"Lil" Fee Head: My First (and last) "Fantastic" Print!

Projects & Prints
#1

Hi everyone,

Just got my Form + 1, and after a few test-prints (the butterfly,) and some other trials and operator errors, I just printed one of my designs and I have to say… WOW! let me tell you some more about my process and what I learned from this…

A “Lil” History

To start, I modeled this little guy in Maya, starting with NURBs and then Polygons (I’m old-school, but very fast!) I then took it to ZBrush and setup the wall-thickness. Here’s a picture of the character, which by-the-way, I call “Lil Fee”:

If you want to know more about this project, check out this link: http://www.710films.com/Projects/SmallFees/SmallFees.html#.VCK9SEuzLnt

The print was done at 0.025mm, using the Grey resin and the supports were set using the default settings. Here’s what it looks like:

The supports were set by default.

The light-colored grey area you see around the eyes and in front of the ears is air! Yes, an air pocket. I didn’t combine the pieces correctly, and to my amazement (something that happens a lot with the Form + 1,) I got these empty pocked, just like the CG model!

What I’ve Learned

This print was the second one for this model. The first one, now that I look back, failed for two reasons: 1) PreForm placed the model ‘automatically" and because of this, 2) an “air bubble” was created and not allowed to "scape,’ does it damaged the print. here’s what the first layout looked like:

As you can see, I created a hole in the neck when I created the “wall” for the thickness of the model - to make the print more “efficient,” using less resin, blah, blah, blah… BUT the model was laid-out incorrectly: it did not allow for any naturally-occuring air to used the scape route of the hole in the neck! Here’s a picture of the first failed attempt:

I then studied the movement of the machine, how it tilts the resin-tank and how, no matter what you do, there’s always air on the surface of the resin, I then looked at the layout PreForm gave me and realized that if I tilted the model so that the hole in the neck was pointing down in PreForm and “upwards” in the actual printing process, that the air would would have its scape route. This was the second layout:

And voila! The print came out pretty good - if you ask me. Hope my discoveries and mistakes helped someone!

Thanks,

Frank
www.710films.com
frank@710films.com

3 Likes
#2

Amazing print! For me, I would orientate the model so that it’s like a bowl and resin can escape while the print builds up. Also the top of the head which would be the bottom of the bowl would have less details that got mucked up by the supports.

Still, very nice.

#3

very cool and interesting. I also think that trapper air is more dangerous than trapper resin. I have read some people make a hole on the top for air to escape, and one on the bottom for resin to escape.

#4

Thanks Teck and Cesar,

The whole trapped air thing is very interesting and something to take into consideration when setting up the layout of the print.

Teck; I first tried the method you suggested but I got a bad print. I think that I rather let the air scape and deal with trapped resign with the clean-up, besides, the second print came out pretty good… I think?!

Another Thing I’ve learned

It helps to keep the support at a density of 0.6. Anything smaller tends to create thinner support, which is more fragile and tends to separate and fall down to the bottom of the Resin Tank, thus blocking the laser and creating solid blobs of resin!

Here’s another failed print:

You can see what a spot of harden Resin can do (prevents the laser from… working!)

Those thin supports break too easily! Like I was saying, keep to the 0.6 density!

And again, thin walls do to air entrapment; they’ll do it to you!

Thanks again! I’ll keep posting my adventures with this printer!

Frank
www.710films.com
frank@710films.com