@leonhart88, I tried your cutter technique and had very good success with it today. I tried it with the same models I broke previously and all were successfully removed from the build platform without breaking any of them. It is remarkable just how different black V4 behaves compared to gray V4. Thanks again!
Hi Bill,
For the models I print, they are sold and shipped to customers still attached to the rafts. This serves three important purposes: 1) the model is identified, 2) the raft and supports provide strength during shipping, and 3) less production effort required in removing rafts and surface prep keeps production times reasonable and lowers costs.
My customers frequently buy sets of very similar models, easily mistaken for one another, so having the name of the model on the raft is highly desirable.
Most of my designs are small and hollow with thin walls and very fine, fragile features (see examples below). Their geometry is typically unsuitable for grabbing and twisting them off the raft, as seen in the FL video. The models would likely be crushed or shattered if grabbed and twisted from the raft.
This is why @leonhart88 's recommendation to use the cutter really helped. The models printed in black V4, and even their rafts, were too fragile for the more conventional prying method that works fine with gray V4. That method required too much force, destroying the black V4 models.
The models are somewhat susceptible to damage during shipping, especially those sent to international customers travelling long distances and experiencing a lot of rough handling. Keeping them attached to the raft helps them survive.
You can increase the thickness of the raft, I don’t know whether that would help.
There are tools made for removing paint from glass which I’ve found useful. I found they worked well removing mini rafts that are always difficult to remove. This one uses Stanley Knife blades:
While sanding may be a helpful workaround, these posts really underscore the need for Formlabs to give us a knob to adjust build platform adhesion.
With the Form 1/1+/2 you could adjust the Z-offset until adhesion and Z-Compression were where you wanted.
I made use of that to obtain more accurate direct-on-base results, and to adjust my prints so that the raft would pop off with perfect amount of force to remove them by hand. It saved a ton of time when doing bulk prints, and I miss it.
I recognize the mechanism is a little different, but surely they have parameters that can be adjusted to achieve the same effect.
There’s some people saying sanding increases adhesion, because of extra BP roughness, and some people saying it decreases adhesion, supposedly because resin buildup might increase adhesion and by sanding this buildup goes away.
I have a Form3 and about 185 prints, about 12 liter printed all engineering resins. I have 2 build plates sharing the load.
These pictures show microscope screenshots of one of the build plates. They don’t seem to show any buildup
And these are pictures of my second BP, which I’ve just sanded with 400 grit. Although the print had good adhesion afterwards (Flexible 80A), I see sanding actually smoothes the surface…
