after some weeks of tuning and testing I would like to share my results with you:
Setup
Photocentric HARD Black UV Resin
Form1+
Open FL with material card attached
Support Size diameter 0,4 mm
resolution 0,1 mm
Cleaning with ultrasonic cleaner and water + dish soap
UV Curing 30 Minutes in self made chamber
This setup works for me perfect !
Due to the relative low laser power needed, I now run since 3 Liters of resin without any clouding in my VAT.
VAT is coated with original silicon - tests with sylguard coated VAT shows the same result.
Customers are telling that they do not have issues with snapping features.
All parts come out warp free - no warp during cleaning.
Please find attached the materialfile and some pictures.
Feel free to test it on your own risk. Feedback is of course welcome
Gray will follow in the next weeks.
Comment: Forgett about standard setting. Did not work for me!
Odd that the quality control would be that off. My resin will be from the US. I will have to reach out to them to ask how different the resins from the EU to US are and how closely they are held to Photocentric specifications.
@computerflummi Great work! - and thanks for the config, Guess I need to unpack my F1+ and set it next to the F2 - now I can do smaller parts a lot cheaper, and the longer life on VAT silicone is a sweet bonus…
Now 4 Liters of resin through one tank - no clouding!
I think I will try create a faster profile. During the development for XYZprinting resin (see different post) I learned a bit more how to handle this profile. By the way: laser power needed for XYZprinting resin is even less than Photocentric.
Grey Photocentric Hard resin on Form1+ made troubles (even in open FL mode).
I tried this seeting now with great results:
200 ml Photocentric Grey Hard Resin (UV) Type
20 drops of Fun to do black colour (FTD pigment set - see webpage)
Print with V1 Clear Setting with 0,1 mm resolution
Make sure Resin is at approx. 21°C
Bath in IPA for max 2 minutes
wash with water and soap until it feels not sticky
Parts are nice in term of surface and sharpness, support can be removed in a good way (before UV curing) and parts are bit flexible to handle them good (also before UV Curing).
Due to a higher content of colours overcuring issue is almost gone - at least I can not see anything unwanted in part or in VAT.
After approx 500 ml: no clouding in the PDMS can be seen.
yes, looks ok. 10mm was at 10,05 - parts fit together.
Very small warping.
In general for Photocentric resin:
Take care about resin temp. lower than 20°C has always been issue in my printer. The viscosity changes very much and lead to a lot of failures.
I modified my Form1+ to have a constant heat at 23°C and preheat resin to be filled into the tank during print outside of the printer.
To be honest: for me it is too much try and error.
Printing is now ok, but postprocess is the next issue.
It looks like that resin has some reaction to acrylic paint from tamiya. This was never an issue with any other resin!
After some hours parts are cracked…
Same for cleaning. Sometimes sticky, sometimes not.
Water rinsing seems very often ok, but next time not.
I will empty this bottle and close the chapter for me.
F1 Blends from Fun to do have the same price in Germany, so I will try them…
The cleaning of this resin is indeed cumbersome. Water cleaning leaves it too sticky so I do it with paint thinner, then UV cure, then another cleaning step. Mixing hard with a little bit of firm gives better parts. I think the cracking might be caused due to shrinkage and stress. The hard resin is really hard/glass like and cannot handle any stress.
Made the same way for cleaning: prewash - UV - wash - dry (2 days!) on daylight - primer (wait 24h) - paint (wait 24h) - topcoat - cracked after 1 day… wall thickness about 10 mm!!
For me this not a good way to work. To complex and not reliable in terms of outcome.
The hard resin is indeed like glas and sometimes I fight to remove the parts from build platform.
With the paint from FTD in it gets a bit weaker / flexible, which was ok for me.
From price view I do net see the benefit for this resin if the FTD F1+ Blends work fine - which needs to be confirmend.
Compared with the daylight resins from Photocentric for my liquid crystal printer the UV resin are much more worse to handle. Daylight resin is easy to clean under water, good to fill and paint. Daylight resin can of course not be used in UV based printer …
Does the FTD dry/cure in a similar fashion as photocentric? Still a bit soft to the touch? It might be the same stuff.
Did a lot of testing again this week on the photocentric, my parts are within +/- 0.02mm of the nominal now but just a little bit under cured. Need to tweak laser power on the form2 a little bit better.
