Designing for current gen resin printing

[Jesse6669]

Where was that from?  The best deal I've seen of late for a Sonic Mini-8K (not the 8KS) is the $446 Mini-8K + 1 spare LCD "Bundle" on Amazon. 

 

https://global.phrozen3d.com/collections/lcd-3d-printers/products/sonic-mini-8k 

I have had good success with Phrozen M8K so far-- the devil you know?  I don't print directly on the plate--but point taken.  I had to replace the LCD on my last one as half of it died from being smooshed.  I'm mostly interested in trying the new RPG resin (I got a couple bottles). 

[Jesse6669]

I don't leave the vat on the printer, even though the picture above suggests that.  I worry that if there was a small leak (haven't had one) in the film on the bottom of the vat it could end up on the printer glass.  Putting on the mat between the printer and wash-n-cure station prevents that possibility from happening.  The vat has a cover to prevent light getting to the resin and I cover the....

I have kept resin in the vat--with the hood on of course--for up to several weeks of non-use, without covering the printer with a sheet or anything else--the room does have shades however and unit was not in direct light.  Not saying you should do this, just that it worked for me... 

I'll need to try that RGM painting knife ($11.25 on Amazon).
Jesse

[JeffB]

 

https://global.phrozen3d.com/collections/lcd-3d-printers/products/sonic-mini-8k 

I have had good success with Phrozen M8K so far-- the devil you know?  I don't print directly on the plate--but point taken.  I had to replace the LCD on my last one as half of it died from being smooshed.  I'm mostly interested in trying the new RPG resin (I got a couple bottles).

Thanks....

I've had pretty good success with my Mini-8K as well...  I wasted the original LCD two months into using it by trying to clean a dried splash of IPA/resin off the LCD with Acetone (DO NOT do this!) which either reacted with the LCD screen material itself, or ate away at a coating applied over it. 

The new LCD has been working just fine, but I bought two spares just in case.

I actually still use my original AnyCubic Photon I to print parts right on the build plate.  The parts don't have a lot of detail, so there's no issues with loss of detail or lack of detail clarity.  But I did buy a Mars 4 Ultra, for the same reason, but I've been saving it to use for resin to cast brass 3D printing.

Jeff

[JeffB]

Is resin that has not been opened but old (a few years) a potential problem?

I'm not going to say that it won't be Scott, but you might find that whatever settings you dial in, might need to be adjusted once you switch to a newer bottle down the line.

There's a "sell by" date on most of the resin bottles you buy now days, and you're probably better off using by that date, or soon after.

But others might have a more informed opinion on this matter.

Jeff

[Sumner]

I have kept resin in the vat--with the hood on of course.....

I haven't looked it up but does the hood color block any light that would start to cure the resin?  Since I don't leave the vat on the printer under the hood I cover it with a piece of ceral box cardboard and a piece of plywood cut to the shape of the vat top.  I have those other covers that snap on but the plywood/cardboard is easier to lift off.

I can say with embarrassment that you don't want to have the wash-n-cure in the 'cure mode' when you have the wash container with the print in it in the station.  Did that once for only maybe 10-15 seconds before I turned the light off and that sure made a mess in the wash  .

.....I'll need to try that RGM painting knife ($11.25 on Amazon).
Jesse

Let us know how you like it.  I love mine.

Pry up near the handle in the fat part just enough to slide it under and then saw it back and forth along under the print.  A friend tried to pry the print totally off by prying only at the corner and broke his.  I've use mine for a ton of prints with no problem.  Like it since it works on the smallest of prints and the largest also.

Sumner

[Jesse6669]

does the hood color block any light that would start to cure the resin?  Since I don't leave the vat on the printer under the hood I cover it with a piece of ceral box cardboard and a piece of plywood cut to the shape of the vat top.  I have those other covers that snap on but the plywood/cardboard is easier to lift off.

Yes, the hood filters out UV light (at least the Phrozen one does--it's an amber color).  I would double-check but I'm fairly certain the other companies hoods do as well.
Also, I have multiple vats filled with different resins and store the second one uncovered, but in a drawer.  The drawer must be pretty light-tight though.
This thread is turning into an FAQ!

[turbowhiz]

I'm not going to say that it won't be Scott, but you might find that whatever settings you dial in, might need to be adjusted once you switch to a newer bottle down the line.

There's a "sell by" date on most of the resin bottles you buy now days, and you're probably better off using by that date, or soon after.

But others might have a more informed opinion on this matter.

Jeff

Yes, it has a shelf life. Its often specified by the resin manufacturer, but failing that I wouldn't assume its much more then ~1 year.

Don't bother if its older... Just buy fresh.

[Scottl]

Thanks both, I won't chance it.

[Chris333]

My printers are right next to a window and my curing light. The cover blocks all the UV light.

[robert3985]

I've been 3D resin printing now for about five years...on and off (mostly off) until about 1.5 years ago when I got a contract that would pay for a new top-of-the-line resin printer, so, I thought that was a good deal!...and it was.

I started out with the basic small Anycubic Photon printer because I'd seen results that I would be happy with posted here at TRW, and for N-scale, it would (from the spec's) print just about anything I was planning on making, and I wasn't disappointed.

However, I WAS disappointed in the brittleness of the different resins I experimented with as well as the limited colors that were available at the time.

I produced several different things, not only in N-scale, but for paying customers, which quickly paid for my equipment and resin.

However, I didn't have a problem finding solutions to my printing problems on YouTube, and I still refer to various YouTubers' and their advice, some of whom I depend on when I encounter a problem.

BUT, I did my research beforehand, and I was fully aware that 3D printing has a number of unpleasant things about it, plus it can definitely be temperamental.

The main "unpleasant things" about it is the odor and toxicity of the resin, and the cautions that are necessary to ensure you don't breathe the fumes too much (whatever that is) or get any resin on your skin or clothes without being able to immediately remove it with ISP.

The other "unpleasant" thing is the ISP and/or denatured alcohol that I decided to use for washing my printed parts and cleaning up.  First, ISP is also toxic, its fumes are irritating and it's an expensive component to the whole printing process.  AND it is highly flammable.  Denatured Alcohol, which is also called "fuel" is just as flammable or maybe even more, and stinks too.

Being the methodical person I am, I knew that I needed to have an inside room that I could ventilate properly, and where I could control the temperature between 22 C and 26 C...not too hot in the Summer and at least "room temperature" in the Winter.  Luckily, I already had an adequate spray booth for my model painting that I made decades ago, which was in my quite spacious laundry/utility room and vented outside through a window I'd blocked off with plywood & Styrofoam.

Then, I needed an adequate, sturdy workbench that I could precisely level, where I had room to work with my 3D prints as well as have plenty of room for both my printer and my wash & cure.  My reloading bench worked great for that purpose since I don't reload any more, and it got leveled and bolted to the east wall of my laundry room, next to my spray booth.

A couple of years later, I had a customer inquire about producing several hundred track-laying tools for him to sell, and I knew I was gonna need a bigger machine...which I wanted anyway.  After watching a lot of reviews of various 3D resin printers on YouTube, I settled on the Anycubic Photon M3 Premium 10" 8K printer, which was built much more robustly and precisely than any other printer at that moment of time...but, was about $700.  Not more than two days after I'd made my decision, Anycubic had a sale on that printer...for $399...and I bought one along with a much larger wash & cure to accommodate the larger prints and build plate, along with some new resin which sounded like it would be perfect for both large items as well as very fine, detailed parts.

So, I switched out my much smaller older Photon and my little original wash & cure when the new, MUCH larger machines arrived, and it took me about half a day to get them both set up, build plate mounting screws replaced with non-hex socket bolts (so the resin would easily drain off of the plain stainless hex-head bolts I bought to replace them), leveling the build-plate, preparing my resin and then running a couple of RERF prints to get my exposure time properly dialed in.

Okay...this "story" so far has explained how I took care of some of resin printings "unpleasantries".  For my printing to be consistent, I commandeered a small room in my home where I already had my spray booth set up...which exhausts both resin and alcohol fumes, but also paint thinner, Bestine and Acetone fumes.

I bought a machine that included two activated carbon air filters in the build chamber also (one of its many selling points), which takes care of most of the resin fumes while printing.

For physical consistency, I bought a machine that was built much more robustly than other 10" machines, making sure it had twin guide rails, a ball screw rather than just a lead screw for extra Z-axis accuracy...and that it had a sub-30micron LCD (28.5microns) to maximize detail accuracy on my prints, and an excellent lighting system and wireless network capability. 

I bought a couple of accurate thermometers to monitor the room temperature and the resin temperature just to make sure the resin is at an optimal temperature for both reliable and accurate prints.

Earlier, I had bought three silicone dog-feeding mats to mount my printer and wash & cure on, making any spills or drippage I might have fairly easy to both contain and clean up.

I also mounted a paper towel rack on the wall to hold a big roll of paper towels for quick and easy access.

When I print, I always listen to the printing process for the first few minute to hear the "pop" of the separation of the raft every few seconds which means it's sticking to the build plate going up and down which it's supposed to do and not to the NFEP on the bottom of the resin vat. 

Both my slicing app and my printer tell me approximately how long it's gonna take for my print to finish up, so I set a timer on my phone for that amount of time.  Generally, I let the finished print drain for about half an hour while it's still attached to the now not-moving build plate.

When I remove the build plate from the printer, I set it down on an edge so that it will drain more for another few minutes (or longer if you want).  I put down at least three layers of paper towels on my silicone mats to catch the resin draining from the print and the build plate at the new angle.

Because my parts are so small, when I wash them, I leave them on the build plate and immerse both my prints and the build plate simultaneously into my 91% IPA, usually for 4 minutes and then check them to see if they need more cleaning...which will depend on their orientation usually.  If they need more cleaning, I'll invert my build plate (with the print still attached) and wash them for another four minutes.

After I'm happy with the first wash, I then immerse my build plate with attached print in one of my smaller wash & cure's wash buckets filled with clean denatured alcohol.  I only swish it around for a minute or two, which cleans off any sticky raw resin.

Then, I set the build plate and attached print on its edge on at least three sheets of clean paper towels, and wait for the print to drain and the rest of the denatured alcohol to evaporate.

If I happen to get any resin on my gloved hands or drips on my machines during this whole process, I clean them off with a towel folded and soaked with IPA as quickly as possible, usually during washing or draining.  Both of my machines look to be brand new, even though I've used them a few times a week for the last year and a half.

I know I'm gonna need paper towels and IPA during this process, so I tear off and fold a few paper towels and place them in an easily reached location along with a bottle of 91% IPA, with its spout-top open for easy, quick access.

I also don't wear sandals, or good shoes or boots when I'm printing, nor any clothes that I might ruin if I get resin on them.  If I drip resin on my floor, I clean it up quickly because I don't want to be tracking uncured resin around my house.

In my waste basket, I have a white liner with a draw-string, and I put soaked paper towels and other things that may have uncured resin on them in this trash liner, then pull the drawstring pretty tight to keep fumes contained. When it's full, I'll take it outside in the sun for a couple of days to cure the waste resin, then throw it in the trash.

After my print is dry (no more IPA or Denature Alcohol on it) I start removing the rafts from the surface of my build plate.  I've found this is very easy to do by starting to lift the raft from the build plate by placing the steel spatula's corner of the tapered edge, just barely past one corner of the resin raft, then levering the far side of the scraper upward gently which easily lifts a corner of the raft up and breaks the vacuum seal holding it on to the build plate.  I lever them towards the wall, not the front edge of my work table, because sometimes they will pop off, and I don't want them hitting my concrete floor!  They lever up and pop off very evenly and quickly using this gentle and slow method.

After the prints are off of the build plate, I'll wipe the build plate with a paper towel lightly soaked with IPA to get any residual uncured resin off...then I put it back on my printer. 

I then remove my large wash container from my wash & cure, and put my reflector and turntable on my wash & cure, and arrange as many parts onto the clear turntable as I can...set the timer for 6 minutes, replace my wash & cure's top, and let it cure.

For my small, thin parts, six minutes is plenty of time for them to cure completely using my big Anycubic Wash & Cure Plus.

Since most of my parts I'm producing will ship still attached to their raft, I don't remove them at this point, and I've engineered how they're attached to their rafts to allow them to be easily painted before removal, which makes that process verrrry easy, with minimal touch-up required because I attempt to support my parts where the support nubs won't be seen when the parts are removed and mounted on the models.

Whenever I get resin on my gloves, I wipe them down with an IPA soaked paper towel, dropping the towel directly into my trash bucket with its white liner.  I attempt to be extremely aware of my surroundings when I'm preparing my printer for printing and when I'm processing the uncured print so that I don't forget any steps or get careless and slop/drip resin where it shouldn't be, and I don't answer phone calls when I need to be concentrating. 

During the process, it's not unusual for me to change gloves two or three times because I don't like the moisture that accumulates in them.  Because I'm wearing two gloves, it's pretty easy to strip them off turning them inside out when they remove from my hands and fingers, so that any resin that may still be on them is INSIDE the inside-out gloves...and I don't touch the outside surface of the gloves with my bare fingers...EVER.

Since the vast majority of my printing is done with one kind of resin, Anycubic ABS-Like Resin Pro2 (grey), I leave it in the resin vat, sitting in my printer with the lid attached, and I rarely remove it from the printer.  I've left it for several months that way, with absolutely zero negative effects to what I'm printing, as long as I stir it well with a silicone cooking spatula so that it's not "swirly" looking.

When I have another type of resin to use, I take the resin vat that's got my most commonly used resin in it off of the printer, and replace it with another empty resin vat, which I fill with whatever resin I need.  When I'm done printing with the alternate resin I rarely use, THEN, I dump the excess alternate resin in the vat back into its bottle, and clean THAT resin vat, put it into its plastic bag and set it aside for next time...then put my most-used resin vat back on to my machine, close the lid, and I'm ready for my next print.

When I have a failure, which happens very seldom, I remove the failed print (most of it usually attached to the build plate) along with the build plate just like I do with prints that are not failures.  However, I don't want any of the failed print to be either stuck to my NFEP membrane or floating around in my resin, so I take a scrap support that's long enough to stick out of the resin in my resin tank, place it where the corner of my print would be, directly on the NFEP membrane and hold it in place (if I need to do that) and, using the exposure checker on my machine, press the LED checker and then expose for a minute.  I then remove the resin tank, and gently pressing upward on my NFEP directly under where the scrap support is sticking out of the liquid resin, until I hear a slight "pop" or series of "pops"...I gently lever up the cured layer I've just created (using the scrap support stuck to the layer of cured resin) and it peels nicely and gently off of the surface of the NFEP, with any stray parts or supports stuck to it, essentially cleaning the vat with no scraping or possible stretching or puncturing of the fragile NFEP membrane.  More modern 3D printers have a tool in their OS's called "Tank Clean" or something like that which does the same thing.  This is an easy, effective, quick and safe way of cleaning your resin tank's NFEP membrane.

Whenever I receive a new bottle of resin, I look to see if there's printing or a sticker that says when it was made, which is usually in very small letters...so, using a Sharpie, I write that date much larger on the bottle so I see it every time I use the bottle...making it easy to see if my resin has expired.  Frankly, I've used resins that were several months...or a LOT of months "expired" and they still worked just fine, but, ya never know and if you've got product to manufacture and sell, you don't want failures after the product has been sold and shipped to your customer...so I'd rather err on the side of being cautious.

I don't have any small children or pets in my house, so not emptying my resin vat doesn't impinge on anyone's safety, and I keep my spray booth's fan going continually, taking care of any vapor leakage coming from under the cover of my printer.

This is my methodology for keeping things clean, efficient and trouble-free, as well as relatively safe. 

When I print, I'm not experiencing any stress or frustration doing the regular things that need to be done, since I know pretty much exactly how I'm going to do them, so any frustration I might have due to a failed print is minimized because my printing room is clean, organized, relatively odor free and I'm prepared for most contingencies.

I decided to subscribe to Lychee as my slicer of choice, but I've had good success with Chitubox Basic and Anycubic Photon Workshop in the past.  Lychee Pro (or whatever it's called now) is a few dollars more a month than it was a few months ago, but nothing extravagantly out of line.  Because I'm producing accurately scaled parts from prototype drawings, it makes it easy to measure and scale my parts before printing. and has a handy cutting feature that I need sometimes. 

Frankly, between Lychee and Chitubox, either slicer will most likely give you everything you need, especially the subscription versions.

Since basic setup for your particular printer, your particular resin, your particular slicer app, your particular environment is different than anybody else's, giving specific information about how to get started with your setup is difficult to do, which is why I haven't attempted to do so. 

However, how to proceed efficiently and cleanly, and what precautions to take because of the common needs and problems of almost all of 3D printing and the materials used to enable it IS possible, and the above is how I handle it.

If you would like to watch a few very useful and informative slicer and machine setup tutorials on YouTube, I highly recommend two content creators, my favorite being FauxHammer and next, VogMan. Both have helped me immensely in how to understand what all the variables are when setting up my slicer, what machine to purchase (good and bad points) and they have a lot of info about resin printing get-started-basics...and how to not have failures, as well as very unbiased equipment reviews.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore