I was having some trouble getting started and I had a lot of bad prints. I thought that maybe I was creating a lot of cured resin that was still left in the tray after each failed print. I purchased some paint filters that were 190 micron mesh. So every time I had a failed print, I filtered my resin. Then I started to see a trend…every time I filtered the resin the prints good worse! The message here is plain: DO NOT USE A FINE FILTER ON THE RESIN!!!
Hmm, this contradicts what many other on these forums have said: That using a 150ish micron paint strainer helps a lot in removing particles from the resin tank. I just started doing the same but i will keep my eyes open for the trend you spotted
I use 150 - 200 micron paint filters to filter resin with no problems.
I assume you used a new paint strainer, and not one you had lying around? Otherwise your resin might have been contaminated…
I must say that I don’t filter my resin and my it doesn’t affect the prints. I check for cured resin before I print each time and hardly ever find any cured resin. I used to filter it in the past, and that worked fine, but I noticed that most of the filtering was a waste of time as I don’t have problems with cured resin in the tank.
I think you’re concluding too fast that it’s the fault of filtering. As 99/100 users don’t have issues (including me). I would guess it’s a coincidence that your prints turned out even worse. Did you check your build platform? It loosens over time resulting in bad prints and eventually mega failures! So perhaps your biuld platform is loose (and was loose before), which resulted in the worse failures!
Even if your printer is brand new. My build platform needed adjusting with the screw on top to stop it from wiggling.
The paint strainers that I was using were the disposable type, so I’m going to say they were clean. Yes I found that my platform was loose at one point and it turns out it was actually broken so Formlabs sent me a new one right away. I also did a fine adjustment on the Z axis and moved the platen down just slightly to get the part to stick a little better.
Steve, have you been using the same tank? Print failures can decrease tank lifetime and lead to further, often time worse, failures. If it’s time for a new time, even properly filtered resin won’t help.
I have several tanks and yes you are absolutely correct, failures destroy tanks. I have taken to “mapping” my tanks so that I stay away from areas that have been damaged. I have made a grid on a piece of paper for each tank. This way I know where to print even though the tank is filled. I keep one tank for each color. I’m going to say that there may have been some early failures because I used an area that was in bad shape, but I think I have that solved now. BTW Melinda has been helping me with my failures for some time now on a “support request”. 43649