Alignment on the Form 4, "optimal" angles?

[charger_01]

Hello, how would you basically position this body? I am not yet satisfied with the printing result. Either I have holes in the surface, perhaps angles of inclination that are too shallow, or I have stripes, or even steps in the body, angles of inclination that are too steep. Before I spend thousands of euros on tough2000 and the results are not satisfactory, I’ll ask in the forum in the hope that someone can give me some useful advice. It is a Form 4 and Tough 2000 resin.

The body is of course positioned in the preform without the components.

[jared2183]

Would recommend rotating it around 45 degrees

[Jakob_D]

Hi Charger 01,

this is Jakob of the EMEA services team.
I agree with Jared, an angle of 45° might be needed for this model.
Searching for a “similar enough” model, I found a Puma GTB. I recorded myself orienting and supporting this model while doing commentary on why I am doing certain things.
You can access the recording following this link.

If you’d like more specific advice on your exact model, we’d be happy to take a look, just get in touch with us in the services team, we’re always happy to help with prints before you start them, not just afterwards.

Kind regards,
Jakob

[charger_01]

Hello Jakob, thank you very much for your detailed video, it was really extremely helpful! I would never have turned the model like that! I remember that you gave me great support at the beginning of my Form3 time! I’m going to try it out with my ASA right away. Perhaps you can also tell me something about the somewhat unsightly surface, especially with Tough2000 and 50 microns, the surface is not completely smooth! I’m attaching some pictures. The holes here are really extreme! Does this, or could this, have something to do with angles that are too flat? I’m actually from Germany, but so that everyone can benefit from it we can stick to English, I’ll just use Google Translate. Your video about the angles of the model in the build space was incredibly helpful! I couldn’t tell from the video how big you had chosen your original contact points to be?

I have several models for which I would be grateful for any help so that the results are optimal and the rework is kept to a minimum. If I make a general request for support, I won’t be able to get through to you! But you were always the biggest help to me back then! There’s probably no way to contact you directly, is there? Thank you again for your great help!

You can also see extreme striping on the roof of the Fiat. I mainly print Tough2000 at a resolution of 50 microns, 25 microns is not possible with this resin. A guy here in the forum gave me the tip to reduce the mixer arm speed in the print settings because of possible bubble formation that could occur at high mixing speeds. So I created an individual print profile for the Tough2000 layer thickness of 50 microns and reduced the mixer arm speed from 600 to 200 mm/s, do you think that is necessary and that the bubble formation could really be a problem?

My latest project: Fiat 131 Abarth Röhrl/Geistdörfer Slotcar 1/32

Problems with holes and streaks in the surface!

[dull_gaze]

While I’m not printing these awesome vehicle bodies, I do design and prototype enclosures that have similar shallow organic surface features / transitions and found your recording super helpful in orientation and support placement!

I noticed in your video a cost quoting tool in Preform - is this feature an internal tool or something all users have access to? I incorporate prototyping into my client design services and while I have a spreadsheet to track print time and volume having Preform generate a ballpark based on input would be incredibly useful.

[Jakob_D]

Hey everybody,

@dull_gaze
I’m happy that the video was of help to you as well, always happy to share my thought process when approaching orientation and supports.
That was a little peek behind the curtain, that I forgot to hide. This is an internal tool for us to use internally, but I’m passing this on as a feature request to our software team though, maybe this will be in a public release in the future.

@charger_01
Nice to see the active community, thanks for the shoutout. I’m happy I was able to help in the past and hope I can be of help in the future as well.
Unfortunately there is no way to directly reach out to a service agent, but feel free to ask for specific people in your conversation if someone is already familiar with your process/issue and we’ll see how we can reallocate cases.

First of all: Beautiful models, these look super nice.
I think these individual things are coming from different root causes, I will put a couple things here, but I would recommend uploading your printers logs through Settings → System → Upload Diagnostic logs and reach out to us in the services team so we can check a few things.

Usually if I go for my “little bit bigger, but fewer supports in the right spots” I go for a +0.1mm to +0.15mm on the touchpoint size and a -0.1 to -0.4 on the support density (depending on the complexity of the model and the need for special hand-andjusted supports, the more detail I’m supporting by hand, the lower the initial density so I don’t have to take off as many supports).

IMG_9728:
The holes on the side of the car look to be the beginning of tiny Volume Explosions that recovered a couple layers later.
General first things to check: Suction Cups (not in this case), Lack of stability/Supports (maybe), Resin curing (optics/age of resin).

IMG_9724:
The ridges on the hood are stepping-lines, the angle needed to be higher for this piece.

IMG_9720:
The streaks on the trunk hood are almost certainly spots on the optics, check the underside of the tank, but I think your LPU needs cleaning (more on that later).

IMG_9635, IMG_9599 and IMG_9600
On IMG 9635: the streaks on the roof of the car, might be a hint at either Z rod cleanliness, or a slight wobble in your build platform. Get in touch with us, we might want to check your printers dovetail assembly, if this isn’t purely supports (the streaks - no streaks - streaks can be a hint at areas of worse/no and better support placement, the .form file of this model can help us a lot in analysing this issue).

The holes in the model are almost certainly spots/dirt/dust on either the underside of your tank and/or on the LPU of your printer.
I reccommend going low and checking the LPU at a very low angle, then take a light source from the other side (e.g. flashlight/smartphone) and also shine it at the LPU at a low angle, basically blinding yourself with it. This will make dust and dirt very noticable on the surface. The more we look straight from the top, the more we’re looking through the glass, rather than at it.

There is a cleaning article on our support pages (you can set this article to German at the bottom right of the page).
The article is dealing with heavily dirtied up LPUs, I would recommend compressed air first in case it’s just dust.

I do not believe any of these issues stem from bubbles in the resin and are caused by the Mixer.
bubbles will almost always get completely pressed out from under the build platform, especially when working with lower layer heights.

Let us know how it goes
Jakob

[charger_01]

Hello Jakob,

Thank you for your, once again, very useful tips. I bought the printer second-hand from a dentist’s office, thank God with a service plan until mid-2026, that saves my life, because I’m just a simple educator with €2000 net. Every repair kills my budget. It turns out that the LPU has a flaw and since I’ve already been in contact with support, I also did a test print. Based on the test print, support determined that the LPU needs to be replaced. Thank God Formlaps’ support is outstanding, at least for me, others may see it differently. Cleaning the LPU is therefore obsolete. Once I’ve installed the replacement part, I’ll align and print the model according to your instructions and then upload pictures here again. An absolute purchase criterion for the Form4 was that the tanks now last much longer, even with technical resin. This puts less pressure on me as a user to make full use of the 175 days and to have to print constantly. Furthermore, the concept of the LPU running under the foil of the tanks was not so good, the mechanical abrasion was enormous, but that is no longer the case with the Form4.
I would not have thought that it would be enough to tilt the print object, in this case the slot car, in just one direction, which is why I tilted it in two directions in the pictures shown. When the new LPU reaches, I will test it straight away.
Do you think that this will work with the much more angular model of the Fiat 131?
By the way, I design the models in Fusion 360.

[Jakob_D]

Hey @charger_01

I’m glad to hear that I came to the same conclusion the rest of the team did and there’s a new LPU already on the way, this will likely fix these issues.
Sounds good, I’d be happy to see some more of these cool models fresh off of the Form 4.

Yes, tank lifetime is a huge thing for people that switch resins often and just need to print with certain resins “every once in a while”, especially on some of those more agressive resins.

The general advice of “tilt any part at least 30-45° on at least one axis” is basically just that: Very general advice and shouldn’t be taken as gospel. I sometimes joke about it by sending the model of a sphere to people and ask them what they think the best angle of orientation would be
What I have as a more or less “inner checklist” is:

1. Are there any (specifically curved) surfaces that need special attention? (Do I need to print these upright to avoid stepping?)
2. Are there any details that need special attention? (A knight figurine holding a sword in on an outstretched arm and I want to avoid supports under the arm in fear of breaking it on removal)
3. Reduce/avoid big overhangs and Islands (Minima) in general
4. try to have a smooth layer-to-layer transition, avoiding big jumps in cross section (use the slider and Page Up/Down keys in PreForm)

Point 4 is usually where “tilt x on angle y” comes from, but as long as the layer to layer transition is nice, the actual angle is basically irrelevant (except for those other things in points 1-3 of course like stepping).

Yes, I think it this should work on the Fiat pretty nicely as well, I would double check if PreForm lets you put non-internal supports on the inside of the doors, or if the overhang is too far for PreForm. This is where quite a bit of the stability of the model will come from during the mid-scetion of your print.
I made a super rough model to show what I mean, I had to put in a lip to get PreForm to make those super short internal supports, which won’t really help much. On a thinner model this shouldn’t be a problem, but if there’s to much “roundness” on the body towards the inside on the lower areas, it could affect support generation in a similar way.

That’s super cool, I switched to Fusion 360 as well (back in university I was taught on Solidworks, but €€€, I dearly miss the 3D spiral sketch function though).
I recently got into fotography so currently I’m designing all sorts of little lense cap holders, adapters and things like that for it.

Kind regards
Jakob

[charger_01]

Hello Jakob, can I ask you briefly how you would support these figures?

The figures are only 12mm tall, which was a bit of a challenge for the Form3, but not for the Form4, even though it doesn’t have a very good LPU anymore. What do you think is better, slightly lying down or standing up?

[Jakob_D]

I would personally do these standing up.
the moment you turn them on an angle, you’re going to have stepping somewhere in the facial area (usually nose) which will reduce the amount of detail even more.
With tiny models like these, I also really like overlapping the rafts in order to form a bigger base. this makes them way easier to wash in a lot of cases.

[charger_01]

Hello Jakob, thank you very much. Then my instinctive decision to print them standing up was right! Such small figures are pretty stupid to print and I needed several attempts. It was an order, but it wasn’t worth it. Thank you very much and see you soon. Kind regards, Sebastian

[charger_01]

Hello, at what angle would you print this? More like lying down like in Fig. 1
or upright as in Fig. 2

Thank you very much for your tips.

[charger_01]

Hello, I made a few test prints this weekend. I first aligned the print object in the build space at an angle of 45 degrees! I also changed the contact points and the number of support structures in relation to the angle of inclination. The result was very unsatisfactory. (See Fig. 2 Fig. 2a and Fig. 2b)

I didn’t understand why the result was so bad. The new LPU has not been installed yet. At first I thought that it wouldn’t work with an angle of inclination of 45 degrees and changed the angle to 35 degrees.

In my opinion, this result was a little better, but far from beeing good, or perfect (see Fig. 1, Fig. 1a and Fig. 1b).

I just couldn’t explain why the results were so bad. I checked the base of the printer and found that the mounting surface on which the printer takes place could be moved back and forth horizontally, that wasn‘t any good at all. The construction was much too wobbly!

The stability of the platform, which was sufficient for the moderate movements of the Form3, seemed to have a huge impact on the print quality of the Form4!
I fixed the entire construction on which the printer stands. I fixed the platform to the back wall so that lateral movements are now impossible. I screwed two height-adjustable legs under the platform, which also prevents it from rocking up and down!

the streaking is gone and the surface is much more homogeneous, (Abb 3).

I had also cleaned the LPU with IPA. Unfortunately, this LPU is damaged and needs to be replaced. I am sure that the print image will then be even better.
I would never have thought that the stability of the underground would have such a massive impact on the print result, although it actually makes sense!