Advice on resin printing

[Dave Ward]

Maybe he doesn't want the transport costs

Transporting the chemicals could be problematical ( like aerosol spray paint cans ) - they attract quite a hefty surcharge. As an aside - I lost count of the 3D printers I looked at, only to find they were 'collect in person' some great bargains to be had, if you were prepared to go to Aberdeen, or anywhere North of the Border - I can well understand people not wanting the hassle of packing & despatching something bulky & fragile.
If the sale is local, I'd think to ask if you could have a quick demonstration & check the best by dates on the chemicals..........
Dave

[nickedw]

My ten penneth having done a bit, is to stump up for a wash/curer unit as well as printer day one as offered in your bundle. I personally consider this essential now for modelling anything with detail. Also, the cleanup is the most off putting part when you’re starting out.

The resin is nasty stuff and gets everywhere and sticks! The biggest mess is manual cleanup. A proper washer unit makes 99% of this go away and ensures all the resin is cleared out of all the nooks and crannies of detail it otherwise wouldn’t be. Mainly though, you are more likely to continue. I nearly gave up before I got my first washer then everything changed and I never looked back.

Be aware the technology is moving quickly and honestly, I think 3D resin printers are the biggest bargain in the world if you look at the cost vs what they can do. You want monochrome, not colour, which sounds counterintuitive but isn’t. So the opposite of tellys if you’re old enough to remember B&W .
4K is a minimum now for a small printer, 8k for larger and the newer machines are 5 or 6 times quicker than the older ones.

You can get a brand new Mars 2 pro for 200 quid which is broadly equivalent to the machine you’re looking at. The screens and UV light sources have a life as well, so you won’t know how many hours it’s got on it, and you don’t want to be swapping screens out in your first steps really. So personally I would always choose a new machine every time.

You’ll end with more than one anyway most likely. I did!



Don’t worry about light. The machines all have uv covers, I often leave resin in mine for long periods, you shouldn’t really but it’s never been a problem in my experience.

Also my advice would be don’t be tempted by the larger machines to start with, they are orders of magnitude more difficult to get working reliably and I’m still grappling with some of mine now a year after acquiring them. I won’t bore you, but they don’t scale well, things that work on a small printer will often fail on a big printer for various reasons I am slowly coming to understand.

All my filament stuff has been in the loft for years, I never used it either. I resin print most days now. It’s night and day between the two technologies for us modellers IMHO.

[nickedw]

Thanks Dave. I'm still toying with the idea as it might just end up as an expensive ornament! The Ender 3 sat for nearly a year untouched :surprised:

If we do decide to go for it I'll keep you updated as we fudge our way through. It comes with around 9kg of resin so I think running costs would be hard to calculate as that should last a while.

BTW your slicer will tell you the exact resin cost for each print as long as you tell it the per litre price to start with, so it’s easy to know exactly what each piece has cost if you’re thinking of doing this commercially

[Tim Marlow]

Just out of interest, how do they cope with temperature variation? I see yours are mounted in the garage Nick. Do they cope well with Winter and high Summer temperatures or is your garage heated/cooled to keep temperature relatively stable?

[nickedw]

Just out of interest, how do they cope with temperature variation? I see yours are mounted in the garage Nick. Do they cope well with Winter and high Summer temperatures or is your garage heated/cooled to keep temperature relatively stable?

Maybe not obvious in the pictures but I’ve added temperature control/heaters (the red LED displays) for the larger printers, the small machines are less critical and don’t require it in my experience. The issue is resin viscosity with larger vats, when it’s cold, the resin isn’t liquid enough to flow back into place quickly enough and warming it up fixes this.

[Tim Marlow]

So the cold causes less of a problem with the resin feed on the smaller Mars 2? I would have thought smaller volumes in the reservoir would be more prone to cold temperature issues?

[nickedw]

So the cold causes less of a problem with the resin feed on the smaller Mars 2? I would have thought smaller volumes in the reservoir would be more prone to cold temperature issues?

It’s area, the area of resin being displaced when the plate lifts is relatively small compared to the big machines so yes, it still happens just the same but the areas are so small it doesn’t matter and you get away with it. Same thing with the FEP flexing and lifting, you don’t notice on a small machine, the prints fail on the larger ones.

[nickedw]

I didn’t explain that very well.

As the build plate lifts, it forms a vacuum/suction with the previous layer, and when this breaks with the lift, the resin has to flow back into the void created so it has to travel from the edges of the plate back to the centre, even when it’s cold and thick, the time this takes on a small printer is always less than the combined, lift, dwell (if you have it set) return time as it’s never very far back to the middle.

As you get bigger build plates, the time this flow back takes to happen as the distances are further, is longer. When it gets longer than the time the lift, dwell, drop cycle takes, that’s when you get problems. So you can either wait - add dwell time, which slows your already slow printing down, or heat the resin to make it flow quicker, or some combination of both.

I’m interested in repeatability above all, so I fix my resin temperature and test it completely, so when I do get failures I know it’s not that. Believe me, there are plenty of other reasons your prints fail so eliminating just one factor is a major advantage.

[Andy T]

Thanks for the additional info Nick.

As it happens my buddy has just become a dad again, so with a whole new set of priorities we've put this on the back burner for a while.

I'm usually one for buying new as at least you know what you're getting. Even though, like most technology these days, it's probably been superceded by the time you've taken delivery :smiling5:

He prefers a second hand bargain, which to be fair worked out well with the Ender, but I think in this case it might be better to go box fresh so that we aren't inheriting someone else's problems.

Interesting to see that although it seemed like such a bargain at the time, the job lot we were looking at still hasn't sold.

[Tim Marlow]

I didn’t explain that very well.

As the build plate lifts, it forms a vacuum/suction with the previous layer, and when this breaks with the lift, the resin has to flow back into the void created so it has to travel from the edges of the plate back to the centre, even when it’s cold and thick, the time this takes on a small printer is always less than the combined, lift, dwell (if you have it set) return time as it’s never very far back to the middle.

As you get bigger build plates, the time this flow back takes to happen as the distances are further, is longer. When it gets longer than the time the lift, dwell, drop cycle takes, that’s when you get problems. So you can either wait - add dwell time, which slows your already slow printing down, or heat the resin to make it flow quicker, or some combination of both.

I’m interested in repeatability above all, so I fix my resin temperature and test it completely, so when I do get failures I know it’s not that. Believe me, there are plenty of other reasons your prints fail so eliminating just one factor is a major advantage.

I get it now. I was thinking of flow from the reservoir, not over the build plate area. Thanks Nick.

[nickedw]

I get it now. I was thinking of flow from the reservoir, not over the build plate area. Thanks Nick.

This is the trouble, there’s so much witchcraft and nonsense out there it’s knowing what to believe because obviously you can’t actually see any of this happening and have to try and figure out what’s happening yourself looking at a failed print.

In the end I ignored everything and did my own testing from first principles and worked everything out myself.

Bed levelling is the classic one, the piece of paper thing is nowhere near what it should be for example. Setting z=0 probably doesn’t do what you think it does either! I’ve got dialled in prints now that stick every time and have no elephant foot. I simply drew and printed a 20mm cube, measured it, usually accurate on most machines apart from height, which will be short. How ever short it is add that distance to your z offset and you’re done.

Once again, it’s not critical on a small machine (why the paper thing works at all) but it really is on a big one. You waste a lot more resin every time on a Jupiter too!

Various software/firmware (slicer/machine itself) does stuff to your first layer to ‘help’ so any calibration you do outside of normal printing has to be taken with a pinch of salt. By measuring an actual print and then compensating you can eliminate all that.

This all learnt the hard way, I have an ever growing collection of empty resin bottles to prove it.

Have fun

Nick

[Gern]

My ten penneth having done a bit, is to stump up for a wash/curer unit as well as printer day one as offered in your bundle. I personally consider this essential now for modelling anything with detail. Also, the cleanup is the most off putting part when you’re starting out.

The resin is nasty stuff and gets everywhere and sticks! The biggest mess is manual cleanup. A proper washer unit makes 99% of this go away and ensures all the resin is cleared out of all the nooks and crannies of detail it otherwise wouldn’t be. Mainly though, you are more likely to continue. I nearly gave up before I got my first washer then everything changed and I never looked back.

Be aware the technology is moving quickly and honestly, I think 3D resin printers are the biggest bargain in the world if you look at the cost vs what they can do. You want monochrome, not colour, which sounds counterintuitive but isn’t. So the opposite of tellys if you’re old enough to remember B&W :smiling3:.
4K is a minimum now for a small printer, 8k for larger and the newer machines are 5 or 6 times quicker than the older ones.

You can get a brand new Mars 2 pro for 200 quid which is broadly equivalent to the machine you’re looking at. The screens and UV light sources have a life as well, so you won’t know how many hours it’s got on it, and you don’t want to be swapping screens out in your first steps really. So personally I would always choose a new machine every time.

You’ll end with more than one anyway most likely. I did!



Don’t worry about light. The machines all have uv covers, I often leave resin in mine for long periods, you shouldn’t really but it’s never been a problem in my experience.

Also my advice would be don’t be tempted by the larger machines to start with, they are orders of magnitude more difficult to get working reliably and I’m still grappling with some of mine now a year after acquiring them. I won’t bore you, but they don’t scale well, things that work on a small printer will often fail on a big printer for various reasons I am slowly coming to understand.

All my filament stuff has been in the loft for years, I never used it either. I resin print most days now. It’s night and day between the two technologies for us modellers IMHO.

My first thought was "That looks like a huge capital investment" - including your new milling m/c. Then I thought, there are quite a few guys on here who have workbench and airbrush/paint set-ups which cost many hundreds of pounds, so maybe your investment isn't so huge in comparison.

Any chance of a quick 'essentials list' including any 'puter programs etc? I doubt whether it's the kind of thing I'd do, but there are sure to be some guys on the forum who might be interested.

[nickedw]

My first thought was "That looks like a huge capital investment" - including your new milling m/c. Then I thought, there are quite a few guys on here who have workbench and airbrush/paint set-ups which cost many hundreds of pounds, so maybe your investment isn't so huge in comparison.

Any chance of a quick 'essentials list' including any 'puter programs etc? I doubt whether it's the kind of thing I'd do, but there are sure to be some guys on the forum who might be interested.

Erm, I’ve got the airbrush thing too. My kit was built up over many years, with the CNC Carvera as the latest piece.

It’s horses for courses, but if you’re interested in making mechanical things - engines, gearboxes, suspension, instrument panels etc, as I am, you need a solid modelling CAD system. My weapon of choice for this is Fusion 360 which you can start for free with a trial and then hobbyists (Also free) license.
It’s extremely powerful but comes with a steep learning curve.
I learnt it pretty fast with Linked-in learning, or Lynda as it used to be called, again you can start with a trial. I use this for teaching myself everything including Adobe creative cloud so photoshop, illustrator, and a bunch of other stuff I use for work unrelated to this - premiere pro, after effects, lightroom etc,etc.

You can learn stuff with YouTube but you don’t know what you’re getting. Linked-in learning is the gold standard and fastest way in IMHO.

If you want to make curvy stuff - car bodies, aircraft etc the. You need something else, blender is extremely powerful and also free, and an excellent place to start.

What’s the difference I hear you ask? Whilst they both let you create 3D objects, Fusion 360 is an engineering thing, so geometry, dimensions mechanical forms with accuracy. Blender is more of a sculpting tool where you can push, pull, shape and sculpt forms that are more organic or irregular - car bodies, seats, even figures and faces etc potentially.

Both of these programs ultimately let you create mesh objects, typically something.stl this is what you need for 3D printing. If you want to drive a CNC machine, you then need something CAM capable. Happily fusion 360 does this too, there’s a lot more to this, but it takes you CAD drawing and uses it to create machine instructions to cut your piece (GCODE) this a pretty big subject so let’s stick to printing for now.

You’ll need a 3D capable, reasonably up to date machine to run this stuff too. I built myself a monster 28 way i9 machine, more for photogrammetry and 8k video work, but it eats this workload as well



You don’t need anything this big, i5+ with 3D is sufficient.

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted the Cosworth DFV model sulking on my fusion screen in this shot - more on that later

As to printers, I’ve nailed my colours to the mast with ELEGOO, so Mars 2 pro or up is a great machine.

You then need a slicer, this takes the 3D .stl file and literally slices it up into printable layers as well as batching and adding supports if required. The main players here are Chitubox and Lychee both are pretty good if a little quirky. I use both.

Broadly that’s all you need. Sorry if most of this is unintelligible if you have questions just let me know.

Nick

[Dave Ward]

Nick,
where I have problems with is the computer - you need a fast computer with plenty of RAM and good graphics. My PC is long in the tooth, runs windows 10, and really struggles to opem & process larger 3D files - I will be replacing this ageing machine, but as it does everything else I want well, I'm loth to replace it for just for one reason! - as a pure hobbyist, it's not the highest priority. As a slicer, I use PrusaSlicer, it's just the one I'm familiar with and I know where all the settings are hidden ( for FDM, of course ). I use Microsoft 3D Builder for splitting parts ( usually models ready for resin printing ) & it seems to repair & simplify models without any fuss.
You can get some good stuff from YouTube - but you should be cautious about following some advice. The reviews are very subjective, and what may be labelled a mistake or failure can be immaterial to others - like touch screens - it improves the ease of use, but does it add to the quality of the print? Wi-Fi? OK, it stops the strenuous task of moving your micro SD cards/USB sticks from computer to printer!, but does it improve print quality?
If you're dabbling in commercial use for your printer, OK, then no problems - the latest machines with the highest resolution will be needed, but do you really want that, as a hobbyist, are you paying for something you don't need?
I must admit, when I started the 3D printing in January, I was carried away - running before I could walk fitted exactly - printing things that I hadn't thought through ( like my 1/35 Bailey Bridge parts - not really realising the sheer size of it ).
You should have definite aims, and be prepared for a lot of grief and frustration before you start producing prints that begin to approach you expectations
Dave

[nickedw]

There’s some things that can help with PCs - I used to be head of technology for a large global company BTW so this isn’t ‘bloke in the pub said…’ advice.

If your motherboard will take it and most recent ones do, buy an M.2 SSD drive, it doesn’t need to be big, 500GB is more than sufficient.

Boot from and install windows on this - just windows. Put all your other stuff, files etc on your existing hard drive. You don't even really need to remove windows from the old drive yet if you're nervous, just point to the M.2 as your boot drive and dont touch your old one, leave it connected as it is and you will still see all your existing content.

This will do 2 or 3 things - M2 is orders of magnitude faster than standard SSDs and leaves mechanical spinny disks for dead so your boot up time will reduce dramatically straight away.

But also it will allow you to flatten windows every 3 months or so (I do it about this often) very easily and quickly without affecting your other stuff.

All windows versions slow down over time and reinstalling regularly, fixes this.

All the so called tune-up stuff you can buy doesn’t do a great deal and I personally wouldn’t bother.

Do this instead. It’s far more effective.

Don’t install Norton or any of the mainstream anti virus stuff either, it’s all bloaty beyond belief and hammers your machine performance more than anything else.

Avast or AVG anti virus are probably the least impacting. You can’t uninstall Norton etc properly either by the way, it leaves hooks and junk. Either, don’t install it in the first place or re-install windows to get rid of it properly.

And yes, RAM is good, get more if you can. If you can't, again M2 works at RAM speed (more or less) so even if you are paging due to lack of memory this makes it a hell of a lot better.

These things will give you typically 20% to 40% performance boost for little or no outlay and a bit of effort.