Form1+ laser flare issues illustrated - pics and video

Hi Steve

That would be nice.

Sacha

Watching this thread very closelyā€¦ Ive had the same issues for over a month now. ā€œIā€™m about to jumpā€

Thank you @KevinHolmes

No one says it has to be a perfect circle.
No one expects it to be. Laser beams need to be conditioned to achieve a clean profile.

Use an aperture. Itā€™s the simplest spatial low-pass filter there is and is a normal part of about every laser optical path out there. Relying on the fact scans are fast and intensity of the flare is low is misleading - you keep curing over the same area in the vat with the flare. At some point itā€™s bound to solidify, and, even worse, resin with chunks of semi-solid resin will flow UNDER the printed object when you do a peel.

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Or better yet, switch to DLP projection, Formlabs. Lasers are clearly full of problems.

Build volume would be VERY small.
Not a problem for jewelry, but it would gouge a huge chunk out of Formlabsā€™ user base.

@Ante_Vukorepa pretty sure that was heavy irony ā€¦ not something Iā€™ve seen from @Monger_Designs on the forums before, but I suspect heā€™s a little peeved at the long dialogue with FL support heā€™s had over this ā€¦

Ah. Sorry, didnā€™t read sarcasm into it.

@Ante_Vukorepa I hear what youā€™re saying about the build size, but if the lens or the distance is adjustable, you can still get a large print area from a DLP. Iā€™m just saying, if the laser is causing so many issues and there are too many things that can go wrong, galvos, mirrors to be cleans, laser spot goes bad.

Looks like even FSL3D is giving up on the laser and switching to DLP projection

waitā€¦what sarcasm? I was serious damn it lol

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personally - my dream SLA machine is a DLP chip gimbal mounted over resin floating on a saline bath - but in the meantime, until the commodity SLA revolution really gets going, the F1 still seems like the main game in town - and Iā€™m keen to get mine working as best as I can ā€¦

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Similar here, I dream of a 10,000 lumen projector over a huge tank of saline and resin :smile:
As long as the part and platform stay under-water you could print any size and never need to deal with fluid level. Each time the platform steps down, the fluid level would remain the same. Simple, scaleable, and fast, very fast.
Monger could lower the projector and print rings. I could raise the projector and print a lawn chair :smiley:

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Imagine the user support nightmare if you were to allow end-users to move and refocus the projector. Not to mention replacing the lightbulbs, explaining the relationship between projection area and exposure times to beginners etc.

Thereā€™s a reason why none of the current consumer level offerings allow end-users to change the projection area.

There would be notches on the mast for the projector. They would be factory calibrated. Just like we choose laser exposure by the name of the resin, you would select the height of the projector by what notch you had it in.

Because laser issues on the first form1 and now the form1+ are not a support nightmare :wink:

There could be pre-calibrated options. For example, for jewelers, it could be pre-set at 50 microns with a pretty good print area. For engineering, prototyping, it could be pre-set at 150 microns with a large print area.

If someone still wanted to adjust the projector, they could have that option.

Lets not derail the topic- a new architecture is no solution ā€¦ I remain attracted to the possibility of an iris or aperture as @Ante_Vukorepa describes here and in previous posts

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But we were revolutionizing the worldā€¦ :smiley:

Alright, back on topic. Iā€™m posting my never-before-seen picture of the laser choke results.

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Agreed. That looks great Josh! Did you see improvements in the prints after installing it besides the beautiful laser spot?

Thankyou @JoshK this is the brass ring right there in front of us ā€¦

Absolutely, before everything small sucked and everything large failed. Afterwards, everything printed awesome.