Just started printing on my Form3 to discover that my small prints, 3mm X 3mm with .8mm holes does not print. I know that I can get great detail from this printer but is there a strategy for how to printer very small parts?
I have not tried the ultra detailed experimental yet.
If I reorient the part would that help?
Orientation helps but sometimes the holes fill in with resin and if you print with clear that resin may be partially cured by indirect laser light .I have printed parts with 0.5mm holes in it.In some cases the holes are less than 0.5mm so now I use a drill bit to clean out the holes.Can you post the object and orientation you are using.
Test1.form (172.7 KB)
I think this is what you were looking for. I have another 15min at the most detailed print using the file I just gave you. Will let you know how it goes.
The larger of the two pieces printed. Since I can’t see what’s going on as it’s printing I wonder what happened to the smaller of the two pieces?
test1.form (201.0 KB)
So a couple of things.The small part only had 1 support.Even though preform said it was enough support the part the support was attached to was very thin.I adjusted the angle of the part and added a couple more touchpoints and I reduced the size of the touchpoints to avoid them damaging the part.It is a very tiny part and you may struggle to get a good print.One thing to consider is redoing the disc and having the “holes” only go half way through the disc.You could use the indents on the part as guides to drill out the holes once the part is printed.
Secondly there are now potentially cured bits of resin in the build tank.I would recommend draining the tank and straining the resin to get any pieces of resin out so they dont interfere with future prints.
Thanks, I’m going to increase the size of the entire project to I don’t have this issue.
Will drain the tank, thanks
On a Form 3, I tried this orientation and got many of the holes on the disc to resolve. The others could be cleaned out with a tool. For the cylinder, The hole is blocked at the bottom. It could be cleaned out, but I suspect moving the supports away from the hole would further improve things.
The single support is fine for the disc, no need to add more unless you want them along the edges to keep the hole surface totally clear.
I also prefer mini rafts as they use less resin and print faster.
This was with PreForm 3.3.2
I’ll try this, thanks
I thought I had posted this a while ago, but at some point I experimented with printing circuit boards to see if I could come up with a process of testing the mechanical properties of a circuit board prior to ordering.
I ended up succeeding, to the point where I could even print the vias, which are along that scale. The trick I found was to add a scaling factor the smaller you went, but I don’t recall 1) what it was, or 2) whether it was linear or exponential.
