicers Im using (Cura mostly and a little bit of Prusaslicer) is to print the larger infill areas first BEFORE the walls wich would basically serve as a raft. As it is now I can only print the walls first and if there are small details like text (im making signs and coasters) it will then begin with those really small details and everything just comes loose and becomes a tangled mess for me because there is nothing for those small amounts of material to stick to and so as the machine changes direction all the time after just a few mm of travel it then just rips it loose. If i could print the larger areas of the part first the small details would then have something to stick to. Is there any slicer where this is implemented? I heard before somewhere Orca had an Infill first option. Is that so?
So how to implement this into a model that you pick up online? this is the real question here. Could you add this design into 3mf or stl file.
I simply use Nano Polymer Adhesive, It uses magical. I never had to use rafts for anything since then. Part simply pops when cooled down.
Never needed a raft!
Isn't 0.2 typically one layer thick and not 0.5? 🤔 Interesting concepts though, will keep them in mind if I ever have the need in the future (I've already used the sprue idea in several designs and it usually works pretty well)
I never use rafts, just an occasional brim. Should I be?
if you don't need to you probably shouldn't
Exactly rafts aren't needed... unless you need them.
I never need them and print very tight tolerances for linear rails etc.
For the most part Rafts are outdated. Like a handicap for non tuned machines.
The square should not need brimming. Mouse ears for Abs. Compensate elephant foot and adjust setting like first layer temp and speed. Has been excellent for me
Hilbert Curve!
nice but takes ages :)
This is great, one stumbling point has always been raft quality from slicer to slicer and printer to printer. What's the best way to ensure compatibility from CAD to delivered part? For instance layer height, "squish" factor, material properties (PLA to nylon to polypropylene to carbon fiber to wood etc) aren't captured in the CAD model. Would like a practial start-to-finish demonstration that best leverages your print farm. And where do UV resin technologies fit in this mix?
Do you have a metronome in the background? I'm listening to this video with headphones and it drives me crazy.
Some very interesting ideas, but how well will they work at a print farm with auto eject? Seems to me like no matter what it's going to cause a lot of human interaction, first to make sure the raft doesn't stay on the bed after ejection and then to manually remove the rafts from the parts later and sort them for post processing or recycling. That seems like the antithesis of automation to me, but I don't have experience in that so I could be way off base here.
This could be good for designing a part for your own use, but IMO it's a boneheaded move for a hobbyist designer who wants to put his designs on a repository for anyone to buy, download and print. Unless they upload two, one with and one without the raft, much like designers for resin printing do with supported and non supported models.
These are all good tips but miss one of the primary functions of a raft: Compensating for an uneven build plate. On a good raft the first layer is deliberately over extruded fat lines so that they can fill down into valleys but it is spaced out so they don't squish together in places where the layer is thinner and push plastic upwards like and typical over extruded first layer. This ends up with the raft being a nice flat surface to print your part on even if the build plate is not flat. Designed rafts do not help with this problem at all. It has to be done as a gcode in the slicer. Luckily it's not a common problem to deal with anymore since most printers have nice flat beds and decent leveling, but it is still something we deal with on our very large format printer printing on a piece of plywood as a buildplate.
Has your company ever made parts with embedded components?
Almost every designer I've commented on, that their design could do with some better bed adhesion built-in, becomes defensive, and tells me off with a long lift of what I should be doing and that MY PROCESS is wrong, and their design is flawless. Usually parts that have a height-to-bed-contact-area ratio that's really poor. 🤦♂️
I've started publishing improvements on print profiles as a passive aggressive response to these people 😂
I like how you throw insults at common slicers.
this video was like the matrix where they download an entire lifetime of knowledge......."I know rafts"
I have never understood the point of rafts. I've never used them, but only been printing about 3 years.
Молодцом!
Two minutes in, still no mention of what a raft is, why someone would want to use it. I mean, I see 'the benefits' slide. But what is a raft? Are you talking about just the first layer of the print? A first layer that is a bed for the rest of the print? for what kind of prints would I need one?
Update: watched the rest. I sort of understand how you suggest to design a raft. But still have no idea why I would want to use it on a print.
- "Protect first layer". From what? the print bed? Maybe this has to do with that in a factory setting you don't want to wait for the bed to cool down?
- "Compensate unlevel bed". I don't think I have that probem, but would that help? Would it not just offeset the unlevelness a couple of layers?
- "Maintain tolerances". Between what? How would that raft help?
- "Improve bed adhesion". So as a substitute to a brim or those mouse ear things?
I guess I'll have to do some googling now to learn what a 'raft' is, so you then did make me learn something.
I like these series of feedback, with feedback like this (explain the 'why' before the 'how') I hope you can make them even better.
Rafts were invented before mouse ears, brims etc. I have only ever needed it once out of thousands of prints. It was a poorly made stl of godzilla and the bottom surface was not level and flat. The raft solves that. Think of it as a baseplate for an ornament, trophy or figurine.
@@phasesecuritytechnology6573 Thanks.
Why don't slicers do these things? If they are simple enough for consumers to do, surely programmers and engineers could add them to the slicers, right?
Sounds like someone is tired of failed prints with his business and is trying to get the word out that his customers need to do this before sending him more files. If I send someone my file to print then I expect them to print it, and they take the time to make it print properly.
Dumb. The more time they have to put into fixing your design the more they will charge you. It behooves you to do it yourself. He is providing a free tutorial service here for his own customers.
People are still using Rafts in 2024?
Are people breathing in 2024?... WTF?... Depends if ya need it I guess. when all else fails, BOOM! rafts come to the rescue