As a miniature manufacturer, we 3D print our models and have previously been using Black resin for its crisp detail. We have been recommended by several people that we try Dental Model resin for its supposedly good detail and ease of support removal over the Black resin.
While I can say it’s been much easier to remove supports as Model seems to be far less brittle than black, I’ve found a lot of soft details on the underside of models. I made sure that it was tilted at about 45 degrees and not overwhelmed with supports and I use Form Wash and (allowing the IPA on the models to evaporate fully) Cure for 40 minutes each. The IPA in the Form Wash had also been changed within the last week and is still far below the contamination level.
You need more supports with model than with black.
Think about how the layers are formed. At the ‘top’ of each support the next layer will be unsupported away from the support and, because model is less rigid than black in the green state, it can move more as the model is moved into the resin.
As to the soft detail - are you printing with a Form 3? It is known that the Form 3 has issues with light bleed or some similar effect, resulting in mushy detail on the support side of the parts. This could be less pronounced with a resin like black that blocks a lot of light.
Previously when I’ve used more supports than necessary for the support of the model I’ve found these soft details because the Wash has difficulty removing the excess resin from between a dense area of supports.
I’m concerned that adding more supports to parts using Model resin will only increase the problem.
Yes, I’m using the Form 3. The reason I switched to Black was for that exact reason, because it blocked out more light. Originally I used Grey, and that also suffered from a lot of soft details because it’s slightly translucent. I’m trying Model now because it was highly recommended, but apart from the ease of support removal, I’m not seeing the increase in detail that I was led to believe.
Has there ever been any word if the light bleed issue will be fixed on the Form 3, or is it just an unfortunate fact of that machine?