Anycubic Photon

[peteski]

It would be sooo easy just to show you, for both of us, but...  I'll try to think of how to demonstrate that without typing a book but when you're push/ pulling parts that intersect with other parts and then deciding to edit them where the intersection will be different it can start some weirdness.  Better to back one out, clean it up to the original if necessary, make the edit to the other, then reinsert the first, making a new, one time, intersection.  I don't know if that helps or not. 

It helps - thanks Mark.

[u18b]

My Christmas present from Chessie System Fan was some vaporware.

Hey Dad.....  THIS is your Christmas present.......

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=311699

.....whenever I get finished with it.

Woohoo!    I love having a son with great modeling skills (growing all the time!).

And he can print both that CSX owns (Indianna and the Illinois- and then add a back porch for the West Virginia).    These are the Chessie System former hospital cars.

[timwatson]

I was told somewhere in the instructions to make a group (or component) out of the drawing before to export as an STL file.  That's what I've been doing.  I'm only using the two add-ons from Sketchup, the STL exporter and Solid Inspector II.  And slicing I've only used the one that came with the machine, manually sizing and placing the supports.  So far that has worked.

Edit add:  And I am drawing at 10x for accuracy where Sketchup won't let you draw down at .010" holes and such based on advice picked up here.  It's easy to do 10X, just moving the decimal.  When done and converted to a group I then resize the group and save that.  If editing, I explode that, blow it back up 10X, and complete the edits.   When complete, rinse and repeat.

Chris try to bring the problematic file into tinkercad and then export as STL. See if the file will print/slice correctly.

Also I just got a Photon for Christmas - so I’ll be joing in soon. Just printed a test Groot. So far out of the printers I’ve used this one is by far the simplest.

[Chris333]

Sorry not touching TinkerCAD.

I did get the Photon file validator to work. What it does is show you each layer and each pixel on each layer. And you can change those pixels. It took me about 2 hours to edit out all the triangles (and they were only on one layer!) So I got two 22' boxcars to print that are usable 

Looking closer at different layers some edges are just not flat. This is a zoom in of a flat area:


And this is after I go in a fill the missing pixels 


The thing about this edge it's only on one side of one car (2 cars side by side from the same file)

So at least I got 2 cars to work with.

[Chris333]

And here is my scrap pile 

[narrowminded]

And here is my scrap pile 

Could you estimate the resin consumed in those failed prints?  Just curious.

[narrowminded]

Sorry not touching TinkerCAD.

I did get the Photon file validator to work. What it does is show you each layer and each pixel on each layer. And you can change those pixels. It took me about 2 hours to edit out all the triangles (and they were only on one layer!) So I got two 22' boxcars to print that are usable 

The thing about this edge it's only on one side of one car (2 cars side by side from the same file)

So at least I got 2 cars to work with.

Did those pixels drop out at a feature transition or just right up the middle of a (supposed to be) flat surface? 

Is this viewing and pixel repair feature the main advantage of Validator over something simple like Solid Inspector II?  And is it a free download?  I'll guess you export the Sketchup file to the Validator as an STL, do your work and then export that STL file to the Photon Slicer?  It still bugs me how that file corrupts like that.  It doesn't seem logical for the pixels to just drop out willy-nilly.

[Chris333]

I have no idea how much resin. But if I sold all of those boxcars it would have paid for the machine.

That is a completely flat area that is about 15 layers thick and every layer had that. I didn't fix it on the good one I have and it looks fine, just showing there was more wrong than just what was wrong 

Haven't tried Solid Inspector II, have no idea what it does.

I added supports and sliced it with ChiTuBox and then opened it in the validator.

[narrowminded]

Haven't tried Solid Inspector II, have no idea what it does.

It's an add-on from Sketchup and used to check faces, intersections, and such to assure a solid model for 3D printing.  It's basic but it has gotten me through this far.  It's not 100% automatic repair and I'm not sure that is possible anyway as some errors could leave the inspector not sure what you wanted, but what it doesn't repair automatically it identifies as a problem area and upon close inspection the problem has been found and then repaired manually.  Without that I'm sure I would have gone nuts looking for problems.  Especially as a rookie at all of this.

The only other thing I've done, from the start and based on advice from... somewhere, is to, before exporting anything from Sketchup, make a group, a single entity I guess, out of the complete drawing.  I'm not sure what the reason behind that is (and kinda' don't care as long as it's working) but speculate that it further assures that the file is seen by other programs as one solid piece.  Again, this not to be some begin and end all but is just what I'm doing, based on some advice picked up along the way, and so far it has all worked.

[DKS]

Chris, I'd place bets some people would be interested in your "seconds"!

[narrowminded]

Chris, I'd place bets some people would be interested in your "seconds"!

That's true!

[timwatson]

Has anyone printing with the grey resin experienced incorrect final printed dimensions? I guess the phenomenon with AC grey is called resin bloom.

Here is a screenshot from the FB group explaining a troubleshooting session that answered the issue of a 10mm cube printing at 10.2-10.3mm.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[narrowminded]

I had that issue but just set my dimensions accordingly.  My tipper car axle pockets were coming out just a little tight, but totally repeatable, so I corrected that with the dimension. Moved the bearing blocks out .005" each, .010" total, and 24 additional chassis came out beautifully with just the right amount of axle play.  They run as free as a typical truck. 

What's interesting is that the dimension I had to move seems to agree with what those folks were experiencing.   BTW, I'm still very early in the learning curve with just a few items printed.  While it would be nice to just get the dimension you called out, the repeatability makes the predictable error tolerable.  I will be trying some other resins in the course of things and expect to learn much more.

[Chris333]

Has anyone printing with the grey resin experienced incorrect final printed dimensions? I guess the phenomenon with AC grey is called resin bloom.

Here is a screenshot from the FB group explaining a troubleshooting session that answered the issue of a 10mm cube printing at 10.2-10.3mm.

(Attachment Link)

That same guy has been trying to push the limits. He has some program that can shrink everything by 2 pixels and has printed threads that can screw into each other.

[Lemosteam]

I had that issue but just set my dimensions accordingly.  My tipper car axle pockets were coming out just a little tight, but totally repeatable, so I corrected that with the dimension. Moved the bearing blocks out .005" each, .010" total, and 24 additional chassis came out beautifully with just the right amount of axle play.  They run as free as a typical truck. 

What's interesting is that the dimension I had to move seems to agree with what those folks were experiencing.   BTW, I'm still very early in the learning curve with just a few items printed.  While it would be nice to just get the dimension you called out, the repeatability makes the predictable error tolerable.  I will be trying some other resins in the course of things and expect to learn much more.

Repeatability aside, if you don't see this as an issue then I do. Accurate printing is crucial. I have kits with dissimilar materials and I could not spend more time changing cad models eveytime something doesn't fit. My cad models are so intertwined with parametric related dimensions I would risk the model blowing up in cad. This has been my biggest issue with SW.