Decided to get a resin setup.

[curious aardvark]

3d printing seems to always come back to the same issue.

Getting the first layer down clean and tight.

I mastered this on fdm printers nearly a decade ago.

Resin - hmm, not so much.

No matter how few base layers I use or how fast i cure the base layer. It always filles in any gaps.
After the first layer everything is beyond incredible.
Precise and with microscopic detail.

But getting any kind of detail down on the first layer.

Now I'm using water washable clear resin.
So I'm wondering if the uv light is passing through the water in the resin, reflecting off the build plate and curing all the resin that's not supposed to be cured.

After the base layers, it's all perfect.
I'm down to 2 seconds a layer for general printing.
And 2 layers of 8 seconds for the initial attachment base layer.

I'm beginning to see why all the prints you see are nowhere near the build plate and swaddled in a massive waste of supports.

Even items with a solid base, generate a brim that is not switched on or shown in the slicer.

I don't believe it's necessary to waste all the resin in supports that people seem to. Plus the few supports I've tried have been bastards to remove and on a delicate model, just break it.

The other issue is flashdlprint, Does not give you any control over the number of base layers, the peel and lift speeds.

So I'm currently using the early version of chitubox that came with the printer.
Gives you access to all the settings flashdlprint does not.
The peel and left speeds are way too high, but can't find the default that flashdlprint uses.

So I'm wondering if I need an opaque resin, an isopropyl alcohol based resin or just need to keep fiddling with the settings.

Once i get the first layer issue sorted, the possibilities of this printer are pretty awesome.

At the end of the day.
There are only three actual parameters you can change on this printer:
1) exposure time
2) peel speed
3) lift speed.

Actually you can also adjust the lifting distance for the peel and lift heights.

Hmm.
Gives me a couple of mad ideas :-)
Does it actually NEED the lift after the peel ?
As long as there's a small gap for the next later of resin to flow into. What purpose does the lift serve ?

And yes i know someone out there is probably shouting at the screen: 'you can't do it like that'.
And there's proably a really good reason you can't.

But you don't ACTUALLY know unless you try. And very few people will actually try to do things that they are told can't be done.

I've spent the last 8 or 9 years doing things with fdm printers I've been told couldn't be done.

So I doubt I'll stop now lol