First Resin Printer, what do I need to know?

[Shredder565]

I had a makergear 2 for a few years, until the leveling became too much of an annoying issue and finally got rid of it.I have a Creality now, and after a few upgrades, have only created about 3 complete prints. leveling is easier, but adhesion seems to be a problem. ugh.I am now going to give Sonic Phrozen 4K a try. having never used a resin printer before, what should I know? for instance, can you just throw away the empty resin bottles in the trash, or do they need to be handled properly?thanks

[curious aardvark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Jg7O4lf5g

watch that :-)

Covers some salient points.

As well as the printer, you will need a large container full of isopropyl alcohol, protective gloves (you do not want to get resin on your skin).
And a uv curing station of some kind.

The basic chain of events is:
design object > carefully fill vat with resin (do not spillit) > slice model > print model > remove from printer (wearing gloves) submege in isopropyl alcohol and agitate to clean the print > put washed print in the UV curing box and bombard with uv rays. > admire your print.

It's nowhere near as clean and simple as an fdm print. But you do get superior fnish and resolution.

And apparently the resin smells quite unpleasant as well.

[Shredder565]

hmm, good to know. watched the video too. Nice to see that it's pretty easy to set up and get to printing at least.

Also ordered a UV curing box that was big enough for 10 inch models.

Lets talk print time.

If a Ten inch model takes about 8 days to print on my creality, how long would the same thing take on my phrozen?
It seems like resin printing might be a tad quicker.

This would be the model in question


CpWz_003.jpg

[AutoWiz]

A 10 inch model in resin that took a FDM printer 8 days to print is gonna take a long time to fully cure after the print, FWIW.


For that size you should maybe not be printing with a 0.4mm nozzle and at 0.2mm layer heights. Ya know? Maybe you should go up to 0.6 and 0.4mm layer heights. Also maybe you might want to tune your printer for better printing speeds and also shell out your object in your modeling software or command less infill in your slicer or something.


Just saying a faster printing method is not always the way out of learning a better way of how to properly 3d print. If only just because light curable resin costs more than the filaments. So in the long run this move might just make playing here more expensive for you.


Why not play with your FDM printer and slicer and see what you can do to shave down the print time? Slice it at 0.3mm layer heights. drop the infill down below 10% and play with other settings to make sure you still have a strong print. Maybe drop the amount of top and bottom solid infilll layers but keep the sides to 3. And slice it a mess of times before you ever print anything.


Maybe tune your FDM printer real quick. There are a simple but effective series of calibration steps we can take to first find out how fast our extruder can spit out the filament and then how fast our robots can actually lay down that filament. There are a mess of tutorials on how to tune your printer and get better speed and function out of it. Here is one: 3D printer calibration revolutionised - Step by step to better print quality - YouTube


Resin printers are cool. And you should want to explore that. But usually when we want to move to a resin printer it is because of print quality. With the tradeoff being strength. 8 day print time for 10 inches of height really sounds like you do not have a lot of time spent with actually calibrating your printer or the slicer you are using. Just because of this one sentence from you I really think you would get so much more out of just spending time with your printer's firmware and also your slicer settings.

[Shredder565]

yes, it's true I try not to mess toooo much with the basic simplify 3D settings. Sometimes I do, but the only time it seems to make a difference is when I change support settings. sometimes getting things down from 12 days to 8.I am self taught, so there is only so far experimenting can take you if you are too afraid to mess things around .

[Shredder565]

first test print. not bad. although it stuck a little TOOO goood. I snapped it a bit trying to use the scraper but eventually got it off...

[Shredder565]

https://scontent.fewr1-6.fna.fbcdn.n...52&oe=61A750E0

[curious aardvark]

right - so here's what you do.

write down how long that took.
then measure the height.
That's how long it takes to print that height.
so you can use that calculation to work out how long anything will take.

On your printer it's only the height of the model that determines how long it will take (well, and layer thickness, cure time, speed of 'dunking' after each layer is cured).

But the gist is that the width and breadth of the model has no effect on print time :-)
Each layer is printed all at once, so if you have a bunch of parts to print - cram that buildplate as much as you can and that will drastically reduce the time it takes per item.

because of this resin printers are potentially much faster than fdm printers.

Tell you what - export the factory file for that robot and post it and I';ll have a look and see how long it would take me to print it.
I'll tell you now, it sure as hell will not be 8 days lol

I suspect there are settings you can adjust in the resin slicer to make the models easier to remove.
A faster cure time for the first layer would probably do the trick, or a thicker layer and the same cure time.

The actual mechanics of fdm versus are diferent, but the basic principles are the same.

[curious aardvark]

right - so here's what you do.

write down how long that rook took to print.
then measure the height.
That's how long it takes to print anything to that height.

so you can use that calculation to work out how long anything will take.

On your printer it's only the height of the model that determines how long it will take (well, and layer thickness, cure time, speed of 'dunking' after each layer is cured and probably a few other things I don't know about ).

But the gist is that the width and breadth of the model has no effect on print time :-)
Each layer is printed all at once, so if you have a bunch of parts to print - cram that buildplate as much as you can and that will drastically reduce the time it takes per item.

because of this, resin printers are potentially much faster than fdm printers.

Tell you what - export the simplify3d factory file for that robot and post it and I'll have a look and see how long it would take me to print it.
I'll tell you now, it sure as hell will not be 8 days lol

I suspect there are settings you can adjust in the resin slicer to make the models easier to remove.
A faster cure time for the first layer would probably do the trick, or a thicker layer and the same cure time.


The actual mechanics of fdm versus resin are different, but the basic principles are the same.

[Shredder565]

right - so here's what you do.

write down how long that rook took to print.
then measure the height.
That's how long it takes to print anything to that height.

so you can use that calculation to work out how long anything will take.

On your printer it's only the height of the model that determines how long it will take (well, and layer thickness, cure time, speed of 'dunking' after each layer is cured and probably a few other things I don't know about ). .

That makes sense. that would also explain how it cuts down printing time by days and makes it only hours.

give that a try. just basic Simplify 3d Settings and supports.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16R_...ew?usp=sharing