Support Removal - Before or After Curing

#1

Hi All,

Just curious what others do here. I find that it really depends on the resin. For example, with Tough resin at 0.5mm touch support size, I can cure the parts and peel off supports very easily after curing.

Waiting till after curing means there is less chance that the parts will warp during the curing cycle.

However, for resins like Durable, peeling supports off before curing is VASTLY easier than afterwards. In general, I haven’t had huge issues taking supports off for Standard, Tough, or Rigid after curing, but would be curious to know what people do for other resins such as Durable, Flexible, Elastic, etc.

#2

I tend to remove my supports before post cure unless I worry about the part warping during post cure. Especially with the Form 3, where I have tuned my clear supports to tear off like velcro, it’s vastly easier to remove the supports before they’re hardened in the Form Cure.

#3

Speaking of Formlabs 2.

For elastic resin you should take them out after curing. Tried several time to remove it before and it is much easier afterwards. Also i did a hole once because I pulled the internal supports instead of cutting it. So I reduce the size of the support tip and used scalpel to cut it very close to the model, like shaving the model to cut the support.

For clear resin its depends on the part. It is easier to remove the supports before curing for sure, but for me its depends on the part complexity. If its simple part and very straight forward to remove the support I might do it before or after, depends on how lazy I am :slight_smile:.
For complex parts I normally cure it before removing the support, after curing they are much more brittle and its very help to remove internal support, just bending it a bit and its detach.

For Tough i’m always using it afterwards and always timing the machine so once it finished i’m taking out the parts. The reason is if I left it for the weekend, its just bend on the build platform. They are also bending during the first few weeks. This material is good but not for very accurate parts, its just changing constantly during the first few weeks.

#4

This is interesting to hear.

@CraigBroady do you do this pre-cure regardless of resin type?

I’ve started ripping supports off Durable resin BEFORE post cure, as I find it so much easier for this resin. Ideally I would leave supports on at all times to prevent warping, and for resins like Tough that seems to work OK because the supports peel off easily - but not the case for resins like Durable.

I’ll do some testing myself to compare between resin types and post the results here when I have a chance.

#5

I don’t follow. Pre-cure?

#6

I mean do you typically remove supports before curing for all resin types?

#7

Usually. Typically I’ll only leave supports on for flexible or elastic.

#8

Interesting, OK. I’ve definitely noticed warping in the Form Cure on parts in which I’ve removed supports first. I do a lot of engineering prototypes so warping is highly undesirable.

I’ve done a couple of test prints using Tough, Durable, and Black so far, with Elastic and Rigid remaining to print. Out of the 3 test prints thus far, Durable is the only one which I think I will remove supports first for. Removing supports on reduced touchpoint sizes for Tough & Black post-cure is pretty easy, but more of a pain for Durable.