Hi everybody, first time posting here, I’m trying to figure out which resin is better for high detail collectible statue printing, I’ve tried model dental as well as Gray V4 resins, there wasn’t any noticeable difference between the two, but I only had limited number of experiments so there might be differences that I haven’t encountered yet, I noticed some slight warping happening to parts when using Model dental but I’m not entirely sure if its resin issue or I would have similar issue with the gray V4 resin.
sorry for the long post, just trying to figure out which most suitable resin to have for my main day to day use.
The resin that I use with the highest"definition" is dental model.
Please see my previous post:
I am using the MODEL V2 for non dental work. It has a lot of filler in it to replicate the equivalent dental stone models.and it is quite durable and more resilient than the standard resins. It is very opaque due to the fillers and so there is very little light refraction/defraction of the laser beam.
Base on the papers that FL have published on this material ( https://formlabs.com/blog/creating-dental-model-resin/ 21) I took the plunge in using it and have never looked back. I think that due to its opacity it prints really fine detail and that is on a F2 at 31 and 35 degC.
It cuts nicely using fine fret saw Grade 2.0 size, and files down cleanly… It is flesh coloured for obvious reasons, but if you can overlook that it superb material.
Read the bumpf as it is the most thorough papers that FL have written on any of their resins.
I find that the dental resin is pretty stable and we make "precision prototypes with it. Like any of the resins post processing of cleaning, drying and heat curing with uv is also critical,
For example, we have found that with bulky thick parts slow warming and cooling is critical to prevent distortion and like wise with thin parts need very careful consideration on print orientation and support to prevent sagging
Thanks for the extensive response, I too like the Dental model resin and I heared from different sources that it’s the go to resin for fine details, however I had some issues with it that I never had with the Grey V4 like some parts that printed clean on the grey had some really visible build lines on the Model, also sometimes some part of the model look squished flat( I printed a hand were the side of the thumb ended up squished flat for some reason) this happened on different prints but never happened with the grey. this is why I’m asking around in hopes of confirming that the grey is equally good in printing fine details so I can commit to it, if not I’ll have to go with the model resin and find a solution around each of those issues.
this all might be Form 3 issue and not resin, not entirely sure.
That hand been sanded, fixed and painted already, however I printed this statue base few days ago, I printed it in two halves so I can fit it in the printer and you can see the warping in the cut like, they are suppose to be flush together, the cut line was facing the build platform and it was supported not printed directly on the platform.
I can see what has happened. We often design in our own supports and sacrificial wall if we really have to make a butt joint and then we sand these off so that we get near perfect faces touching each other. If we need extra strength we use a couple of biscuit joints. The support struts do not necessarily give you a flat planar surface.
However to get a stronger and more forgiving joint you may want to consider a lap joint and instead of a straight join, hide the join by following the line of your cobbles to hide the visible joint. You could then grout the gaps between the cobbles with resin or filler. We do this for our larger engineering parts and we always try to hide a join in a corner or surface feature. We actually learnt some of these techniques from repaired old statue!!
A bit more work at the design stage but a far more pleasing end result.
Yea I was going to move the cut around the cobble stones, but then figure I do a straight cut and see if it’s too visible at the end, didn’t account for that it’s going to warp like that, it still fixable, I’ll just have to add some material there and sand everything then prime them and that should do it, I might try print one half of the base in the Grey V4 resin just to see if it still warp or not.
Your insights on joint techniques are invaluable! It’s like when I was learning about rock polishing techniques (https://rockstumbling.com/rock-polishing-techniques), realizing the importance of careful planning for a flawless finish. Your suggestion of using lap joints and hiding seams resonates with the meticulous attention to detail needed in projects like these. Thanks for sharing your wisdom for achieving not just strength, but aesthetic appeal too!
Generally speaking, the harder the print is, the more detail it will show, and the warmer the color tones, the more detail it will show. So I feel that using MODEL would be the best choice, actually Rigid is not bad either
