The lines you see are due to the very shallow/steep angle of that surface. The closer to vertical or horizontal a surface is, the more visible to layer lines are. On a mSLA printer, in particular, it’s visible because the the image has to jump to the next row of pixels.
On the Form Printer, the laser is technically capable of moving in fine increments as to do away with that, but in reality you’ll have the same thing.
One thing I could have done is enable anti-aliasing, but that would have soften up some of the sharp corners. I could also have angled the piece so that, no one surface is near horizontal or vertical, and the lines would have disappeared, which is what Preform does all the time when auto-orienting in order to prevent this from happening, but I opted for perfect vertical and horizontal surfaces, with only one outside surface needing a little sanding. Your choice.
I hadn’t seen the Phrozen 4K mini. They opted for a small 4K panel, which of course gives them a higher PPI. BTW, the Phrozen 4K doesn’t use a ball screw, their larger 8K model does.
I like this test print. I did something similar before as a calibration print, but this one looks cool. I’ll give it a shot later.
Edit:
BTW, I was looking at Phrozen’s product line and prices, and I think the Sonic 4K you linked is way overpriced at $1400. for that price you can buy 4 of their Sonic Mini 4K, which use the same LCD panel, and have nearly the same specs.
The only things you get extra for the money, is a hinged metal cover, dual linear rails, and Ethernet and WiFi connectivity. For me, USB connectivity is good enough. slice the model, copy the file to the USB and print it. My printers have wireless connectivity and I never use it. The dual rails are good, but that’s because they chose to extend the build height to 7.8". Most printers of this size work fine with a height of 6.5" and they only need a single rail.
Ultimately, you have to ask yourself, are those extras worth 4x the price? I for one, prefer a bit of a minimalist feature set, but a solid performance, especially when the feature set doesn’t really add anything to the print quality.
I use IPA and Ultrasonic isn’t safe with flammable liquids. But also, I don’t think it’d get the internal passages. They need to be aggressively flushed or they just don’t wash clean…
Agreed. I found that the only way to clean the small recesses in a print are with a pump bottle, then I use compressed air to dry it out (actually I use my airbrush as a glorified air compressor).
So, I printed the little test print from Amerlabs and it came out pretty good, considering how small the details are. Very sharp.
My problem is I can’t get a good photo of it. I can see all the details nice and clear, but photographing them … that’s another story. I used my Nikon DSLR, but the 18-55mm lens I have doesn’t have a decent macro capability.
This last image I was trying to show the area where it has these ultra-fine cylinders (in red). It actually printed all of them, but they are so thin (thinner than a hair), they simply collapsed, and you can see them bent
For Ultrasonic IPA isn’t safe, that’s correct. For that I always use TPM which does basically the same as IPA. Even with no temperature setting it goes up to roughly 39.
Regarding entrances and micro cavities, as long as the liquid in the Ultrasonic machine passes through / touches the surface then it will clean it. I was a bit skeptical at first but that’s how it works apparently. Obviously a frequency changing machine will work best. I usually use mine with its “sweep” function (goes everywhere) and alternates every few seconds from 37 to 80khz. This way it does the rough cleanup and also the more precise one in a single bath.
So, at least for me, an ultrasonic bath is way more thorough and faster (which is relative since I do a quick IPA bath afterwards to remove the TPM). The only bad thing is that to recycle TPM I would need a vacuum addon due to the high boiling temperature it needs to reach. Well, at least it lasted about 5 times more than IPA (3 times more is the advertised difference) and when using only Rigid 4000 and 10k which are messy due to the glass fibers.
No need to say the obvious but there are great and bad ultrasonic cleaners and we usually get what we pay for.
MSLA is the clear winner, just look at the market, whats out there, what people are buying. The machines themselves are very simple a laser complicates the machines and will be evolved out, this is already mostly the case . You do not need to pay a bloated price to get someone to help you use the machine, especially when its like $2,500 bloated just ask a question in the forum for the brand you choose.
This seems to be an argument that’s becoming popular, that somehow, mSLA printers are for hobbyists whereas the Form printers are for commercial use. And you’re probably right if pricing and support are all that you weight in.
But let me give you something to think about. Assuming print quality and dimensional accuracy are similar, IF you were trying to use these in a commercial environment, what would make more sense?
A printer that costs $3500, and then costs about $150/liter to operate, and takes about 6 hours to produce a part, or
A printer that costs $800, uses resin that costs $40/liter and produces the same part in less than 1 hour for 1/4 of the cost.
Then take that $3500 you budgeted for the 1st printer, buy 4 of the $800, you can now produce 24 parts in the same time it takes you produce 1 part.
Oh, and and if one breaks, I still have 3 others that are still functional while I spend only $800 to replace the broken one.
Just saying. Just because the printer is inexpensive, it doesn’t mean it can’t be used in a commercial environment.
It’s worth looking at what happen to the FDM market in since the mid 2000s. There were a plethora of startups in the west building these machines, but as the Chinese started supplying their cheap copies the western companies either folded or moved in to niches in the engineering space.
Nothing wrong with moving into the engineering space, if that’s what your intent is as a company. But perhaps they were forced to move into this space.
But just look at Appel, They provided the design and customer service, and had the Chinese manufacture their stuff as well. Sure they charge a premium but that’s because their products and service are superior. And people recognize that and the added cost makes sense. If they wanted to just sell phones to corporations at inflated prices yeah they would still be in business (for a while perhaps). But they conquered the problem and dominate the market, sure this is easer said then done. The form 1 was very Apple like when it came out as it was promoted. But they obviously did not become the iPod of resin printers. But Kudos to Formlabs they are still trying to rock it in their own way.
In a sense, but not directly. I see the commercial vs. Hobby use argument brought up many times, in the context of comparing the FormLabs with other (read less expensive) printers.
So I put my 2 cents in, with regard to that argument. Didn’t mean any offense.
I’m a hobbyist, not a professional user. I don’t like the higher price of the FL printers that much. But SLA is finicky and FL has always given me great support so I’m sticking with them. I might buy one of the newer low-cost machines just to mess around with, but when the Form4 comes out I will probably buy one, just like I did with the Form1, Form2, and Form3…
I think it really comes down to how cost-sensitive your application is. Personally, right now I would never get a Formlabs Printer for myself unless I suddenly become rich and just don’t care about money anymore.
For dentistry, Formlabs printers are basically a no-brainer if I’m informed correctly (they are certified for the biocompatible resins and other similar machines cost way more).
For a company needing the printer for rapid prototyping/fixtures, the wide resin range and the “pro” support can be worth the high prices (as is the case with the company I work for currently).
But for a hobbyist, unless you really want to have all the Formlabs resins available, the prices are hard to justify, especially as the quality of FormLabs prints isn’t exactly superior to what you can get out of a modern Mono LCD printer for a fraction of the cost.
