Would you buy a resin printer????

[dunginhawk]

Good morning...
So i am looking at yet another 3d printer... AS it stands now I have owned a rostock max v2 (sold) and currently own a Makerfarm Prusa I3v 12, a Flashforge Creator Pro, and a Taz 5.
Ive been fortunate enough to have paid for these a few times over so im looking to make the next leap.
I know there are a lot of threads on resin printers etc but id like to see what you guys think about using it as another tool in my arsenal.

1. Doesnt seem to be any affordable (5k or less) resin printers that have any build volume at all. All very small
2. Ease of use... They seem actually easier to use than FDM, set a couple parameters and go.
3. Obviously cleaning the parts etc is a pain, but I can get past that.
4. Color and material choice is quite limited right now correct?

I love the idea of a resin based printer, its resolution etc. Just curious as to where you all fall on it?
thanks

[curious aardvark]

well you might want to start with a peachy. Build volume - pretty much whatever you like.
cheaper than a litre or two of the resin.
And almost ready to buy.

I guess it depends entirely on what you want to print.

Colour and material - not as limited as you might think. You can get resin in most colours and flexble as well as rigid resins.
Expensive, but available.

[dunginhawk]

So the peachy is a cool idea and may be fun to play with, but the quality isnt very good, and the resin is brittle and not great.
Although it may be able to use other resins also?
if the quality was any good id buy one.

[awerby]

I've been using a couple of them; the Form1+ and the B9 Creator. Both are fairly small, but they both offer much better detail than any FFF printer. The B9 is mostly intended for jewelry and small sculptures; its resin burns out well, so you can use them as patterns for metal castings. Neither is as easy to use as it might seem, but the B9 has had fewer problems than the Form1. Dealing with the resins is messy; they tend to drip where you don't want them to, especially in the Form1, which has all its delicate mirrors and electronics open underneath the tray. Material selections are limited, although Formlabs has put a lot of energy into developing different resins, so they're offering their standard resin in clear, gray, white, and black plus they've got "tough" and "flexible" ones as well. The jury's still out on how well their "castable" resin really works. None of it's particularly cheap, though.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[dunginhawk]

I ordered a peachy just to goof around with... quality is terrible so id never use it for anything... Im wondering why the quality is so bad... what is the variable in the equation that is causing the poor quality?
Could you make the laser come to a finer point? Is the water dripping in to the reservoir causing slight movement/vibration of the part?
There has to be a way to get better quality. the quality is so variable too, some places looks ok, others really bad which makes me think there is some vibration or randomness in the equation.

[Brumbaer]

I have an Ultimaker 2 and an B9Creator 1.2 at home.
I don't use the Ultimaker anymore.
The Ultimaker has 2 advantages, build space and toughness of the finished model. The B9Creator has 2 advantages, incredible print quality and less restrictions when designing.
I haven't used the Ultimaker in nearly a year. I use the B9Creator daily (counted over a year, probably every other day).

I do miniatures for war-games. Soldiers, vehicles, buildings etc.. The casual onlooker does not see the difference in quality between a printed miniature and one bought.
Some things like building get decent results on the Ultimaker, but decent is only enough, if you can't get good or very good.

There are things the Ultimaker is better suited for, but I almost never print those.

As the main advantage of a resin printer is print quality, you should buy the best you can afford. Expecting the Peachy Printer to deliver high quality prints is IMHO naive. ANd a bad resin printer is not better than a good FDM, printer, so why not buy an FDM printer and get the FDM advantages as well.

Resin printers are more messy, because fluids are more messy than solids. Post production is a skill you learn. I remove the build table, use a knife to remove the model, put it in a jar with IPA, put the jar in an US cleaner (filled with water) for some minutes. Get the model out, remove the supports and I'm done. At least with the B9 you do not have to clean and empty the vat after every print.

Whether to buy a resin or an FDM printer is just a matter of what you want to print (and the money available ). If the models are small and full of detail, buy a good resin printer. If you need large or sturdy models use an FDM printer.
Of course you can use tricks, like making making copies of the model and cast them in metal or cut the model up into multiple pieces, or add details with prefabricated parts.

[dunginhawk]

I already own three printers so im pretty set with FDM. I may sell the FFCP and the MF and get another taz, for customer users, but the resin would be more for trying to make more of a business out of this. goof around. have fun
Right now the resin would likely be a curiousity . but im sure i could make some money off of it.

The quality of the peachy shouldnt be something that isnt fixable though.. sure its a little strange looking and cheaply built, but the premise is the same as any other, laser cures resin. it should be possible to increase its quality...

[Brumbaer]

I already own three printers so im pretty set with FDM. I may sell the FFCP and the MF and get another taz, for customer users, but the resin would be more for trying to make more of a business out of this. goof around. have fun
Right now the resin would likely be a curiousity . but im sure i could make some money off of it.

The quality of the peachy shouldnt be something that isnt fixable though.. sure its a little strange looking and cheaply built, but the premise is the same as any other, laser cures resin. it should be possible to increase its quality...

You can make money from everything. You can make money with bad quality, if it's cheap enough, or the customer doesn't know better or you brand it art, hip, chic or "the next thing", or whatever.

With any given hardware, there is only so much you can do quality wise. Except you modify it until it is is no longer recognizable, which begs the question why you started out with the stuff you started out.
The premise of an 1950s Beetle is the same as that of an current Bentley Continental. If you know how and are willing to invest time and money or only more money, you can make traveling in the Beetle as comfortable as traveling in the Bentley.

Of course if the "journey is the reward", speed to market and efficiency don't really matter. Go ahead, let us know how it went.

[curious aardvark]

of the machines I've seen working I'd probably avoid the form 2.
The build process is really complex and involves the model coming in and out of the resin for every single layer.
That has to effect quality.

As brumbaer says - resin's only real current selling point is the detail level.

Give it a few years and it'll either disappear entirely as new technologies come to the market, or they'll improve it to the point it's the preferred technology.

Given that there are at least two resin techniques out there that print really fast, it could well be the latter.

I've personally got no current use for a resin printer - but I don't print many artistic models or decorative items and I don't give a rats arse about barely visible lines on the plastic :-)

For me the future of resin printing would have to lie in the potential for really fast prints.

[dunginhawk]

Yeah, like that one that was just unveiled that printed that red sphere with interconnecting pieces in 7 minutes... that one looks promising. if its consumer price friendly