I’m back printing again. The owner of my company has recently destroyed a few of our older parts (printed in the standard resins) by putting them on a lathe. They of course shatter almost the second he turns it on. He wants to be able to turn some of our round…cup shaped items (water filter containers) to sand them down and/or carve some fittings into them.
We have also lost several pieces due to dropping them on the ground. So going forward he wants to ditch standard resins in favor of either tough or durable. I’m leaning towards tough but need a push in the right direction.
I have run some machining second ops on tough - it cuts OK. You just can’t take heavy cuts or you can shatter it. The older (V1 and V2) tough was less brittle and you could get pretty aggressive with it.
I haven’t tried anything on durable. Judging by the feel of it, I would say you would probably be OK. Overall I think tough would make a much better functional resin though.
I do a lot of printing with Tough. It’s tougher than the standard resins but it’s not really tough enough for my purposes, lacks shatter/impact resistance. I just last night printed my first parts with Durable. Duplicates of Tough parts I’ve already evaluated. So I’m about to see whether Durable is better suited for what I’m doing. My fear (based on the Durable example spray-bottle thing I handled while at FL a couple of months ago) is that it will be too flexible. The parts are hanging on the build platform now, so once I get a few other things taken care of they’ll come off for wash and final cure. Then I can bang on them a bit and see if they’re stiff enough but not too stiff…
I have but have not used tough because of the brittle characteristics. I like the somewhat flexibility of gray3 and white3 because I use these in conditions where they are touched and elbowed a bit and they resist those slight impacts.
I would be interested in how you evaluate the newer stronger resins .
Well, the first print came out OK. I took a chance with a few smaller parts I jammed on to the build plate, had to stand them up almost 90º and these parts failed. But the larger parts printed fine. They’re in post-cure now and I’m optimistic. They appear to want to hold their shape pretty good, but they are significantly more flexible than Tough. More like I’d expect Nylon to feel under compression (the parts are tubular shapes). Squishes out of round and comes right back when you let go.
When I loaded the FORM file, I expected it to complain about the supports, since the FORM was originally configured for Tough. But it didn’t. But I regenerated the supports anyway, without changing the orientation of the parts. The regenerated supports were different from the originals. But the version of PreForm has changed too, so I don’t know if this is specific to Durable or not.
Removing prints from the build plate with Tough has been problematic for me. I had to move my Z reference up 0.3mm to deal with it, and some parts still stick really good (I have a 12" insulation knife I use instead of the tool, it’s a thin/stiff blade that gets under the base where the FL tool just breaks the lip off). I used the same Z for the Durable print as I’ve been using for Tough. I could not remove the damn print from the build plate. Must have taken me 15 minutes to work it loose and I left a lot of resin on the plate (I keep a 2" wide wood chisel I use to remove these remnants, that works really good for this. Flat side of the chisel against the build plate).
Unfortunately, the entire build platform was populated, no bare spaces to heat. I’d have to apply the heat through the print. Not sure I want to do that… I’m thinking maybe I should try and compound the build plate, make it a little less rough.
Never had the need myself; but I have read on this forum that sticking the build plate in the freezer for 20-30 minutes will make the prints pop right off…
An opaque bag so she couldn’t see what was in it, maybe. If I could find someplace to hide all the stuff I’d have to take out in order to make room. I think it’s pretty much a non-starter for me… but I do appreciate the suggestion.
I think spraying a can of compressed air held upside should do the trick too (and probably much faster). Not the most ecological solution; but if you need it sparingly probably worth it .
Oh. Well. I could just use the “Freeze Spray” stuff I have for electronics debugging. It’s like compressed air, only you don’t have to turn it upside down to get cold stuff to come out. I’ll give this a try at some point in the near future and report back.
Well I finally got around to my first Tough print (v4). I was prepared with a can of compressed air, a hair dryer and was ready to put it in the freezer. To my surprise both of my parts popped off as easily as standard resin (and both parts came out perfectly).
I was also thinking the parts would be green and they came out blue-ish color instead. I know I can search for this but I’m feeling lazy this morning…was the color/formulation changed recently? Or will it turn green-ish after post processing?
It’s not the resin that’s the problem with sticking too hard, it’s the mechanical setup of the printer. If you’re not having problems with one resin, I think you’re unlikely to have it with any. If you are having a problem with one, you are more likely to have it with others (at least, insofar as my limited experience goes).
that’ll make my wife pop right off, too.