The Peachy Printer Suggestion Thread

[Eddie]

As you know, several of the Peachy Printer guys frequent this unofficial forum. I thought it would be a good idea to create this thread to take suggestions for the Peachy Printer. Perhaps your idea would be something that would help put Peachy Printer over the top, and make it just that much better.

Let's hear your ideas!

[erikk]

If “rocking platform” is in action, every next layer (half layer) before gets under bright laser light can move a bit and submerge in to resin to get fine layer of fresh resin over the previously “bombarded” laser path. Than will return in “0” (horizontal) position just before making another laser layer/path.

I like the general idea, but maybe there's a simpler way to do the same thing.

It seems all you need to do is raise the resin level, relative to the printed object.
Your idea requires moving a large amount of water (at the end of the print), and probably wouldn't scale well to large print containers

A mechanism could drop and then lift the printed object by a fixed amount any time the laser is shut off
Or something could get pushed into the water to displace a volume to get the resin higher temporarily.

I talked to Rylan about these and he likes all of them as options for users to modify and test, but it likely won't be an option for the $100 printer.
So anyone who is doing a beta, test out one of these on your own when you get it and let him know how it goes.

[Slatye]

The big problem I see with that is that you'll create waves in the resin. Since the Peachy just hardens the top layer, this would create waves in the print too. To fix it you'd have to rock the bed a little bit, then wait 30+ seconds for the waves to die down before doing it again. With a 30-second delay per layer, printing is going to take ages.

If you can get a pump in there, that opens up a whole lot of options. For example, rather than dripping water onto the job, you could pump one layer's worth of resin through a spray nozzle. That would create a fine layer of resin coating everything, and then the laser can selectively harden whatever bits are required. No need to worry about waves either, although ensuring that the resin doesn't just hang around in the air could be an issue.

The most important thing for any modifications is going to be getting some I/O pins available. Can't control a pump or servos or autofocus or anything else without extra I/O pins. I remain hopeful that converting the Blender plugin to just output raw serial data to an STM32F4-Discovery will be straightforward; then that can handle all the timing-sensitive I/O tasks.

[mike_biddell]

I wonder if it is possible to design a printer where nothing moves apart from lasers. If the resin cures on light intensity (which I believe it does), is it theoretically possible to have say two or three focussed laser beams which print the object in situ, firing through the resin. So that the intensity at the focal point will cure the resin and not anywhere along the beams axes. Of course, to avoid the need for refractive corrections, the lasers would ideally be in the resin. Just a thought. No need for drips at all.

[kmak]

Hi
For varies of reasons my first attempt to “improve” printer is not practical! Have realized this after some time thinking, reading little bit more :-D but have some more stuff in the next few lines:
Hope it is not too late:

1. definitely I would like to separate water from resin (practical reasons not mixing two substances)
2. Printer structure which now is 2 containers plus printing “head” should have additional container holder inside lower container (which is running along rails inside lower container) which can hold container with resin (narrow tall, shallow wide, etc… with task to reduce resin consumption) depending of size of printing object. In addition to this printing surface (four legged “M” letter shape) adjustable height, with spirit level elements of strategic position (legs) around structure for easy calibration (this one goes inside added container! Just middle part of letter "M" shape).
3. With this modified hardware setup calibration of printing surface (level of water and resin) should be much easier and final print could be extracted without help of scissors! (I saw this on last video clip)
4. I hope that I properly understood principle of how this printer works but there is something which I could not answer such as:

- To have best print out in ideal situation laser beam should be perpendicular to surface?
- If that is true, than laser beam when reaches “far” end of the printing object will have some “losses” in energy and laser beam shape will not be “circle”?
- Finally is it possible compensating laser energy losses (beam energy)?
-

• I assume that reflecting mirrors do not affect power level of laser beam!?

Cheers

[Anuvin]

Kmak:
You are correct. As the z height changes, the laser will need to be refocused. It may not be an issue for small prints, but for larger prints, focus could be a problem. However, if you float the inside container inside the outer container, and attach the peachy to it, the laser optics never need to be adjusted. See here (design by Spelljammer, here on the forum.)

The reflecting mirrors do affect the power of the laser, but not enough to be a problem. The resin only needs a few miliwatts to cure.

[Elliz]

I thought of a way to make it possible to print big overhangs, bu I am not sure if it would work. It would be simply putting a second printer beneath the liquid contanier, and pum water out so that the resin would descend. The laser could then print in a shorter z. The big problem I see is that since the laser would ave to travel through the water, there coud be disortions. what do you think?

[Omega]

My wishes are an short wiki or how-to for the usage of the printer, blender + script. Would it be posible to print highly inert material like PTFE or PFA?


Thanks and please contuine being great.

[Omega]

Hi,

an other thing I would be great are markes for positioning. To be enabled to exactly print on things placed in the printer. So it can the resin can be changed and modifing older prints.
Perhaps the laser could guide where to exactly place the older print?

[iplayfast]

So far the prints shown have all been small, tall skinny prints. While this is great progress, I would love it to show some of the "standard" prints that are use to show off other 3d printers. For example the yoda head http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14104 would be fantastic. Just start off one of your machines and let it go overnight and show the results.

The reason I think this is important, is that I've got concerns about the laser being at more of an angle when the outside edges appear then in the centre. This would be more apparent in a large figure then a tall skinny one.

I also would like to know how exact you currently are. If the yoda head is supposed to be 100 cm from ear to ear, how big is it actually getting. Does it distort from the middle to the outside. (eg if eyes are supposed to be 1 cm apart, do they match as well as the ear example above).

I'm not suggesting that you would expect perfection at this early stage, but it would be nice to have a reference of a large object as well as a small one.