Enhancing the life of the resin tanks

Here’s a thought…

What if the glass were quickly conductively heated before the peel? My experience with this resin is that heat makes it soft and gooey. A quick burst of heat would only really impact the layer on the glass. Wouldn’t that ease the peel (but put some thermal load on the glass)?

Or, do this with one of Zak’s awesome tanks:

I just pulled out an OEM tank that had probably 4 liters through it to try this new tank yesterday. All of that was various mixes of resins I’ve been experimenting with. 50/50 clear/tough, 33/33/33 clear/tough/flexible, 50/25/25 clear/tough/vorex-black, 50/50 (50/50 clear/tough)/FLblack, etc. Above is just after installing the cleaned up heating element. The amazing thing was, the OEM tank had zero clouding at all. None. Not one visible trace of damage to the PDMS. I print @ 43C or ~110F.

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While your analogy of

is interesting, what would that actually require and be like?

First, the build tank would have to be filled to the height of the build volume (or at least as tall as the current part).
Second, how would the lasers get to areas with hardened material in the way? To get around that, the build would have to start in the center of the object, and essentially spiral outward from there, but what would hold the built center in place?
Third, how would you get around entrapping resin in the model without a lot of carefully placed weep holes?

Sounds all cool and science-fictiony, but really, just not possible. EDIT: anything’s possible. Maybe just not very reasonably practical.

I mean, I guess you could merge FDM and SLA and have a microscopic (edit: resin) dispensing nozzle that would continuously add to a bubble (or hang it) while the lasers circle and follow the nozzle around a platform.

Sounds complicated but really neat actually.

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Sheesh, the world is full of nay-sayers. You really don’t even know how much damage you do when you shoot ideas down.

How is it any different from adding all the material at the bottom? It’s not. Except it’s better because you wouldn’t be limited to the plane of the bottom, so you don’t have to worry about horizontal surfaces. Currently, adding only from the bottom plane, you can’t build a horizontal surface without supports, but if you could swing the lasers over to the side, or have a second set of lasers, you can easily do it. What is so impractical?

First, filling. Why? You are wrong. The part could grow like it currently does from a shallow tray.

Second, blocking. ??? The same way they do now. You are only adding the option of deposition from the side. The Form is already doing it from the bottom only. You are clearly grasping at straws just to shoot the idea down.

Third, drains. What? Why? Just finish up at the bottom like it does now.

The only real issue, which you didn’t bring up, is if there is such a 2-frequency resin, or chemical that will harden only if both frequencies hit it at the same time. But if that exists, this would be fairly easy after some coding of the build strategy.

You’re absolutely right - the best things have always been created by those who don’t believe in impossible.
My hat is off to you in apology.

-C

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That’s what the more expensive printers do like Polyjet. They have a printer head that places a dot of resin and has a UV light to cure it, it also has another nozzle for a wax support material.

Man, this is what I get for not researching stuff. I feel like I have a great idea, just to figure out someone else has already done it!

And I think the patent on that tech recently expired so maybe we’ll start seeing affordable printers that use that soon.

Edit at the top regarding my 2 axis resin tank idea.

I am really curious what material Full Spectrum Laser is using in their SuperVat. They boldly claim:

“Instead of using a PDMS/silicone release layer, FSL3D has developed a special material that does not cloud/fog even after several hundred thousand print cycles. In addition, due to lower release forces, SuperVAT™ makes large prints with heavy infill more reliable.”

Source:
http://fslaser.com/News/Detail/131106557619

Apparently Carbon uses Teflon AF 2400 with “with excellent oxygen permeability, UV transparency, and chemical inertness”. The stuff isn’t cheap either - it goes for around us$1500 per 25 grams. Carbon casts the bottom plate in-house. They also pump oxygen (or air?) to the plate.

Problem is - even if I managed to cast my own plate - I would be stuck with the firmware settings on the Form 2.

By the way here is the white paper on the Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) process used by Carbon:

Tumbleston2015gl.pdf (995.2 KB)

Tumbleston.SM.pdf (411.7 KB)

For some people it would probably be cost effective to pay that much for a tray that won’t ever have to be replaced

I suppose so - but I’m not sure how many grams it would take of the Teflon AF2400. Could easily cost $5k - $10k for a window made of it. And for that kind of investment - it would kill me to be stuck at the current speed. So we need open firmware!

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Looks like someone has made their own CLIP window:

Details are scarce, but states they used Cytop Film from http://www.agc.com/ - $1450 for 1000ml/1% = 10 grams of film.

Looks like he poured the solution in a glass container, heated for 30-100˚ (guessing celsius) for 5 hours then 100-340˚ for 3 hours. Then stretched the film using the flex vat technique.

He shows a fan that is feeding it air under it - I’m not sure if this could be adapted to the Form, thoughts?

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That’s pretty sweet. I don’t see why it couldn’t be adapted…

Hey, what about the material used for contact lenses? That’s somewhere around 55% oxygen permeable…

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Looks like threads that were created before we removed auto-close are still affected. Sorry about that! Here’s a link to the newer thread for anyone interested: Enhancing the life of the resin tanks. CONT