Initial results from DLP printer

[robert3985]

Impressive!   What size are those prints?

IDK much about DLP.  How would that compare say vs. a Phrozen Sonic Mini 8k, or Anycybic 12K Photon Mono M5s? (both pricier)?

https://www.amazon.com/ANYCUBIC-Precision-Ultra-Silent-Printing-Life-Span/dp/B0B4QWYBZL/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2KMWPHTD2QA9W&keywords=AnyCubic%2BPhoton%2BD2&qid=1701191032&sprefix=anycubic%2Bphoton%2Bd2%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.17d9e15d-4e43-4581-b373-0e5c1a776d5d&th=1

https://www.amazon.com/phrozen-Printer-Resolution-Micrometer-Printing/dp/B0C5WSKBKQ/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Phrozen%2Bsonic%2Bmini%2B8k&qid=1701190939&sr=8-4&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.17d9e15d-4e43-4581-b373-0e5c1a776d5d&th=1

https://www.amazon.com/ANYCUBIC-Self-Leveling-Intelligent-Detection-Printing/dp/B0C5M4Z951/ref=psdc_6066127011_t2_B0B4QWYBZL?th=1

Ed, from the reviews I've watched and read, your final print "quality", being defined as detail retention vs smoothness (layer line minimization), won't be too different particularly between a DLP printer (Anycubic's and Elegoo's print quality being virtually identical) and the Phrozen Sonic Mini 8K, since both of their effective "actual" X-Y resolutions ("pixel" size at the focus point on the resin side of the FEP film) are within a couple of microns of being exactly the same.

Anycubic 12K printers, especially their higher-priced Photon M5s, aren't getting good reviews because they don't give sharp, artifact-free prints. Both of Anycubic's 12K printers have been built with an emphasis on speed, rather than print precision, and definitely are much faster using their proprietary high speed resin, and printing with a Z-axis layer height resolution of 100microns, which is twice the "normal" layer height of 50 microns.  I print most of the time on detailed projects at 30 microns...slow, but detailed...vs fast, but "soft".  Out of both of the Anycubic printers, the lower priced, less feature-rich Photon M5 produces the higher quality print...with the reason being it has NFEP film on the bottom of the resin vat rather than the "more advanced" yet opaque ACF film that the Photon M5s has...partially producing a higher print speed with their High Speed Resin.

Next, are the two Elegoo 12K printers.  Note that all of these 12K printers (Anycubic & Elegoo) have the same specs on their LCDs...the rumor being the LCD's are identical, from the same manufacturer.  Here, it's the war between clear NFEP film and opaque ACS film again...with the lower priced, much less feature-rich, more crudely built Saturn 3 producing marginally better prints than the higher priced Saturn 3 Ultra.

BUT...and it's a big "BUT"...the resin vats for each of the Elegoo M3's are the same, except for the film.  The Saturn 3 Ultra will produce the same very high quality prints as the Saturn 3 if you use the Saturn 3's resin vat with the clear NFEP attached.  This limits the top speed of the Saturn 3 Ultra, but you can switch over to the Saturn 3 Ultra's resin vat, that has the ACS film, use a high speed resin, increase your layer height to 100microns and print 3 times as fast if needed for non-precision projects.  The best of both worlds just by purchasing an extra resin vat.

The Saturn 3 Ultra has obviously the highest build quality of all four of these 12K printers, with a metal body, adjustable rubber non-slip feet, the best UI, the best WiFi, the sharpest print capability, the highest print speed if needed, which means it has the best, fastest motor and also a heavy-duty ball-screw for 10micron resolution precision and durable Z-axis movement.  Only the Anycubic Photon M5s has some features that surpass it (auto leveling, print failure detection, low-resin detection & a larger resin vat), but is much more cheaply built, more expensive and has the lowest print quality of all four printers...even when printing at normal speed, with your favorite resin.

If I were in the market for a new 3D printer that has a larger capacity than any DLP printer, but will print just as good, has a much better build quality and extra features that contribute to its production rate and ease of use, the Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra (with an extra Saturn 3 Resin Vat and an extra two USB Air Purifiers ) would be the one I would get, without any hesitation.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[bbussey]

No mfg ever explains the resins and what makes them different. Is the resin with ceramic called Craftman resin?

Yes, that is how AnyCubic is marketing it. I really like the results so far. I’m running through past projects and the D2 results are far better than the Mono results.

[Sokramiketes]

I tend to think about print volume in terms of being able to print a passenger car body flat (or 90 degrees).  So while DLP may have a lesser volume capability, Bryan's new machine has the capability of doing an 85' passenger car vertical. 

[Chris333]

I know I did buy one certain printer just for passenger cars  , but my newest Elegoo Mars 4 Ultra 9K is small. It is perfect for what I need and the highest resolution of anything made yet. (18 microns)

I had that craftsman resin in my watch list forever, but never bought it because I had no idea what it was. Think it was cheaper as well. Guess I'll try some.

[robert3985]

I tend to think about print volume in terms of being able to print a passenger car body flat (or 90 degrees).  So while DLP may have a lesser volume capability, Bryan's new machine has the capability of doing an 85' passenger car vertical.

Initially that's the way I thought about print volume also...3 years ago.  As long as I could fit an 85' passenger car in there some way, it served my purpose as a hobbyist.

However, times they have changed, and now that I'm doing the occasional commercial job, I need a fairly large print volume to produce many parts in a single print session...but, some of those parts are for use on N-scale models, so the resolution has to be high also, which is where the 8K 28.5 micron pixel sized, 10" LCD printers came to be my logical choice.

Sure, I could have gotten a 22micron machine, but the print envelope was too small, and frankly, after AA and blur to minimize layer lines, the difference in print quality can't be seen...especially with many popular resins only having an ultimate resolution of 50 microns.  So what that you have a machine with an LCD that has an 18, 22, 24, 28.5, 29.5 micron pixel size?  When the light gets from the LCD to the resin in the vat through four or five layers of glass, air, plastic...the actual pixel (voxel) size that cures in the resin is between 50 and 55 microns anyway....right at the resolution capabilities of the resin you might be using.

Gotta remember that the difference between an 18 micron pixel and a 24 micron pixel is 6 microns...that's 6 MILLIONTHS of a meter!  Your naked eye isn't gonna see that, even if your resin was capable of reproducing it.

Here's why a 10" 8K or 12K machine is good...lots and lots of parts in one session....

Photo (1) - Parts parts parts and more parts:


That's 1008 parts in about 40 minutes.

So, when ya gotta make a lot of detail parts, the bigger 10" 8K to 12K printers are just right....

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[ednadolski]

I wish I could tell what those parts are....

I would also love to see how one of these printers might render say an EMD SD40-2 fuel tank in N scale.

Ed

[robert3985]

I wish I could tell what those parts are....

I would also love to see how one of these printers might render say an EMD SD40-2 fuel tank in N scale.

Ed

Ed, here ya go!

Photo (1) - One raft (24 parts) of N-scale ditch lights/mu hoses Kobo style for E9's:


Photo (2) - One pair of unpainted N-scale ditch lights/mu hoses Kobo style mounted on a Kato Kobo E9:


Photo (3) - One pair of painted N-scale ditch lights/mu hoses Kobo style mounted on a Kato Kobo E9:


I designed these to mimic the Kobo 3D printed ditch lights/mu hoses but with a more robust (larger) mounting pin because several of my friends have Kobo E9's and all of them have broken or missing ditch lights/mu hoses. The Anycubic ABS-Like Resin Pro is much stronger and more flexible than the original Kobo prints, which was a big problem for Kato/Kobo and they gave warning on their packaging that great care needed to be taken with the model because of the fragile detail parts.

These will be part of a set of details to add to a Kato E9/E8 and will include these parts, a more realistic set of ditch lights/mu hoses, snowshields, modern horn array, beacon and several other parts.  Debuting soon!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[GaryHinshaw]

Nice.  Are you using the ABS-like with the DLP?  I tried it with my Mono a few years ago and wasn't happy with the soft detail, but I didn't experiment with it very much since the basic resin was so crisp, relatively.  But maybe it plays better with the DLP?

[bbussey]

Nope, I’m sticking with the DLP ceramic resin. I’m getting great results on everything so far, much better than what I was getting on the Photon Mono. I ordered a bottle of black to try.

[robert3985]

Nice.  Are you using the ABS-like with the DLP?  I tried it with my Mono a few years ago and wasn't happy with the soft detail, but I didn't experiment with it very much since the basic resin was so crisp, relatively.  But maybe it plays better with the DLP?

Gary, I'm using the newer Anycubic ABS-Like Resin Pro, but have the newest ABS-Like Resin Pro 2 on order.  Details with the ABS-Like Resin Pro are excellent, and both were/are optimized for both details and non-fragility...flexibility.

I've got some parts in the works with ultra fine standoff details..grabs, railings & mesh walkways that will test the durability of the ABS-Like Resin Pro 2, but I am sure these details will print very well.  I am, however, very happy with the results I'm getting on the E9 detail parts.

I carefully keep the temperature in my printing room between 22C & 25.5C...most of the time hovering right at 24C.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[Peachymike]

Yup.  DLP still uses FEP film on the bottom of the resin vat.

Basic differences between DLP and SLI resin printers is that DLP's don't have an LCD, and don't need to collimate UV light since they use a UV LASER as their light source.

I hope that Bob is not insulted, but I believe he has confused SLA and DLP.  Both the Anycubic and Elegoo machines are digital micro mirror devices. The light source is a UV projector (not a laser) that shines at a panel that is made up of thousands of microscopic mirror elements. These elements are flipped to either direct UV light at the vat or away from it. Light directed to the vat determines which pixels are exposed. Because of the nature of this device, it is much less susceptible to light bleed so light uniformity is about 92%. Less light bleed means that there is less light leaking into the voxel next to the one being exposed. This gives a crisper edge that is difficult to reproduce with the MSLA common in most hobbists printers. MSLA printers as we know use a light source shining through a screen and can use lenses to try to straighten the light in relation to the screen, but there is still more light bleed in these systems.
Please forgive me, but I felt there was confusion about how it works. This is one that will be interesting to see how it develops as tech and software evolve.
Mike

[robert3985]

I hope that Bob is not insulted, but I believe he has confused SLA and DLP.  Both the Anycubic and Elegoo machines are digital micro mirror devices. The light source is a UV projector (not a laser) that shines at a panel that is made up of thousands of microscopic mirror elements. These elements are flipped to either direct UV light at the vat or away from it. Light directed to the vat determines which pixels are exposed. Because of the nature of this device, it is much less susceptible to light bleed so light uniformity is about 92%. Less light bleed means that there is less light leaking into the voxel next to the one being exposed. This gives a crisper edge that is difficult to reproduce with the MSLA common in most hobbists printers. MSLA printers as we know use a light source shining through a screen and can use lenses to try to straighten the light in relation to the screen, but there is still more light bleed in these systems.
Please forgive me, but I felt there was confusion about how it works. This is one that will be interesting to see how it develops as tech and software evolve.
Mike

Ahh..Nope, I'm not insulted in the least. Although I am aware what a DMD is, I was not "fully" aware.  For some reason I thought the light source was a LASER.  I see in Anycubic's sparse information about the system that they don't say exactly what the light source is.  Yup, I might have been "confused"...or maybe just ignorant...(that's happening more and more as I approach my 75th year) about what the light source is for DLP printers.

No need to ask for forgiveness...I appreciate being corrected, and later today, I'll make corresponding corrections in my previous description...which I was wanting to keep very basic/simple... and give you Mike credit for the correction.

Thanks!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[Peachymike]

Thanks Bob, you gave a good description, but I think that it was more on an industrial level that the machines we get as hobbyist. I’ve read a ton of your posts and you are a wealth of information, that’s one of the good things about age. I’m still a young’n at 60 and already my CRS (can’t remember sh_t) disease drives me crazy some days. I had to fix one of these for a friend so already been inside to see what makes it tick.
Mike

[Simon D.]

Fauxhammer who comes from a miniatures, but still relevant perspective, does very good reviews.  He seems to think that DLP is the future, but the small build size is holding it back.


Anycubic DLP:

Elegoo DLP:

Best printers of 2023

May be helpful.

[JeffB]

Gary, I'm using the newer Anycubic ABS-Like Resin Pro, but have the newest ABS-Like Resin Pro 2 on order.  Details with the ABS-Like Resin Pro are excellent, and both were/are optimized for both details and non-fragility...flexibility.

I've got some parts in the works with ultra fine standoff details..grabs, railings & mesh walkways that will test the durability of the ABS-Like Resin Pro 2, but I am sure these details will print very well.  I am, however, very happy with the results I'm getting on the E9 detail parts.
Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

Let us know how that resin works out for you Bob...  I've been printing detail parts for myself and some friends.  Some parts print really well, but are relatively fragile (too brittle), like HO and S scale stirrup steps for narrow gauge freight cars. 

I've printed them using both Elegoo "Prime Grey" and Siraya Tech "Fast" resin, which is strong, but brittle and prone to shattering.  Would appreciate any recommendations on a more flexible, but still detail capable resin.

Jeff