So brand new tank, brand new resin. First print of two small shoes look amazing! No flaws. Second print was a head. I think due to the orientation (the head was positioned upside down and vertical high) I got very bad peel distortions on the face.
Next print was the same head but split in two halves. Quality still very good except for a minor peel line distortion on forehead.
I made some model adjustments to the shoe laces and re-printed the shoes. Same setup as before though the quality still looks good, it’s no way near as good as the first print of the shoes. The peel lines are a little more distorted and fine details not as pronounced.
So is this just tank degradation? How many prints does it usually take until the tank/pdms starts to degrade. I often hear about people getting great first prints then not so great after that.
Most of the time the Form1 issues are due to dust on the mirror. If you’re getting peel lines, it may be due to the piece being too large and solid (make it hollow to have lower surface area) or it could be that you don’t have enough supports to keep the print stable as it prints.
Here is the second print I did. This had some pretty drastic peel lines. The supports look fine, I think if there were support issues they would detach from the model, though these were solid in place. I think this one was more down to bad orientation as it is very vertical. I also printed this near the corner of the platform and prints tend to come out worse in the corner. Maybe I have some mirror dust issues there?
It does look well supported, and I don’t think orientation is the problem. Occasionally in high res, sculpted or scanned models like this, there are problems in the mesh that the mesh repair process doesn’t completely fix that can generate layers that look like that. You scan through those layers in PreForm to look for anything strange in the rendered tool paths.
Another possibility is that there are significant changes in the internal geometry or wall thickness in those regions which can occasionally cause those artifacts.
How tight is your build platform being held to the bracket? If you can give it a wiggle and have it move, you may need to tighten it up. It may be a bit difficult to see / feel. How tight is the locking arm? If it is really easy to lock it down, tighten it up.
David is right, check and make sure the build platform doesn’t have any slop. Also when you scrape the resin in the tank make sure it is clear and make sure the resin is mixed well. Pigmented resins do require good mixing prior to printing since the pigments will settle over time.
cheers guys, I did a couple of half head prints which came out pretty good. There is one problem area that has a bit of peel distortion, on both prints (positioned in different areas) could be due to internal supports or lack of, will check the preform file.
I did filter the resin yesterday as it was getting little goopy bits when I ran the scraper a cross the pdms. It’s a real messy job filtering resin though, but it definitely increases print quality. Will post pics later.
I usually check for platform wiggle before each print, feels pretty stable as the same problem area happened when printed again on different area of platform, so laser issues are ruled out. I think it’s definitely a model wall thickness or support issue. One new thing learned
I paint filter works wonders, cheap to use when compared to the loss of time and resin if there’s failed prints.
I jumped to Clear resin here since it is much easier to maintain and has the widest layer print options. No change in details that I could tell.
