I don’t own a SLA printer but just curious as I have a full Fuse system with Blast and polisher upgrade…but just curious if anyone has tried this?
I know there is sanding of supports involved as I have done SLA before (complete mess and not for me) but with this Fuse SLS system now being fully streamlined with the Blast and Polisher and my methods of Dying locked in… I am half tempted to get a Form printer as it appears a lot more refined as a SLA system, just to proof this process out myself but I can’t see why you could not Blast the SLA parts after curing…and run the polisher on them… no one has tried this?
If the support “dots” need more than that you could hit them either with a more abrasive blast, as we prep metal for Cerakote with Sand/Garnet, to sand them or hit them with a hand sand if needed but then run the Blast polisher to uniform the finish afterwards…?
I run a lot of parts on SLS and I thought maybe a Form SLA would be nice now that I am seeing this clear v5 resin to proof out new designs as we run a lot of “cases for things” and to see visually how well a new design and item fits inside a see thru case prototype and or attaches together to help fine tune and tweak before mass running it in SLS.
Right now when we design something as a case or with internal springs… I “half print” the item or cut/break it in half to visually see the fit around an object and/or how well the internal springs form around an item… a clear prototype would help visualize this a lot easier…
Just a thought…and I can’t imagine that nobody has tried this yet…especially interested in what it would do to the clear v5 resin…
Although we don’t have the Fuse Blast, we almost always blast our SLA components as standard post-processing.
However, the contact points of the supports are not removed in the process. These still have to be sanded manually.
Blasting has two main effects:
Firstly, sanding (both dry and wet) produces a fine material dust. This tends to settle in thin slits, holes or leaves a light residue on the components. this can be cleaned very easily with blasting.
on the other hand, depending on the material, the layers can be completely hidden. SLA prints are very smooth even at 0.1mm layer height. however, you may still see individual layers or super slight inconsistencies. we mostly use the standard resin in white for prototypes and customer orders. these blasted parts are extremely smooth and cannot be recognised as additive components. the same result is achieved with the 4k and 10k resin. however, it should be noted that white glass dust is produced in the booth, which discolours SLS components. we have an additional booth for this purpose.
as even with the standard resins a fine dust can be produced which can discolour SLS components, I would recommend having an extra blasting cabin for blasting SLA components.
We started with FDM printing, then SLA printing and then SLS printing.
Personally, I now find SLA printing rather unpleasant because of the long and manual post-processing of the supports. In my opinion, SLA printing is only really a production process to be taken seriously if components can be printed completely without supports. For this, however, the product often has to be specially designed for SLA printing. This is feasible for our own products, but not for customer orders.
Once you have got used to SLS printing, it is very difficult to like SLA printing again. We have a handful of customers who want to test injection moulding prototypes with SLA surfaces. Otherwise, I would recommend SLS printing over SLA printing as often as possible.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the budget for this, but ideally I would rather expand the post-processing options for SLS printing to replace SLA printing if possible. For this I think a polishing solution together with a chemical smoothing solution would be a perfect addition. For example with the Fuse Blast and the AMT PostPro SFX.
After switching it to their polishing media and doing that upgrade… man I tell you what… you need to get a Blast. Worth it. I can’t imagine hand blasting parts anymore. I just ran two chambers with 544 of these parts below (layer lines are intentional as they are knife handles…which is funny because making layer lines happen is hard to do when you want them on a Fuse) with only about an hour of labor (knocking the dust of in the Sift). This does not count the dying, rinsing and drying but man this would have taken me a full day of hand blasting in the past. I run a very short polish 10-15 minutes which just gives it that slight sheen…beautiful.
But yea I would think that putting these clear resin prints in the blast for a polish cycle would be a great method for uniform surface finish after whatever process you’d use to sand them…
Yea that makes sense… I definitely don’t want to mess up the current Fuse and Blast workflow as it is perfect right now. I don’t have the space for a second Blast on top of a Form system but was just curiuos on how the Blast would do in that ecosystem.
I definitely do not care to manufacture in SLA after SLS… but for prototypes I am on the fence about getting a Form SLA system.
Same on SLS. I may be getting my second Fuse printer here soon… GET A BLAST!
Worth it and it will shave hours off the little manual labor there is in post processing…
*After thought… I imagine if you run the SLA parts in another cabinet to get all your sanding out of the way… rinse them off…and put them in the blast for a polishing tumble you would limit any of that getting into your SLS system…
I also want a Fuse Blast soo badly, arg!
but i don’t print with the fuse often enough for the price to be worth it at the moment. On average, we print one build chamber per week, and it’s not even completely full.
I work alone in production as a self-employed person. even if I have 150 parts to finish (just like today and tomorrow), it’s currently financially easier to stand at the blast cabinet three times a day for 20 minutes and blast the parts myself.
The parts in the picture look really good. You have now switched to the normal PA12, right?
For the standard resins such as clear, white and black, this would certainly be an idea. I don’t think the parts lose much material after the first initial blasting.
It’s a different story with the 4k and 10k resins. The parts have to be blasted for a very long time and lose glass dust throughout.
But the 10K resin parts after long blasting are by far the best parts we can produce. This is a first class surface finish.
But the time required for post-processing is extreme. We are talking about manual, hand-sanding with various abrasives, sandpaper, sanding sponge, etc. for each component. It can easily take 15 minutes per component. Then rinse and dry. 5 minutes blasting per component. A series of 20 parts then takes a whole working day. I don’t enjoy the work, and the customer doesn’t enjoy the price.
What can I say?
Yes, I am now running Nylon 12 and started getting our first bulk orders of it in which helps slightly in cost. I still believe this system is still VERY NICHE in what makes sense for manufacturing but it is doable for unique items.
Off the original topic but yea…I could go in great detail my thoughts on this system as a business. Bottom line, if you stay a one man shop in your own backyard…and you produce and sell your own parts directly to consumer…then this system can be amazing.
Producing parts wholesale for others to sell can be challenging even with minimum overhead. If you can’t fit 75-100+ units of any given item in a single chamber…I’d say it is out of the question. For me, even direct to consumer, I have to at least get a dozen in a chamber even at my higher cost product line…
Unfortunately the Formlabs “production end use materials” of Nylon 12 GF and especially CF are way outside the cost and effort for production parts even in your backyard…unless Elon Musk needed a space shuttle part and trusted you to make it in your shed…
Again this is for another thread but I have deep thoughts on all this…
But…even at one chamber a week I would be trying to justify somehow getting a Blast… it is just that good as far as completing this SLS ecosystem in my opinion
