Hello,
i printed some part, support is ok, but after cleaning the support, i have really a bad damage to some areas of the part.
some material where the point of the support contacts the part breaks completly away…
and now i have the fill it and use putty…
what do i wrong?
must i increase my pointsize of 0,6 of the support?
The size isn’t the issue and increasing point size will only make it worse. It seems more likely that it is your method of removal. Do you cure the remove or remove prior to curing? Do you gently cut away supports or just snap them off? I ask the second question, because if you are getting craters, then you are snapping them off and being too aggressive.
@cjryker06 nailed it I think. You have to cut the supports with the supplied cutter (we bought an expensive, flatter, smaller, sharper one just for this operation), not rip them off.
Some people remove the supports jus after the IPA cleaning and before post-curing (this has also been advised by formlabs) and it definitely helps as the supports aren’t as likely to take a chip or material with them when you rip them off. Personally, most of the time I choose to leave the supports for post-curing because I found that the parts are less likely to bend during that operation.
You could try to reduce the size of the contact points. This definitely helps cleaning afterwards This is a risk you’ll have to take but I’ve read people on this forum who said they were drastically reducing the contact point size for small/light parts and never had issues. I personally always dial down at least .1mm from the default value and also reduce density by 20%, but If I have a very important print that will be running over night I usually don’t take chances.
Yeah, you just need to be more careful with removing the supports, and place them in an area that you can sand smooth easily.
You can put me in this category. I find the supports come off very easily just after the IPA bath and rarely damages my part. The material is more pliable and the support points break off easier. I do not find any significant warping in the post cure, I am using only tough material, curing under a nail drier.
-KD
Warping mostly happens because of temperature. With my home-made curing box i thought I had 60° but it appear I didn’t because the Form Cure and the parts are noticeably hotter. Though is very flexible at 60° and i also didn’t experience this with my home-made curing solution… while i found that with the form Cure parts tend to bend under their own weight and keeping the supports did help tremendously.
I agree that it’s way easier to get rid of the supports before post-curing though.
ahhhhhhhh ok, here is the frist point which i find very important…
so you clean directly when its out of the ipa bathing??
yes because then is soft, a kind of jelly…
but then i never clean and used the flush cutter…
i also let dry it after the ipa bath one day in a normal 20°C warm room and cleaned it then, but then the support was so hard that it spring also away…
is that the problem? that i must do it directly after the ipa bath?
john but i thought everytime i must not cure?!? my part is one day ofter printing very hard so i dont have a uv light or so for cure… what does it do better then the air and time?
Everyone seems to have a slightly different workflow…these different workflows seem to depend on your ultimate expectations. It is important to know my parts are mechanical in nature and not artistic. Certain areas of my parts require precision (such as threads) and I do not put support points there. Other areas I could care less if there were slight bumps or divots.
I use the smallest point i can get away with, normally 0.40mm. I soak the part in the IPA bath for a min of 15 mins each (30 minutes total). I pull it out, shake off the IPA then just rip off the supports by hand, using the cutters as needed. Then let dry a few hours, then cure.
Support removal after curing is mainly if you are concerned about parts warping. This is most common when not all the IPA is dried out or when dealing with very thin parts.
As per Formlabs specifications, post-curing wort the proper settings improves mechanical properties by 50 to 100% which is a huge change (depending on the metrics and the resin), and dimensions are also more accurate, so in my opinion post curing is absolutely a mandatory step.
Now, Standard resins aren’t tacky or too soft even without post-curing, which is why some people get away without post-curing. If you’re not all that interested in making your parts match the advertised mechanical properties and if dimensions aren’t very important AND you’re only using standard resins, then go ahead and pass the post-curing step
Hi Kevin John and Cjry
its a bit hard to unterstand all…because i only have a fdm printer and i m not english…
but kevin thats also a main problem, i cant put my support point do the back or non seeing areas
then i got a messege thats not printable
eg
or for example this parte where i also have the problem with the support that damage my part
i would never do the point to a corner of 2 sides…
and back to the point of cleaning so you kevin, also to it directly after the 30min ipa bath!
ok then i will do this also…
cause otherwise its sooooo hard, that spring away and then the damage comes…
abuts curing
my parts are not meachnical they are props…
but how long let you cure it on normal air ? 1 day? or is that even
pointless, because anyway everything except uv is meaningless?
is it also possible to make a print, which is 3 days after ipa bath again bathing for the removel of the support soft which a rebath in ipa?
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