Ideas

[Dayling]

Having seen all the videos on the Peachy Printer, I have come up with a few ways of improving it:

• Automatic laser strength so consistent quality is maintained throughout the print, no matter how far away the laser has to go.
• A pump to siphon out the salt water to save time of adding removing it and the resin.
• A case/holder like the silver one shown in the introduction video, to keep the printer safe.

[/dev/null]

1) Laser, if perfectly focused, have very little attenuation in air. And you cannot correct imperfect focus by adjusting power. Not to mention distance has to be pretty large so good UV laser would start to lose its focus. So what's the point? I feel I'm missing something or misunderstood your idea...

2) You can try cheap manual syphon pump (on ebay you can get one for less than $2), with it you could remove salt water under resin. I did not try this myself because I do not have Peachy Printer yet, but I think this is easiest method to remove salt water. Of course, if somebody has better idea, they are welcome to share it...

[Christina Jackson]

I haven't tried using Peachy Printer yet but will take note of your recommendation so that I can apply it, or share it to my colleagues who are using Peachy Printer for 3d printing. Thanks!

[perfessor101]

Hello Dayling

I've been using hydroponic syringes 100ml and up for transferring saltwater and resin around
Works quickly and I can remove mostly salt water or mostly resin

[Slatye]

I suspect the easiest way of removing the salt water will be to simply have a tap on the bottom of the build container. Open the tap to drain the water into a bucket, then empty the bucket back into the reservoir.

It'd be nice to do it all automatically, but then you need a sensor to detect when you've finished draining the salt water (conductivity? Does resin conduct electricity?), a pump (the little eBay ones will work, but possibly not for very long - and they're pretty slow), and control circuitry. Definitely not impossible, but probably too expensive to include in a $100 printer.


I wouldn't be surprised if most people just use the build container and reservoir as the printer case. If you size the reservoir just a tiny bit (a wall thickness) smaller than the build container then you can put everything in the reservoir and drop the build container over the top to seal it.

Getting longer ranges is something that the Peachy Pro is meant to fix. It'll have autofocus on the laser to maintain a nice, tight beam when printing large objects.

[Deadbot1]

the drip sensor for the z axis works because the salt water is conductive. so a pump with a drip sensor inline before it would be able to run until it stops reading conductivity(indicating that resin is entering the tube). A simple micro and some clever programming could be used to detect the end of printing and automagically start the pump.

I have read about issues with gaps in the print, supposedly caused by too high of surface tension. Most resins I have seen thin out with heat. How about heating the water in the reservoir as well as having a heater in the bottom of the build tank to maintain a constant elevated temp? Again a simple MCU(possibly the same one as controls the pump?) with a PID could be used. Since the simple kit requires us to supply our own tank, I would think that a clever maker could build one out of hard insulation board and FRP coating to get a nice build volume and an insulated,heated reservoir. An opaque tank would make sense as well to help avoid resin curing by accidental light exposure. Since you need to build the tank, you could integrate an enclosure for the unit easily.

[Aztecphoenix]

A suggestion for the peachy scanner, if they could laser cut an escapement gear for the encoder disk that is driven by the laser mount, this way using either a stepper or a servo you can have the laser do a sweep and as it does a return sweep it catches and moves the escapement rotating the encoder disk for the next sweep.

even if they add this as an accessory to purchase separately I believe many would buy it (motor and additional electronics included)

[Bobby Lin]

I love all the great tips you shared in here! Will be noting all of this so that when I decide to purchase a Peachy 3d Printer these will be in handy

[NeilR]

I am planning on starting with the basic setup when I get my Peachy, so I can be sure I have it all figured out. Then I was thinking of using a larger container and getting the drip settings working just right. Now with the main tank ready to print I can simply us a 4",6" or larger tube in the tank to contain the resin, the tube would be weighted and have some holes at the base to allow the water in. This would allow for easy changing of print volume and minimize the resin need to cover the tank surface area. I would also think it might make calibration easy and consistent. Thoughts?

[Aztecphoenix]

I am planning on starting with the basic setup when I get my Peachy, so I can be sure I have it all figured out. Then I was thinking of using a larger container and getting the drip settings working just right. Now with the main tank ready to print I can simply us a 4",6" or larger tube in the tank to contain the resin, the tube would be weighted and have some holes at the base to allow the water in. This would allow for easy changing of print volume and minimize the resin need to cover the tank surface area. I would also think it might make calibration easy and consistent. Thoughts?

You're on the right track however, you would be better off having a movable dripper an close off the bottoms of your different size tubes, reason being the way you want to set it up it will take the same amount of time for all your prints meaning a 6" print will take the same time as a 12" print because the "z" has to fill the same volume regardless of print size. I'm doing something similar but using print chamber inserts and a movable dripper based on the size of the object I plan to print.