Hi
I’m currently in the process of prototyping some small 3cm dice designs on the Form 2 originally using some left over standard white resin.
I’ve now realised that the white resin lacks the impact resistance needed and fractures too easily when rolled on a hard surface. I’m therefore looking for a stronger resin that can be printed to the same (or similar) amount of detail.
It seems to me that Tough or Gray Pro resin might be the best pick but I am unsure which (or if another resin entirely) would be more suited.
Take a look at the new Tough1500, great material in between Tough and Durable.
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Do not use Gray Pro. That being said there are a few other factors that are important, that are design choices in the dice.
Are the dice your printing solid?
No: Make them solid. Or accept that they are non-functioning desk decor. I say this because my desk has plenty of ‘non-functioning decor’ and I have a drawer of shame filled with ‘learning experiences’.
Yes: See next question.
Do they have sharp (traditional Vegas style) or filleted edges?
Sharp: Durable. Any of the other resins will crack and split. Tough may also work if used lightly, but there is still a pretty high chance they will crack or chip with normal usage.
Filleted edges: Durable or Tough will work perfectly fine.
Another thing to note if they are sharp edges and you want to use tough, do not over cure it. More cure = higher chance of breaking. Durable would be the best choice for the sharp edges because you run a low chance of damaging whatever they are being thrown onto.
I have a ton of experience with the engineering resins, since it came out literally today i have never printed with the Tough 1500. If it works as advertised it would also work.
Hope this helps, if you are able post a picture of your design, I would love to see it.
Hi
Thanks for the feedback, unfortunately I am unable to show the whole dice but attached is a cropped image.
As you can see it contains a lot of sharp, small, angular geometry. The most common problem I have is the ‘heads’ chipping off completely when rolled.
Do you think I would lose this detail if printed with Durable? Perhaps I’ll request free samples from Formlabs of Durable, Tough and Tough1500 resin and compare?
Thanks again
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That has a lot going on and looks awesome. Looking at that though, on the “heads” where they connect to the body you will need rounded surfaces. I would also recommend that you round the all the exterior edges even if it is like .35mm. Without the rounded surfaces, any forces being applied to the dice will be highly concentrated in the interior corners. Resulting in the heads being broken off. A small rounding of the exterior ones will drastically reduce the chipping of the edges. If you are able to make these changes you may not have to order a new resin at all.
The whole of 5 minutes i took to through this together. I hope you can see what I mean. The ones on the exterior you should be able to make small enough that they do not interfere with the look your going for. The ones on the interior need to be larger, it may not be as ascetically pleasing. But it will make it much more practical.
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Hi, Thanks again for the advice.
I’ve made a couple of adjustments to the design as you said, thickened the head connections and chamfered some edges that were potentially too sharp.
My resin tank sadly needs replacing so I won’t be able to test the design until that’s sorted. On the off chance that it’s still too prone to fracturing then I might get myself some Tough1500. It might be about time I stray away from my Standard resin comfort zone anyway.
Whenever you do get around to testing it let me know how it goes.
Hi, I’m back
So i got the new tray and printed the improved design, It’s quite a bit stronger and can easily survive being tossed over a solid surface (it only broke when I accidentally dropped it onto a stone floor but i think i can live with that)
Thanks again for all the help