Suggestions for which resin to use for a small, fragile sculpture

I’ve printed the object successfully with white resin. The piece just fits into the build space of the Form1+.

As you can see, it has a long, thin, and quite fragile tail. Since the final rendition will be 5 of them in a mobile, I need to have some more flexibility and resistance to breaking… I’m looking at tough and flexible, but note that both caution against fine detail or thin parts.

The surface is dry pigment in an acrylic medium. White resin takes this finish well. How do the other materials react?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

I would suggest tough resin, printed at 50µm. While tough may not show fine detail as well as, say, castable, it will definitely prevent long thin features from breaking. Tough also shows detail far more than flexible. Based upon the size of this part, I don’t expect it would pose an issue for you.

If you’re adventurous, I’ve had exceptionally good results printing a 50/50 mix of clear and tough using the black Preform setting. See here for more data.

Thanks for the suggestion. I managed to miss the original thread.

Have you noticed any further changes since the various parts were printed?

Best…

The tufflex ended up getting too hard for it’s intended purpose over time, but the tuff (50/50 clear/tough) is still kicking it after a month or so and hundreds of snaps/unsnaps. by far the most precise and durable resin I have used to date. I am using a heated tank (~100F) for printing with it though, so your milage may vary @ room temperature.

Ok.

I think i’ll wait for Tuff until my “2” arrives next month.

The studio has radiant heat, but I keep it at 65° F. Havn’t had any particular failures with white, but maybe I should use a space heater to bump up the local temperature, and heat up the printer when I use Tough today?

Thanks again.

ok, but be advised that ‘open mode’, which will allow pouring in resin on your own without using the cartridges on the F2, is not available now, and a date when it will be has not been announced.

I use the clear for all my basic and detailed prints. I found that the sample of the tough became brittle and shattered but believe it is from the post processing they used.
I recently started helping a customer prototype some parts for an invention and the clear has enough flex and durability that we can check for fit form and function with it.
Clear also seems to offer the same detail as the others without the hassle of the pigment settling out.

The sense is that the specialty resins, such as Tough, do better at warmer temps. And the addition of the heater in Model 2 speaks to that.

I didn’t have the energy or time to build an immersion heater, so I just bought a heating pad (without an automatic shutoff), and placed it under the printer. Set the temp on medium, which after a few hours had the resin stabilized at 87 F. The bottom of the case hit about 98 F, but didn’t seem to do any harm.

First print (pure tough, no black) was successful with really nice detail.

Thanks all.

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.