We’ve been using the Form2 for a week or so now and I’m getting the hang of these print settings. We’ve already printed several hundred parts in that short amount of time and it has been excellent quality and reliability, up to this newest part.
We are trying to print a rather simple handle on the F2. Due to it’s size, it can’t be printed vertically or horizontally. The best orientation we’ve found that fits is vertical (handle tube going up and down) with a small angle backwards in order to clear the build height restriction (we’re about 1.5 mm away from maximum allowed height even in this orientation).
I originally printed 3 with support density set to 0.5. I’ve done 40 other parts at a time with this setting and figured I’d start there…bad idea. 3 hours in, 2 of the handles broke free from their supports and started floating in the tank. I aborted the print and tried again with a density of 1.0 (default). I had to reduce the number of parts to 2 in order to have room for the new supports (no big loss). This time 1 survived, the other broke free at some point, but not completely, so it printed…well…malformed. So, I still don’t have it right, but I’m closer.
I’ve been printing FDM for 4+ years and am quite familiar with how printing works. I can stare at an FDM mid-process and tell you what needs to be adjusted. With the F2 SLA, the majority of the same items remain the same, however the ‘peel’ force is what I’m learning now as that seems to be the issue. The parts are so heavy, and the resin (Black V4) is rather “squishy” when it prints, that the sheer force of peeling the parts from the tank during each layer, once you reach the upper limits of the height of the F2, cause extreme force on the bottom legs of the supports. So, how do we go about this?
I can see 4 options unfortunately.
A: Increase support density to 1.5 to increase the number of supports bearing the peel force.
B: Increase the Base Thickness of each support to 3mm or greater to better survive the peel force.
C: Increase the Point Size to, something, to keep the part better adhered to the supports.
D: Some combination of the above.
While this is a learning curve I have to surmount, the amount of time (46+ hours) and resin (350 mL) required for these prints makes me wary of just throwing caution to the wind and experimenting as I would normally do. I may end up just doing that, but I’d rather get some feedback from those more attuned to the F2 and understanding what would be the best solution. The learning curve is steep on this one, but can be overcome.
Thanks in advance!
