Hi All,
I just finished a 15 hour print at .1mm with a part that pushes the size limits of the Form 1. Based on the Preform setup, it fits within the size constraints (just barely). It was actually closest to NOT fitting in the left/right directions, and had a little more breathing room in the height direction. Ironically, it’s the top of the part (last area printed) that actually failed. Everything else appears to have printed beautifully. The large hole at the top should be a continuous surface with what is below it.
I was really hoping this would make it, and quite disappointed when it didn’t. Anyone have any insight on how I might try again successfully? Any tips or tricks for printing large parts?
Check out attached images to see where it failed. It was about 190ml of gray resin.
That sucks, that’s a lot of resin and a long wait, I hate when that happens! Did you have your support “distance from base” setting at the minimum? Oh never-mind, looking at it closer I see that part fell off long before it reached the extents, so that’s not your problem. An area was either not sufficiently supported or too thin or a spot just messed up for some other reason. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to look like exactly.
Here is what it was supposed to look like:
Whoops, that was the other side (I recreated the view in Preform just now to illustrate how it should have printed). Here is the correct side:
Hey Aaron,
Check the layers around where the first tear or mistake happened. My guess is that a piece of that internal geometry printed without a touch point attached to it. I’ve found that if even the smallest part of a layer that sticks to the PDMS and doesn’t come away with the model creates a snowball effect that ruins a larger and larger area as pieces stick to this problem area and is kept down on the PDMS. You’ll be looking for a little floating island of blue on a layer that doesn’t ever branch off from something already printed or a support.
If you can’t find anything like this then my next suggestion would be to try to angle your part so that the angle of the part to the build platform is in the axis with the peel instead of 90 degrees to it (at least that’s what it looks like from your picture). Also you could try a slightly less angle to the build platform than you have and orient it diagonally across the build platform to fit it. While this would increase the surface area of each layer slightly you would also be able to pump up the touch point density and slope factor to try to secure that shell a little better.
Hope any of this helps!
Dylan
Thanks for the tips, Dylan. With all the supports packed together so tightly, it’s difficult to tell if a “floating blue island” is attached to something else downstream. Are there any tricks to this? Or just something you learn with use? The tall supports were on the hinge side when I built it, if that’s what you mean about the angle and axis.
Use the layer slider on the right hand side to scroll to near where the problem began (maybe 300 layers before) and use the arrow keys to scroll upward. While you’re scrolling track all of the layers and make sure that all layers have a majority connection to the layer before or have a touch point in the layer directly before an island appears. It’ll take a while to examine, but it’s worth it for the amount of resin.