tstageman92

Will be following this with great interest Jack, I live in Brantham, a mere 10 min drive from Belstead Bank, and have been out photographing on the GE since the mid 2000s!

That is incredible! I'd love to know how it would look printed!

Absolutely stunning modelling, following this thread with great interest!

Those drawings are simply stunning! What a skill

They are really nice, in fact your wagons are amazing quality, from the photos you could consider them as engineering samples from the big manufacturers! Reading through your earlier posts, I think my next major move with 3D printing is going to be teaching myself how to make objects that aren't 'basic' shapes. There are a number of multiple units I would like to explore designing however when it comes to things like curved fronts, I get totally swamped by my lack of skill in the drawing department. I have always used DesignSpark but maybe I'll have to give Fusion360 a go, a lot of people seem to use it and say good things about it.

Morning chaps, hope you all had a good Christmas! Have continued playing with my new Mars and after taking on your comments and suggestions above, have done another long print overnight last night. Printed with the supports on the inside, which has certainly made it much neater. Overall really good, still appear to have the resin pooling at one end despite lifting the model off the plate by about 5mm...maybe even more required? I had a major issue with the roof printing, totally my design not being suitable with the roof being far too thin but happy to retry after a few alterations. The body also seems a little flimsy along the centre section so again think that needs a bit of beefing up. One thing that is puzzling me is the fact that on the drawing, the obstacle deflector plate things at the bottom of each front are nice and square with round corners but for some reason mine has printed like an oval at the bottom...any suggestions why this might have happened? I have been using Chitubox, but I hear a lot of chat about Lychee....any bonus' to using Lychee over Chitubox? Here are some photos of my print (sorry, bombarded with photos!) This is the end with the resin spooling.... Thanks chaps Tom

Evening chaps, Ok, so after a couple of prints with my new Mars, fairly pleased with the results. Thought I would just share a couple of photos and wondering if I may pick your brains regarding a few points I have noticed. So I began with a small lineside building, totally fictional, just to see how the printer performed when printing brickwork and corrugated type surface. I have to say they came out really nicely, I have found that I could do with making the brick mortar maybe 0.1mm deeper so that you can see it a bit clearer, make it a bit more defined. And the corrugated surface printed really nicely. Then I test printed an N gauge Class 416 MLV body. I had previously done these on my FDM printer but just with a really basic shape, and added all the detail myself. I also couldn't 'cut' the windows right out on the FDM otherwise it seemed to cause too much droop at the top of the windows. However on the resin printer, no such issue. Its come out really nice, especially the buffers which I'm really pleased about. A few minor bits of the support still attached as I've yet to tidy it up but its really neat. I have noticed however that there are some print lines on the side of this body, which run horizontally despite the model being printed at like 30 degrees. So must be to do with the slicing? Any thoughts on that? Also, one end of the MLV body has got quite a bit of excess resin on it, and is not quite as defined and neat as the other end. The end with the excess on it is the end that was nearest the build plate....so am wondering....is it worth dropping the model down from the build plate by another couple of mm? I think this one was printed with 3mm gap between the build plate and the start of the model, so maybe its got a bit of excess resin cured to that end as it was at the end that had a longer exposure time? Any thoughts on that too please? Compare the image below with the one above which is much neater. But all in all, I'm really pleased, still learning and trying to refine the whole 'cleaning and curing' routine, may feel the need for a new purpose built workbench to keep everything neat and tidy! Thanks all, Tom

Cheers Jim, thats very helpful advice. Is there any basic settings that anyone would suggest changing on a fresh copy of Chitubox? I have just put my first print on the printer, so will see how it comes out. Tom

Ah great, thanks handy to know. More than happy to leave a print to do over night now then! These particular side frames I'm after trial printing, they don't have a pinpoint recess, they are to stick onto a flat plain bogey frame so that should be fine. Ah cool, thanks for showing that screenshot, thats handy. I think the N gauge bogeys I would want to print in 1 piece though, I have got some of the Elegoo resin to start with so will see how they turn out.

Couple of questions chaps if you don't mind. Have done the Rook test print on my new Mars, really pleased, came out really well. Does anyone know if a freshly done print needs to be removed from the print plate ASAP or can it be left there for a while before cleaning and curing? Only thinking if I set off a 5 hour print while I am at work for 12 hours, it'll sit there for a good long while before it gets removed, cleaned and cured. Does this matter? Also, I hear a lot about printing things at an angle. I am thinking one of my first prints will be a, flat on one side, bogey side frame, in OO gauge, or indeed an N gauge bogey whole, any suggestions on how may be best to print it? Finally, just any advice for a newbie, please feel free to send it this way. Plenty of experience using an FDM printer but first time I've ever used a resin printer! Cheers Tom

Yes, I think thats what I'm going to find the most challenging being so used to filament printing! I am just waiting for some IPA to turn up and then I'll be giving mine a go for the first time. So with what you have learnt regarding orientating and supporting, what would you suggest for this? Its a sprue of 24 N gauge coach buffers, what do you think would be the best way to print these? I have just installed Chitubox for the first time and having a bit of a play around with it prior to being able to print. I'm hoping it'll produce some nice prints of this as I use a lot of these for 3D printed EMUs but wouldn't have a hope in hells chance of getting my FDM printed to print these!

I have obtained some Elegoo resin from Amazon, which should hopefully be here in the next couple of days, and can have a go at a few prints. I think I'm going to find resin printing is a tad more involved than printing with an FDM printer... Those printed parts are very very neat Mudmagnet, if I can produce anything half that good from mine Mars I'll be over the moon! Tom

Have just managed to grab a bargain on Amazon, Black Friday deal on a Mars, £148 down from £184, didn't think that was a bad price! Now to find some resin at a good price...any suggestions folks? That is very neat mudmagnet! Love the detail! Tom

Yeah, that'd be great, thank you! Yes, point taken chaps about the temperature of the resin, I can imagine that would make a difference. I would like to be able to run mine outdoors but I'm not sure for me thats going to be practical, I might have to have it indoors, which hopefully will save any issues with cool temperatures.

Have you had to upgrade anything on your Mars? I hear on a lot of FB groups about people upgrading their printers but its not something I know much about. I only inherited the Robox from my friend that sadly left us earlier this year, I had just sent him files and he printed them so I knew very little about the actual printing process. It took a good number of weeks to be able to get a decent print off the Robox after trying literally every setting under the sun. It probably could still do better with some upgrades but I'm a bit loathed to start swapping bits in and out just yet. I still find it fascinating to watch it printing however it becomes more and more frustrating as my drawing skills are improving but the quality of print isn't, hence the now real consideration to buy a resin one.