I’m new to a form 2 - and have watched formlabs videos etc - but have a small model (2.5 ml of resin or so) and have had a 50/50 fail / success ratio in the my first 6 prints or so.
If I let preform apply default “auto” orientation And supports - I get fat supports everywhere it seems - that are a nightmare to remove later.
I have experimented reducing the density - and the touch Point size - but realise I have no good heuristics for optimising the supports- or for understanding a failure of a print - which set of characteristics I should “increase” before having another go. …
When should I go for larger touch pint size ? Higher density ? Etc.
Most things I’ve read so far end up unhelpfully saying something like “with experience you’ll know where you need supports, and can do with less than the computer suggests” . Ok … but how do I short circuit wasting lots of failed prints - to gain that experience ?
Are there any good resources out there discussing this in some depth ? Could anyone share some links ?
In particular anything that helps with guaging the spacing that will work, and touch point size … and indeed presumably the trade offs In those vs orientation.
(So far my failures have been odd localised bits in the model not coming out right l, or a block of semi hard gunge attached to the tank (I’m using an Lt tank, and tough 1500 resin).
Can you post a picture of the failures?
To reduce the print failures:
clean thoroughly the build platform with IPA just before printing, personally I clean it 3 times with paper towels soaked in IPA and I never got problems.
detail should be tilted 40-50 deg to the platform and also rotated ~30 deg in Z axis
use solid rafts
standard PreForm supports in more of the cases do the job but with the time you’ll find that manual editing of the supports improves the results (less post processing, suppressing effects of parasitic resin curing, etc.).
I’m also new (10 days) to my Form 3 (and owning SLA too). There is a ton of information on the support articles, guides and blog posts at Formlabs.com. I’ve been reading like crazy.
Nevertheless, I’m sure there’s a lot of knowledge within Formlabs and in the expert users out there, particularly concerning manual support editing (thank you @luben111).
I know it’s a complex matter, dependent on geometry, resin type, printer versions… etc
But if there was not yet a webinar specific on how to manually add supports, with expert tips and tricks and a couple of interesting cases where adding manual supports gives a better a result than the Auto-generate algorithm does, it would be nice! > @Formlabs
It would be great to take it to the limit. After all, minimal supports not only save great time in post processing, but also your part comes out clean.
(Ok, maybe less supports give you shifted layers and such… see… this is why I need the webinar )
Hi Jonnyhifi,
Are you able to share the stl file? It may help to see what problems you may have just from experience. It would also help to see what your actual failures are.
One of my F2 is set up to run TOUGH 1500 and it prints at 50 micron steps.(wish it could do 25microns.
If all looks good and still not working then happy to run a small test part to isolate whether it is a machine issue.
)