Has anyone used the tough resin yet?

@Anthony_Huczek but what if those tabs breaK :wink: I have had situtations where they all break and I have no choice but to use the razor. Sometimes the tabs hold and they work as they should sometime you draw the short end of the stick lol

Just curious. Have you ever sanded your platform? Ours got pretty scratched and I wet sanded it and smoothed it back out. Iā€™ve noticed the clear does stick more than the white. But getting the scratches out really helped.

Me too, with the breakages. I use the tabs, and since the initial few failures some weeks ago, I am always careful to increase pressure VEEERRRY slowlyā€¦ and nevertheless, sometimes they break. And when ONE breaks, I know Iā€™m in for some fun, 'cos they usually all break then, particularly if Iā€™ve got a large part on the base where the tabs are close to the edge of the build platform.

Sometimes, however, the material seems to be more elastic/clings less to the build platform, and then the part just pops off, like you say. This seems to be model-size independent.

Both the breakage problem and the nice experience of models popping off seem to be a) base thickness dependent (somewhere around 1.6-2.0 seems to be best, with thinner and thicker both resulting in brittle breakage) and b) build platform. I have a SOB platform, where I have had to use hammer and chisel on more than one occasion, and a nice friendly platform, where models come off easily. I also have 2 others which I just havenā€™t used enough recently to be able to categorise.

I guess Iā€™m going to start compiling statistics on the kind of models and base thicknesses in connection with which build platform I have usedā€¦

I havenā€™t sanded any of my platforms - support said it wasnā€™t necessary, after I referred them to one thread with a method involving a lot of sanding between every printā€¦ he said heā€™d been using the same platform for 6 months, hadnā€™t sanded once and everything was fine. Still, maybe he doesnā€™t print so often, he was born under a lucky star, or somethingā€¦

At any rate, both my SOB and the Officer Friendly platforms have lots of minor scratches with occasional slightly deeper gouges; a new platform I tried once also stuck pretty badly.

Like I said: itā€™s time for statistics, as much as I hate it. That always helps with debugging such a problemā€¦

My experience so far with the sob prints was that i needed to move the platform up in the fine-tuning.
When I have done that it started working.

I also lightly sand my platform every few prints with scotchbrite. Then clean the hell out of it.
This had made a noticeable difference in removal.
This mostly just removes sharp edges.

I just did my first Tough Resin print (small part, long flat surface).
I printed 4 copies directly to a used build platform (which had previously been sanded) with a NEW resin vat.
0 Z-calibration/adjustment.

The geometry came out perfectly.
There were bubbles in the print surface (I had just shook the bottle).
There was some minor compression on the first few printed layers, but I suspect I could solve this with adding some positive Z-axis fine-tuning adjustment.

Okay so by complete accident I was able to replicate resultsā€¦

I tried a new build plate/Newish resin tank and tough material results ā€¦ FAIL

After this I kind of scratched my head and thought well the only thing I changed was the build platform which is far from new so I put that back in and well it workedā€¦

I guess the new tough resin may need the extra grooves to hold on to when using supports.

Interesting. I contacted support and of course they have asked me to print off the standard 5 butterfly symbol print. Before doing so I decided to try printing the 4 x 1cm cubed print I use to fine tune the printer. I did this a few times with the z-axis at 1, 05, 0, -0.5 and -1. On each and every occasion the two front squares printed fine (nearest the front of printer) and were an absolute nightmare to get off the platform with the rear two stuck to the resin tank. There is obviously some interaction between the build platform and the tank that is currently escaping me.

Iā€™m now having this problem also. With the new tank I finally got a good print (it was on the outer edges).

I thought that fixed our problem and attempted a different print. Two failures in a row with it sticking to the outer edges but not the center.

Reading all of this, I am almost certain we are seeing the effects of large tolerances on the build platformā€¦ like I said, I have a platform that has been a SOB like forever, and another one that behaves itself; both seem to be scratched approximately the same, although the SOB has a few ā€˜war scarsā€™ since I had, as far as I could see, on several occasions no alternative but to use chisel and hammer.

Also, I noticed this yesterday - look at the gap on the right hand side of the (good) build platform fixing:

So, when the next print job is finished, Iā€™m going to measure what I can to get some dimensional comparisons between good and bad build platformā€¦ anyone else have any ideas for comparisons?

@Mariann_Cary I never said ā€˜thank youā€™ for the tip, by the wayā€¦ I will try that, when I have finally gotten round to ordering everything on my ā€˜splurgeā€™ list, and will get back to you.

Well my ticket is being looked at (canā€™t fault the service help guys and girls). Hereā€™s the formlabs test print in both tough and regular resin. I was asked to print in regular as the tough was showing signs of issues in the optical path but the regular came out perfectly and I only just cleaned the mirrors a week or so ago when I moved into my new print lab.

The tough resin print left two of the butterflies in the tank and only 2 were properly attached, the third was attached but only by around 50% of the base. Getting those off that were attached was a nightmare. I ended up having to use a hammer and chisel as all the tabs broke off and the scraper was all but useless.

I really hope I can find out what the issue is with my setup as a good few requests that Iā€™ve had could have used the tough resin.


Awesome! I havenā€™t played with the tough resin again yet because now my clear resin and white resin are both failing! Cleaned both tanks and giving the white another go as we speak. Trying as much troubleshooting before I put in a problem ticket. Good to know a scratched platform isnā€™t really affecting the prints. Mine is all kinds of scratched ATM. I may need to get a new one along with a new resin tank for the white resinā€¦Thanks for doing that test print! :smile:

After some back and forth with support, I have had a few prints work ok. For my setup, I have been printing a pretty small object (~1.7mL of resin required). This generally has resulted in little rafts floating in the tough resin when the base doesnā€™t adhere to the platform. With the build platform offset tweaked to 0.1mm, and the model moved to the hinge edge, the prints adhere. The dimensional accuracy of the Tough resin is quite good - on a 0.05mm resolution print I see accuracy within about .001 inches when I use a micrometer to measure my print. If I move the model away from the hinge, my adhesion problems return. If I print with the Clear V2, things work perfectly so the printer is fine. I suspect that a wider initial base is required for the Tough resin to adhere to the build platform, so I think Iā€™ll wait on any more small prints with the tough resin until there is an update to PreFormā€™s Tough resin settings.

Guys ā€˜nā€™ gals: for anyone having problems with adhesion to the build platform, may I suggest you go have a look at a hideously long post I just made after a few days of looking into this subject - I think and hope I have at least something to reduce the problem if not actually cure it:

Itā€™s to do with the effect that bow, warp and skew of build platforms relative to resin tanks can haveā€¦

This is very interesting. Iā€™ll need to check how flat the two platforms I have are. One being a lot older than the other.

My issues with the tough resin have reached a point where nothing more can be done until the new software update 1.9.1 comes out. I would recommend that anyone else that has had these issues get in touch with the help desk to be able to log the issues so they know how many people are experiencing the issues.

Guess Iā€™m sticking with regular resin for the time being!

Interesting because all of a sudden I have been having multiple failures and it is because part of the support base is not adhering to the build platformā€¦

Weird part is that the base platform is the same thickness across so it is almost like the layers were built and compensated along the way.

Tom

The low angle you are printing at presents a lot of peeling surface area and load. Have you tried printing at a steeper angle to try to reduce the peel area and load?

@Thomas_Judy : that is exactly the same kind of effect that I had had on lots of bigger models, it was also not totally predictable (I think due to the approx. 0.2mm shift accompanying removing the build platform, removing the model, and reassembling the build platform) - with me, it seems to be totally gone once the front-to-back non-parallel angle between platform and resin tank as well as lateral skew is compensated forā€¦ the bow in the platform can probably only be removed by milling it flat, which might loosen the 8 press-fit threaded sockets, but this approx. 0.2mm higher up in the centre seems not to be too critical if the other tolerances are compensated.

I know the method I used is not terribly high-tech; I also donā€™t know how long itā€™ll holdā€¦ compression of the paper shim may lead to mid-/long-term instability; really, the adjustable screws for the resin tank I read about should be able to give a first and perhaps in itself big enough improvement, but whoever wrote about that said FormLabs doesnā€™t allow you to touch these, so I stuck to modifying the build platform, where voiding the warranty isnā€™t a problem. Additionally, there is a variance from platform to platform anyway, so I doubt whether those screws would really solve it.

At any rate, for the moment, specifically coupled with @BrentONeillā€™s hint of using the hex screws to do some fine adjusting, with my method I really have got a) much more reliable and even adhesion to the build platform, plus b) much easier detachment of the models from the platformā€¦ no breaking tabs, no excessive sticking. Do be aware, however, that simply removing the build platform, detaching the model, and plugging the build platform back in and printing again can cause 0.2mm shift, thus different results, which in itself can make the difference between it-just-worked-that-first-time to oh-shit-what-went-wrong-NOW?!? before the compensation method is used.

Try printing my test file 2015_07_27-2cm_base_thickness_plate-x8_numbered.form (2.2 MB) - it prints in 14 mins on clear at 200Āµ / 18 mins in white at 100Āµ /24 mins in black at 100Āµ, using only 4ml of resin; adjusting the build platform using the results is a little trial and error, but I always got significant improvements for all 4 build platforms already after the first iteration; a maximum of 3 iterations requiring platform disassembly plus one further one without disassembly (using Brentā€™s fine adjustment) leads to around a max. difference of ~0.3mm across the build platform - this is compensated for very well by the simple but clever method FormLabs usedā€¦ itā€™s only when you get a big tolerance problem that their method doesnā€™t seem to be enough, but it seems fairly common for this to happen. With 4 print runs, 3 platform disassemblies you are probably looking at 2-3 hours time frame per platform, with about 1 hour of actual work occuring. For me, a small price to pay for predictable printing.

The down side is having to keep a list of build platform/resin tank combinations with accompanying z-axis offsetā€¦ AND having to remember each time you change platform and/or resin tank to readjust the z-axis offsetā€¦ but Iā€™d rather have that one-off effort than the constant frustration, money/resin wasting and resin tank ā€˜burningā€™ that accompanies the failed prints - maaan, do I HATE coming in in the morning to find a 12 hour failed print!!!

Give it a go with the tough resin, if you get a chance, and let us know if it helps.

I was debating on milling down one of my build platform but something in me is holding back because the standard resins do not have this issue so why is it that the new resin is giving us such griefā€¦ if the surface needs to be perfectly flat then why is it that I have two new build platforms that are not perfectly flatā€¦ one measured a 0.01mm dim with the others were much smaller, again not perfect but enough not to work?

I would think that if it needed to be perfectly flat then formlabs would have seen this issue during the initial testing and released a new platform that is machined and assembled better but as far as I know (partly because no one from formlabs as talked in this board) they have not experienced this issue and it is a select group of us that have this going on. I really donā€™t want to have my team at the surface grinders stop what they are doing to grind down my build plate just to have the same issue happen again or worse it works and I have to have them do this every time I buy a new platform.

Its just odd to me that all this time and they have no public response as to why this could be happening and if it is in fact that the build platforms are no good well I have two that will be needing replaced so that I can get this Tough Material printing.