Anycubic Photon and Mono X 3D DLP Printers

[Valentin]

2 hours ago, Paul_sterling said:

 

Not always, sometimes I remove beforehand, it depends on how marginal the shape/strength of the part is without them, some warp for fun. 

 

For cabs, I tend to cure with supports for half of the cure time, remove them, and then finish off. its easy on slim structures to over cure, and then they become too brittle, and the parts break rather than the support joins. I wouldn't care, the ball ends of the supports are 0.6mm dia, and 0.25mm engagement into the part.

 

Paul. 

 

For how long do you set the ANYCUBIC Wash & Cure machine for curing a model of an engine, or a coach, or a wagon in 4mm scale? Would you reduce the time if the model is smaller?

 

I have heard good feedback from others regarding the sacrificial skirt, under the footplate. I will try it myself soon.

 

Keep us posted with your thought about the Siraya Fast resin - I have just bought a bottle and printed only the 3DBenchy boat using the exact settings recommended by Siraya in their instructions, at a temperature between 15 and 22 °C - I am happy with the fact that the dimensions of the boat are nearly the same (within 0.1 mm) with the ones in the guide. With the ANYCUBIC translucent green resin (delivered with the printer) the differences were higher - probably because I couldn't reach the recommended environment temperature of 30 °C.

[Paul_sterling]

39 minutes ago, Valentin said:

 

For how long do you set the ANYCUBIC Wash & Cure machine for curing a model of an engine, or a coach, or a wagon in 4mm scale? Would you reduce the time if the model is smaller?

 

I have heard good feedback from others regarding the sacrificial skirt, under the footplate. I will try it myself soon.

 

Keep us posted with your thought about the Siraya Fast resin - I have just bought a bottle and printed only the 3DBenchy boat using the exact settings recommended by Siraya in their instructions, at a temperature between 15 and 22 °C - I am happy with the fact that the dimensions of the boat are nearly the same (within 0.1 mm) with the ones in the guide. With the ANYCUBIC translucent green resin (delivered with the printer) the differences were higher - probably because I couldn't reach the recommended environment temperature of 30 °C.

 

I cure at 2 minute cycles. basically, I look at the part, and if any surfaces still look "wet" it goes back in for another 2 minutes. Physical size of the model shouldn't make a difference on cure time, as its bathed in light, rather wall thickness will impact on cure time. so with that in mind, I'd still use my current regime whether it was a 2mm model, 4mm, or 7mm, so long as the wall thickness was generally similar. 

 

for the skirt i use the cross section shape of a house, a width of 2mm, and triangle height of 2-2.5mm, engaging into the part 0.25mm, this seems to work well, but it is early days. 

 

Thanks, Paul. 

[JCL]

Hi all, I don’t know if anyone is interested, but Anycubic have a Black Friday sale on. 3 resins for the price of 2 using the RESIN3 coupon. Also, money off printers.

 

https://www.anycubic.com/collections/uv-resin

Edited November 21, 2020 by JCL

[njee20]

It’s £21.68 a litre on AliExpress, with £27 off £105 spend with RS0011, so 5 litres is £81. 

[MikeTrice]

57 minutes ago, njee20 said:

It’s £21.68 a litre on AliExpress, with £27 off £105 spend with RS0011, so 5 litres is £81. 

Hmmm! I seem to have bought a Mono X and way under the Amazon price.

[njee20]

Yeah Amazon prices aren’t usually competitive on Anycubic. the Mono X looks really good. 

[JCL]

10 hours ago, MikeTrice said:

Hmmm! I seem to have bought a Mono X and way under the Amazon price.

 

You move quickly!

[njee20]

I swear the Mono X has gone up - I've just gone looking! 3D Jake are still doing them for £475, but even in the Black Friday sale Anycubic are ~£550. Makes it a good chunk more expensive than the Saturn.

 

[JCL]

Its been going up steadily since September, although, delivery times are a lot quicker. Mine took 6 weeks, but they seem to be down to a few days now.

 

Current things to check are:

• build plate flatness
• build plate knob seems to be melting for some people
• yellow cover crazes because of the fumes

Not everyone gets these of course.

[Paul_sterling]

I’d been considering the Mono X myself, but it’s going to need to settle (down!) in price first, I popped on amazon when Mike mentioned he’d bought one, but they all appear to be £800+, might be missing something though. For now I can get LH&JC No.5 on the Photon S in a single print. 

 

Re resins, I’ve found success with anycubic translucent green, and elegoo abs like grey, they’ve been pretty good, but got blown out of the water this week, as I’ve finally tried siraya tech, fast abs like in this case, but I am going to try Blu v2 next, they are more expensive than the anycubic and elegoo resins, but I get less wastage, and it seems to print really well with very short exposures. 1.5 seconds quicker than elegoo grey, and I reckon there is room for further reductions. 

 

You may also also see in the pics my modified sacrificial framework, which helps to keep the running plate straight, and allows for ridiculously heavy support columns for the taller stuff, so I can drop the exposure further (as the marginal starting surfaces are then beefed up). 

 

 

Cheers. Paul. 

[njee20]

Yes, I've got a bottle of Fast to try, but I'm resisting because I don't want to like it so much that I don't want to use the 15+ litres of Anycubic resin I've got 'in stock' 

 

Tenacious is amazing though, I mix 1:3 with Anycubic and it's totally transformed bits that used to fail all the time - bogies, coupling pockets etc, where you want a bit of flex.

[monkeysarefun]

9 hours ago, Paul_sterling said:

but they all appear to be £800

 

Jeez, thats around $1500 in AUD, I can get one online here for $820, around 450 gbp.. Traditionally we've always had to pay the "Australia tax' on everything - things here being much more expensive due to 'shipping', 'small market' and 'we are greedy and just want to rip you off'.

 

Nice to see us ahead for a change, pity I can't justify a 4th printer!

[MikeTrice]

10 hours ago, Paul_sterling said:

I’d been considering the Mono X myself, but it’s going to need to settle (down!) in price first, I popped on amazon when Mike mentioned he’d bought one, but they all appear to be £800+, might be missing something though. For now I can get LH&JC No.5 on the Photon S in a single print.

 

Yes Amazon were not the cheapest. Got mine from AliExpress for US $699.20 with free shipping from France with a 2 week lead time.

[MikeTrice]

AliExpress is not the most intuitive site. Somehow I bought in USD which works out a fair bit more than if I had ordered in GBP (unless the price is still falling).

 

Have requested a cancellation and if successful will reorder in GBP.

Edited November 22, 2020 by MikeTrice

[monkeysarefun]

26 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

AliExpress is not the most intuitive site. Somehow I bought in USD which works out a fair bit more than if I had ordered in GBP (unless the price is still falling).

 

Have requested a cancellation and if successful will reorder in GBP.

Yeah, here the aliexpress site asks me to choose  where the printer comes from -  China , Czech Republic,  and a few others that I can't remember (cant get to the site from here at work) with the price changing currency depending on where I selected. Still if you know what to do you can come out on top - a user in a NSWGR 3D modelling forum I'm on picked one up a week or so ago for $920 shipped (500 GBP) through them.

[MikeTrice]

The Mono X is currently showing as £457 however as soon as you select it and choose a colour(?) it jumps to £542. Reinstated my previous order of $699.20 which equates to £525. All very strange.

[JCL]

Aliexpress has a reputation for being a bit more "Wild West" than Amazon, although apparently they have been getting better on the customer service bit more recently. There's some talk about them on the Mono X FB group.

 

Second thing I printed after the calibration pieces was this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4627080 , even with the "elephant's foot" because I printed it flat on the plate it slips over the build plate bracket really well.

[njee20]

usually the headline price is with delivery from China, at great expense. That’s the case for me - £449 for the Mono X, but with £196 shipping. Any other country is £536. 
 

3D Jake are now £575 - up £100 on yesterday. 
 

interesting when the Saturn is still expected to be $500.  

[Paul_sterling]

On 22/11/2020 at 23:29, njee20 said:

usually the headline price is with delivery from China, at great expense. That’s the case for me - £449 for the Mono X, but with £196 shipping. Any other country is £536. 
 

3D Jake are now £575 - up £100 on yesterday. 
 

interesting when the Saturn is still expected to be $500.  

 

I'm hanging back to see what the saturn is like. I almost bought a Mono SE last week, but relented from bidding, its not a huge step up from the Photon S, and overnight prints means I don't desperately need faster printing just yet.

 

Paul. 

[njee20]

My Saturn is good. It’s slower than my Mars though - the greater peel forces mean you have to slow the lift speeds and have greater lift height. 
 

that said I’m dabbling in printing some O gauge and it’s not big enough, so now considering a Phenom or Phenom L!

[MikeTrice]

My Mono X arrived yesterday but it will be a while before I get to grips with it.

[MarcD]

How environmentally sound is the eco resin? If you have tried it out what results have you had?

Marc

[billbedford]

This might help. 

[MarcD]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for that. It would be interesting to find out were/how the soya was grown. But the plasticiser properties have some potential uses.

Marc  

[MikeTrice]

For some time I have been experimenting with the possibility of printing Gresley coaches on the Photon. The subtle curves of the prototype can cause problems with visible stepping :

 

I have tried various alternatives regarding orientation around the x and y axis in combination with antialiasing but in all instances some stepping remained visible. I mentioned this to @JCLand he has carried out some experiments to see if he could resolve this. His solution, to me, was completely out of the box, but in hindsight makes perfect sense. His solution? Try rotating the model around the Z axis.

 

It is true that to date my models have always been aligned to the build plate which meant the sides were aligned to the pixels of the LCD screen. Rotating the model on the Z axis breaks up this alignment. Jason had tried some test prints to prove the idea.

 

This was too good to ignore so I had a go at printing the section of Gresley coach at different Z angles from 10 degrees to 30 degrees. The following print was done at 30 degrees however 10 degrees seems to work just as well and does not impose too much on the build area:

 

Both models were printed at 0.02 layer height with AA set to 8. The first photo is of an earlier print done parallel to the build plate and the second print done with a 30 degree rotation.  As can be seen from the supports both were printed with no X or Y rotation. Rotating along the Z axis also works where the original model is tilted along the X or Y axis. The photos are the best I can manage with the current Winter Sun.

Edited December 30, 2020 by MikeTrice