Just wanted to share our first print experience. First tip I have is to examine your printer when you remove it from the packaging and make sure that the resin tray is seated properly and the build platform is pushed all the way back and engaged. On our machine, the build platform was engaged but not pushed completely back over the resin tank. Let’s just say I had a panic attack when the printer was turned on and the platform came down on the edge of the resin tray. Aside from that, the setup of the machine and downloading the software went very smoothly.
We printed this septafoil knot. It took 3 hours at the .05mm setting. We used the default settings. We had to rotate the part around a bit to minimize the red shading. That positioning was trial and error.
The noises of the printer become somewhat soothing once you realize they don’t mean something is malfunctioning. Once the printing was complete we let the part drip for a minute. It was VERY hard to remove the part from the build platform. After several tries we were able to get some air under the part and lift it off with the scraper. We soaked the part for the recommended 10 min after agitating for 2 min. At this point the part was still tacky. The supports were almost impossible to remove at this point. We were able to break off a few but we were afraid of breaking the part so we took it outside to sit in the sun. I wouldn’t recommend leaving it in the sun for too long because after 30 min the parts started to yellow. However, after about 10 minutes we could break off the supports by hand. They left visible bumps which was a bit disappointing. We were able to sand them down once fully dried with sand paper but that affected the finish. This part was made from a file we downloaded from grabcad.com.
Today we are printing an actual part that we normally make out of aluminum on a CNC machine. This time we will compare the finished part to the model dimensions to see how close we are. I took some forum suggestions and set this one up to run as grey resin at the .025mm setting. The print time for this part is 14 hours! and I’m sitting here in hour 7 and still can’t see much. I’m concerned the print is going to fail based on some other posted experiences, but we figured we’d give it a shot. I’ll post our results/observations in a day or two.
