Delivery No.1 - Build blog of the first V1.0 Peachy Printer in the Wild

[CescoAiel]

Next stop: PRINT $#!T !!!

Well then! Go ahead and finally print something! We're all waiting to see your result already!

[Builder1]

New Print, New Pics
I did a print a couple days ago.
I have posted new pics in a new gallery called “Peachy-Print 2”. Here’s the link

http://postimg.org/gallery/iqedknx0/

Quicker Setup
-Having the Salt premixed in the Drip bottle and a bit more in a second bottle helped make setup much quicker and cleaner. Not a single drop of water got on the table this time! Last time I had a small mess.

Drip system
-Use clips !! I got these white clips at the dollar store. 10 for $1.50. There bigger than I wanted but they are working out really well! MUCH easier to put on and take off than the plastic “O”s.
-I finally got the siphon down pat!! This system really does work fabulously !!
-I used DVD cases as my drip bottle stand. This allowed me to easily increase or decrease the height to get the drip rate I wanted. It worked really well !!

My One Mistake
-Zoom in on pic P1010462.
-I set the mesh to be, not over, not under, but just barley attracting the resin via surface tension. I thought this would be the perfect height. N0pe. The print did not adhere to the mesh and just floated up on the surface. It is VERY hard to see if this is happening until the print is done and your draining the salt water.
-Another oddity, my print is about 4 times smaller than it should have been?!? You can see a test on the glow paper in pic P1010454 showing the start of the print and the three base cylinders. They are almost as wide as the container (about 8cm between the 2 closer cylinders). This is the size it should have printed but you can see in P1010474 that is much smaller. I’m filing that one under “WTF” and will retest everything later (with manually added rafting).

Clean up and odor management
-Washing everything that touched resin with dish detergent, completely eliminated the smell of the resin. Also, I think the green resin has less odor than the red. I could hardly smell it while doing the print! I still had to do a 5 minute airing of my room.
-As an added precaution, I UVed EVERYTHING that touched resin, including the paper towels and my hands (having gloves is HIGHLY recommended). Even after violently scrubbing my hands with soap I still had a significant number of resin speckles all over my hands. Shining the UV light on my hands was like revealing some kind of “resin murder scene” !!! I couldn’t believe how much got on my hands! Curing the speckles with UV hardened them and they easily wiped off. However, I really don’t want to be breathing that in later. Use gloves.

Continuing problems
-The peachy software will NOT print the rafting I’m creating in Slic3r. I discovered by accident that it will print the “Skirt and Brim” (which are completely useless for the Peachy). I NEED RAFTING !!!! I do not want my print to be embedded in the mesh, even a little bit. Why would I want to destroy my print by ripping it out of the mesh !!
-I think the Peachy software is ignoring the rafting gcode. It does ignore the gcode for laser movement speed and for this it makes sense.
-I will do more experimentation with rafting settings and also manually adding thin rafting into my model directly. A thin extruded circle or triangle that touches several places on the bottom of the model will work perfectly and be easy to add. Also, if I make it about 10 layers deep, I can have the resin fully under the mesh and start my print and be confident that my model will adhere to the mesh but not be embedded in it.

The Future
As I stated in my previous posts, MY TIME IS LIMITED. As much as I want to build crazy cool stuff with the Peachy and share my experiences with all of you, it has to fit into my schedule.
“Good news everyone!”
Several personal and work schedule changes are happening right now for me. This should give me time to do prints and experiments at least once a week. I’m excited !!

More to come!

[Builder1]

Just did a test on glow paper testing out:
1) Why was it small?
2) Where's my freakin' rafting!

1) As for the size... I still have no clue why this happened. It was "actually" only about 20% smaller than it was suppose to be.
My test on glow paper printed at the exact size it was suppose to be.

2) I decide to generate some new gcode and slic3r crashed on me. I restarted slic3r and reset the print settings (they go back to defaults when you restart the program). That's "print settings" not "Printer settings" just to be clear. I then created my gcode, opened it in the Peachy software and ran the print.

The rafting printed !

My guess is that 3lic3r was misbehaving as I had it open for about a month on my laptop.
Mental note: Restart Slic3r before generation gcode ;-)

more to come...

[CescoAiel]

Just did a test on glow paper testing out:
1) Why was it small?
2) Where's my freakin' rafting!

1) As for the size... I still have no clue why this happened. It was "actually" only about 20% smaller than it was suppose to be.
My test on glow paper printed at the exact size it was suppose to be.

Gotta remember that you are projecting in a cone, so the higher the resin starts, the higher you are on that cone, and thus the print will be smaller in the X/Y ranges, but not in the Z...
It'll probably be resolved by making sure the software is set correctly for that height, so it can compensate...

[Builder1]

I did another print last night and it was another failed print.... but now I know why!!
The resin has gone bad.

As a test, I took my entire print container and shone UV (9Watts) directly in it about 6 inches above the resin.
after about 20 seconds, a thin slime started to form... and that's it. I zapped it several more times but it would not cure anymore.

To remedy this problem I have a bottle of Fun To DO Snow White on its way with overnight shipping !!!
Why the rush? My usual schedule has changed for tomorrow and I will have lots of time to do prints but I need resin to do prints. Tuesday may be the only day I get to use the printer this week so I wanted to be sure I got it on time.

On the plus side:
-the model printed at the correct size
-the rafting printed as it should but I will make the rafting much taller next time.

Before I did my print, I redid all of the printer calibration as well. I think that took care of some of the oddities in print size.

Come on FedEX!! Don't fail me now !!

[amoose136]

What kind of resin? Depending on the resin it could either be the polymer itself or simply the photo activator that went bad. If it's the activator you might just be able to find out which activator it uses and add more.

[Builder1]

MakerJuice G+
I have very little left anyway. I don't think it's worth saving.
Great idea though. I haven't dug into the chemistry of these resins.

While were talking about resin chemistry; I noticed that the FTD resins are acrylic based.
Is this typical of other resins?
The MakerJuice web site doesn't say say much about their resins, chemically speaking.
Any thoughts?

[amoose136]

I contacted a Makerjuice chemist and asked what happens chemically when resin goes bad but all he said was "Typically what you will see is the viscosity slowly increase and/or the resin will become less reactive when it reaches the end of its shelf-life. We normally give our products a 1-year shelf-life, but that's not to say that it could be perfectly fine after 1 year." So I still know nothing about what actually is happening.

[Builder1]

I got my FTD Snow White resin last Tuesday and promptly did a print.
The resin was described as "low odor" and it certainly was less scented than either of the Makerjuice resins (I can't be sure what the MJ resins are suppose to smell like when new). It is also thicker than the MJ resins. During the print there was one square in the base where the resin did not want to go through and it just happened to be in the middle of my print. Figures.

This print was not a success HOWEVER, it did cure properly under the UV lamp where the MakerJuice I have wasn't.
All the recalibrations that I did have proved a success! What I did get printed at the correct size. I have an 8.2mm hole in one part of the model and with my caliper, it measured 8mm.
For this resin, I will need to slow the laser draw speed down from 100mm/s to as low as 50mm/s and crank the laser power from 65% to maybe 100%.

I made a new gallery for my FTD prints:
http://postimg.org/gallery/2g96zxbtg/

@Rylan: Did you test FTD resins? If so, what settings did you use?? Where there any other items of interest that you discovered with the FTD resins?

My next steps will be to:
-Try new Speed and Laser settings for the FTD resins
-Use the test models included in the Peachy Software to test the above settings until I get them dialed in
-Buy some new MakerJuice resin too

If anyone has seen any details on the forum of what settings to use for the FTD resins , PLEASE let me know !

J

[Builder1]

Quick update...

SUCCESS !!!!

I set the Laser to 100% and the print speed to 80mm/s.
For my test I used on of the models in the Peachy Software "Library" (they are there for testing purposes).
I will post a picture when I get a chance :-)