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Anycubic Photon and Mono X 3D DLP Printers


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4 hours ago, Quarryscapes said:

They won't be circular because it's not a hemishpere, the curvature X-Z is different to Y-Z, as the edge needs to stay the same distance from the saddle tank. If it was to remain hemispherical, then the plan view would be eliptical. 

 

It's definitely not in the mesh, nor is it in the slices. I wonder if it's small imperfections in the FEP causing the last fragile layers to get mis-shaped?

When you print with supports and get distortions what angle are you printing at? If you are printing at an angle it might be worth printing a cube of known dimensions and then see if some form of calibration adjustment is necessary or try cleaning the lead screw and relubricate.

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13 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

When you print with supports and get distortions what angle are you printing at? If you are printing at an angle it might be worth printing a cube of known dimensions and then see if some form of calibration adjustment is necessary or try cleaning the lead screw and relubricate.

 

Nothing's distorted as such, I used Chitubox's compensation to adjust for shrinkage on that run, which of course is only applied around the permeter of the slice, so when the slice isn't in the same plane as the feature it doesn't compnesate enough. I'd have to do some experimentation (or some maths! :wacko:) to find the right value for a supported angled print. This piece was always meant to be printed on the bed, and a supported print is going to take twice as long for very little, if any, gain in quality. 

 

 

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Something that is distorted, but still looks good...

 

XT2B8608.jpg.601b69e17d190b5499bddc5f60f386b1.jpg

 

XT2B8613.jpg.90e0d8f5524e8d55d79fa64360e414b8.jpg

 

16mm Scale FR Slate wagon. I forgot to subtract my calculated angle from 90 degrees so it printed with a slight repeating pattern. Still turned out usable. Although quick question - the corner facing the build plate always gets bent up a little, can this be mitigated at all? I was thinking longer supports might helps as they would give before the more substantial wagon superstructure. 

 

 

Slatechitu.PNG

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21 hours ago, Quarryscapes said:

Something that is distorted, but still looks good...

.... Although quick question - the corner facing the build plate always gets bent up a little, can this be mitigated at all? I was thinking longer supports might helps as they would give before the more substantial wagon superstructure. 

 

 

 

It's the support structure flexing slightly during the up and downs of the printing process.

 

I put 6 heavy supports in to minimise this -  3 along each long edge touching somewhere strong but inconspicuous.

 

If that doesn't cure it, increase the exposure slightly, so that the supports are harder and stiffer   

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45 minutes ago, tebee said:

 

If that doesn't cure it, increase the exposure slightly, so that the supports are harder and stiffer   

 

I’ll tell the wife to do that!!

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23 hours ago, Quarryscapes said:

Although quick question - the corner facing the build plate always gets bent up a little, can this be mitigated at all? I was thinking longer supports might helps as they would give before the more substantial wagon superstructure. 

 

Slatechitu.PNG

 

That print looks pretty good. Hard to tell from the supplied image but you might try a couple more supports in the corner:

Slatechitu.jpg.c4785f9d8898b31303005e55d35fdbaf.jpg

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I mentioned previously issues with anti aliasing on the Mono X and have finally had a chance to print my test sphere to compare results. The UV strength was reduced to 40% and exposure increased to 3.2 seconds. No improvement whatsoever:

IMG_3861.JPG.1ca375ca0f485b3aa97679b5f2565fcb.JPG

 

I wanted to carry out some experiments regarding a van body. Before going too far into the modelling I wanted to verify how the planking would come out and the louvres in this GNR Fruit Van:

IMG_3862.JPG.5e1f80c17636023717ace9664a3030c4.JPG

 

Ok, not the result I was expecting. It looks as if large chunks of the side have been ripped off of the print which I put down to the supports failing. It did however show me that I needed to reduce the plank gaps somewhat.

 

The second test print was better but still had the flaw:

IMG_3865.JPG.ba00d1f98818ac7c7ccd76f81f556568.JPG

 

So what was going on? I could not blame the weak sides or support falure here. The answer (I hope) is that the model was non-manifold.

 

The way the sample was put together was quite complex with lots of Blender Boolean operations. Boolean operations in Blender are always a bit fraught especially if you have multiples acting on the same object. Instead I applied some of the booleans and re-engineered the rest checking each component for being watertight along the way. The second test confirmed the planking depth for me but I was unhappy with the louvres which were also remodelled for test 3 which being watertight had no printing issues. Phew.

IMG_3866.JPG.d5dd1d3ce660bd8a0bdca3c83b0e6ece.JPG

 

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Good to see you sorted it out Mike.

 

For anyone interested, MS Windows 10 has a program called 3D Builder. I always open my exported STL in there to see if it needs repairing. If anyone uses it, the standard output is 3mf, so you'll need to use Save As to save as an STL file. Save As can be found in the hamburger menu (the three lines) to the left of Insert.

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On 10/05/2021 at 11:10, MikeTrice said:

I mentioned previously issues with anti aliasing on the Mono X and have finally had a chance to print my test sphere to compare results. The UV strength was reduced to 40% and exposure increased to 3.2 seconds. No improvement whatsoever:

 

I'd seen a lot of chatter on the Facebook groups about AA and the MonoX so decided to test it out. I have to agree with your conclusions Mike, AA just doesn't work. 

 

On the left, an N Gauge shoc van printed at 0.01 layer height, 1.2 sec exposure with AA set to 8 and blur to 4 in chitubox. On the right, a shoc van printed at 0.01 layer height, 3 sec exposure with AA set to 8 and blur to 4 in chitubox. 

The IV intensity was 55% on the left, 50% on the right. 

 

Interestingly I lost one of the two vans from the print plate on the 3 sec exposure version, with the other also almost separating from the print plate as can be seen from the bend in the raft. 

 

shocvan.jpg.7bcff1366e1eceb5f6e176ad9beeefe5.jpg

Tom. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Hi @TomE, changing the subject slightly, how thick are the skirts you put on underneath the vans? I've got the week off, so was going to attempt to print a couple of wagons myself. Also, were there any concerns about suction?

 

cheers

 

Jason

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  • 3 months later...

I'm ready for a new bottle of resin and there seems to be a lot more varieties than the last time I bought some. Just wondering what people are using now. I used to buy just anycubic grey, I've got a photon, mainly use it for loco, tender and coach bodies and some smallish solid parts. Thanks.

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I also use Anycubic grey, have tried plenty of others (Siraya Tech Build, Elegoo, Elegoo ABS, Longer, Phrozen), but never found any of them meaningfully better for ‘normal’ prints, and many are significantly more expensive. 
 

i have got a bottle of the Anycubic Craftsman to try at some point, but have yet to do so. 

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On 04/09/2021 at 22:25, njee20 said:

I also use Anycubic grey, have tried plenty of others (Siraya Tech Build, Elegoo, Elegoo ABS, Longer, Phrozen), but never found any of them meaningfully better for ‘normal’ prints, and many are significantly more expensive. 
 

i have got a bottle of the Anycubic Craftsman to try at some point, but have yet to do so. 

Thanks, I bought a half litre bottle of plant based grey as it was the same price just to try it out. Haven't had a chance to use yet though.

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Forgive a complete tyro with this type of printing - but six months ago, I received a Mars 2 Pro printer for my birthday, courtesy of Di - of course! It has laid dormant partly because I hadn't the immediate need, and partly because I found the thought slightly intimidating. 

 

However, I have been looking at a loco that caught my interest, and a couple of parts really need to be printed, so I took the bull by the horns, so to speak......

 

I spent a morning on Design Spark Mechanical and drew up the necessary, then downloaded Chitubox and slicedit etc...,  and today had a look at what I had to do with the printer. It reality it was all straight forward, and I went straight to printing 8 of my spring assemblies rather than their Rook trial piece. I went for 1 micron, as I want the highest level of detail (that is the point of the machine for me) and pressed Go.

Of course it was only realistic to expect the print to fail. The question was at what point and in what way.......

 

To my great joy, all eight turned out perfectly, blemish free.... what a machine, and an addition to the workshop!

 

Mars 2 Pro first attempt
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 04/09/2021 at 22:25, njee20 said:

i have got a bottle of the Anycubic Craftsman to try at some point, but have yet to do so. 

How've you got on with the craftsman resin? I used it to print some erm... funny world leader busts and it worked admirably this was using the apricot colour. Printing heavier, model railway related items however with the grey colour, it was utterly useless - my results were similar to the Amazon reviews for it - fine for small items, useless for heavy items. 

While cleaning my resin vat by just exposing the screen for 30s, the cured resin seems incredibly flaky compared to normal anycubic resin, I'll certainly not be using it again for any model railway related items, that's for sure. A lot of people say that you need to up the exposure time for it, but my anycubic standard resin settings worked fine for apricot, but the grey was just completely unusable no matter what settings I tried. 

Edited by Mattxjs
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