Hey guys, not sure if this is the right format to ask for this but im fairly new, so thanks in advance for your patience.
A couple of months ago i bought a form 2 and after some reading my first couple of prints were great, i would call them a huge success, really happy with the quality obtained, after that i decided to move to smaller prints (as my hobby its wargaming) printed a couple of models from hero forge, noticed some loss of quality on smaller parts that i assumed were in part to not using many supports. When i moved to some models designed by a friend i couldnt get those to print at all, it was at least a thousand layers gone to waste. i gave up at the time and since i saw some cloudiness at the bottom of the resin tank, i decided to buy a new one. well my new tank arrived, i decided to try it out again and i failed again, supports would print but the actual model wouldnt, after tinkering with it again, i found out that those modelds didnt had the right thickness so that one was on me, decided to try again with a bigger model that i hollowed out using meshmixer, imported the model to preform (up to date) made sure firmware was updated as well, since this was a test used the one click print wizard and since printability was allright decided to go for it. Needless to say, it failed again, supports were printed but not the actual model (taking a look at the resin tank, seems that parts of the model were printed but somehow they detached from the supports).
Haven’t had this problem myself but I would think it’s a problem with the STL of your model. Was there a lot of goopy, semi cured resin in the tray where the model was printing? If not, then I’d say your STL was just a skin. When you slice the model in preform using the layer slider what do the layers look like?
Well the model itself its manifold, like i mentioned i inspected it and hollowed it out on meshmixer before importing into preform, the resin tank had indeed bits of semi cured resin on it, only thing i can imagine at this point its that the supports tip wasnt big enough as i lowered them to .4 to reduce possible damage to the model. It is just frustrating that the last couple of prints were a failure i guess.
Any reading material you would suggest to avoid this kind of mistakes in the future?
It really doesn’t look like a support tip size problem to me. Going too small can create a failed print, but I wouldn’t think you would end up with no printed model at all because of that.
Do you know what your wall thickness was when you hollowed the part in meshmixer? I’ve found meshmixer can do strange things to parts on occasion.
Meshmixer can produce self-intersecting pockets internally with some geometry and wall thicknesses. It seems that these self-intersecting features cause issues in PreForm. At least this is my experience.
When you get models online, you have a very high probability that the geometry is bad.
3D printers need to be able to tell which part of the build area is material- and which is empty space.
3D models do NOT contain data about the solid portion of the model, because that would take too much data- So they only represent the SURFACE of the model.
A surface can describe a solid only if it is entirely closed- a term often called Manifold, or “watertight”. Imagine a balloon shape without a knot in its neck… no matter how spherical it LOOKS from the outside, the inside of its surface and the outside of its surface are NOT separated by the wall of the balloon… Tie a knot in the neck and suddenly it will hold air- or water because the surface is fully closed.
Lots of folks model for RENDERING- which does not have to be solid geometry. or perhaps they are just novice modelers who don’t understand how geometry describes a solid… As a result they will model shapes that are not closed… or multiple separate intersecting shapes.
Depending on the software they are running, intersecting solid shapes can result in a mathematical boolean- with the intersecting area no longer identifiable as part of a solid.
So- in general- whenever the printer prints perfect SUPPORTS- but a MISSING or oddly incomplete model… it is almost always caused by the model, itself, not qualifying as a solid.
You can try opening the model in modeling software and see if the software has an Object doctor that can fix the geometry or topology. If the model is composed of multiple intersecting surfaces, you can try Merging the models into a single object.
In general STL files have fewer potential import issues that might corrupt geometry. They triangulate 4 point geometry often found in animation models produced in subD software.
But I can warn you that, having downloaded hundred of files from online sources, about 70% of them have problems that might affect printability.
We just use Geomagic Freeform or Sculpt to import them, and that solves most issues right there… but I realize most folks can not afford that software.