Just thought I’d let you know about my experience with porcelite ceramic resin in my form2. So far, not good. The material is very dense and was preventing the wiper from returning to a straight position, which was causing the bulld plate to catch on it (this could have just been a wonky wiper, but I’ve only had it happen once or twice with other resins, with this resin it was every layer).
The resin is packed with ceramic particles and these particles settle very quickly in the vat which concerns me, in respect of the continuity of ceramic particles to resin ratio as the print progresses.
Although I have not yet had a successful print, I have printed several base rafts, and they surprised me by being very porcelain like. I was expecting the cured resin to be plasticky (is that a word?) until fired in a kiln, but straight off the build plate it is a ceramic object and therefore quite brittle so great care needs to be taken in removing from the build plate.
I’m going to attempt more printing today and will make more posts regarding my success (or further failure!)
So, just (almost) finished a 4.5 hour print, all was well but 10 minutes from the end… the print completely detached from the supports! Not sure if this was because it was too heavy, not enough supports/contact points too small or the huge build up of particulate on the bottom of the vat. I’m running the same print again, max supports and .6 contact size.
I was using 100% supports with .40 contact. The second attempt was a complete disaster - nothing on the build plate at all with 150% supports and .60 contact. Trying to print again.
Success, sort of. Got a complete print, same setting as before. There is a definite loss of quality toward the end of the print as the ceramic material is settling on the bottom of the vat. I printed this at .1mm just to get the job done as quickly as possible. Perhaps if the wiper was able to stay straight the resin tank would have remained clear of particle build up longer, but in my experience the wiper needs to be removed as the resin is too thick (also the particles would build up on the left and right side of the tank in a much thicker layer, I would imagine this would also cause issues with the wiper).
I’m going to do one more print, but at this stage I have to say that if I wanted ceramic models, I would use regular resin and make a mold and then slip-cast as this material, in my opinion, is not yet capable of producing high quality prints with any degree of regularity.
Printed a bigger, more complex object, not really sure if all this effort is worth it though. The number and size of supports will be a bugger to clean off.
How much does that material shrink when fired and what kind of temperatures can it handle after?
Wonder if it is possible to make die cast molds out of it for Zamak and other metals and alloys?
I think the shrinkage after curing/firing is about 30%. Not too sure about the other stuff. There is a lot of info on the manufacturers website though.
Watching this with interest - thank you for documenting it. 30% shrinkage sounds very high - although that’s comparable with the level of shrinkage the first generation of silver clays exhibited.
I assume the density of Porcelite is way in excess of that of the standard resins? Looking at the horse print I don’t envy the support removal - I think I’d probably use a diamond cutting disc on that…
I have a bottle of Porcelite that I haven’t broken open yet. I think the shrinkage is around 17%. I think I saw that on their website comparing it to regular ceramics that are around 12% shrinkage. If I am way off, sorry. Just going by memory.
When I break open the bottle, I’ll post up my results. I will be printing with a From 1+ though.
The material is very dense - if you check the link to the youtube video you can see how thick the deposits of ceramic powder are on the bottom of the resin vat. The tech support told me they printed with the wiper attached, but it kept fouling up the build plate so I removed it.
There is a guide, but it is pretty basic. I print out using the grey setting, I have filled an old resin tank so I can use the automatic filing process.
thanks for sharing
