Hi
So I contacted formlabs about the mirrors and they had scratches on the big mirror and the small mirror so i changed the mirrors out and the mirrors were clean got a new resin tray and resin. And I got this!!!
Hi Jacob,
I know you said you checked the other mirrors, and they were fine… but I found I had to REALLY look VERY HARD (read: spent ages shining a light from all angles using a magnifying glass) to see that the galvos in my printer weren’t clean (as well as were clean at the end of 90 nerve-wracking minutes of cleaning); and when I cleaned them, I was close to despairing at the start, because they seemed to get worse (I wrote a longer post on this).
At any rate, the flakes you’ve got, as far as I can see from the somewhat blurred picture (any chance of getting some closer, sharper pics uploaded?), look similar to the ones I had, and these come from a) dirty optics (most likely), or b) bad laser, as far as I can see and as far as I’ve read in all the forum posts.
You might also try reorienting the part… I found it tempting to orient parts like you have done here to get smooth vertical surfaces, but I’ve had more success with orienting them at about 25 degrees to the x and y. Your part may be too big for that, but try and get as close to those as possible, specifically aiming to use more or less up to all the edges of the buildable area. I suspect this is also less likely to generate flakes, since there isn’t that much flow in the resin in the tank, so again, you spread the ‘spray’ of the laser around the tank if you angle the part to use as much of the area of the build platform as possible.
Doing so is also MUCH kinder on the tank, as the laser is not always shooting through the same small cross-section of the tank; additionally, try 100µ… I know it’s tempting to go for 50 or even 25, but both not only take longer and are more likely to generate flakes, but are also harder on the tank.
Good luck - I’ll cross my fingers for you… know how frustrating it is!
Sol
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Thanks - great pictures (even if the model looks terrible). The flakes really are brutal…
Did you have any luck with the mirrors? Any thoughts on reorienting the part to reduce the number of layers and spread the ‘load’ of printing across more of the bottom of the tank?
If you’re still struggling: how do you feel about letting me have the .FORM file (I’m using 1.8.2 which won’t read files from 1.9 though)? I’m still learning, and it looks like an interesting part to print - is the idea that 2 of the same part will fit into each other?
Hey
I sent the printer back to formlabs for a replacement the customer cancelled the order.
Downer.
Still, I’ll cross my fingers that the replacement is an improvement… would be great to here how you get on with the new one.
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