Rough and rougher surface finish on 2 sides of my Rook

Hello,

As I’ve only recently received my printer, I’m printing some examples to learn about the process. I’ve been trying to print the Rook, which is also one of the examples shown in several blogposts.

Most of the rook came out quite beautiful! However, on 2 sides, there is some ‘deformation’ visible, as if the surface has been roughened up. One side (the front side) quite rough, the opposite (back) side less so, but still worse then the areas that printed cleanly.

I’ve included 3 pictures:

Rook-full shows the overall quality of my print. On the left and right side of the smaller, middle layer of the rook, you can see the roughness starting, while you can also see where it printed smoothly.

Rook-bad shows the roughness on the rook, which in the PreForm software corresponds to the area visible in the ‘Front’ view (left side of the printer, where the hinge for the resin tray is).

Rook-vBad shows the even worse roughness on the rook, which corresponds to the area visible in the ‘Back’ view of the PreForm software.

Lastly, I included the .form file I used for this print.

Does anyone have an idea what’s going on here and how to prevent it?

Thanks!

(BTW: I’ve also created a ticket to ask Formlabs for help on this issue)

Rook-20140108-1.form

Hello,

Thanks for posting!

Rough surface finish can result from any number of things, but we do have a calibration print that can be performed in order to lock down the issue. We will be following up with you via your ticket asap!

Jory