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Anycubic Photon and Mono X 3D DLP Printers


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1 hour ago, Penrhos1920 said:

 

You’ve got some interesting distortion of the roof at the bottom and the way it’s collapsed and effected the windows is really odd.

I thought that too as I scrolled  the photo!  Seemed a shame to get 90% successful then the last bit buggered up, then I realised it was meant to look like that,

 

A good first print and great step-by-step setup guide, if only the Facebook groups for the various printers had something similar pinned to the top of their pages it would stop 80% of the "this printer is  &$#%($  I'm sending it back!" posts from frustrated noobies.

Edited by monkeysarefun
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Mk2 print. Just need the underframe, front window and interior to do now.

 

This one is also 0.04mm but rotated 45 degrees in the x and 20 degrees z.

 

IMG_3590.JPG.5bafc4da7214a4f90a20f00d90cd764f.JPG

 

IMG_3591.JPG.5400168561e3142123b9518d7cbc24e0.JPG

 

IMG_3592.JPG.fc4b47feaef5147072fb8fb0961a4bf6.JPG

 

IMG_3593.JPG.ad91d4f6ca76ce7245054d7bc817131e.JPG

 

Above mouldings have been given a quick blast of Humbrol primer and will need a bit of a tidy up.

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One of the problems with the new large format machines is a lack of spares, especially in the UK. I like to have some spares in stock especially FEP.

 

For some reason the majority of UK suppliers only do the larger FEP sheets in 0.1mm thickness which users have found to be less durable.

 

I recently spotted that 3DPrintMonkey advertise FEP sheet for the Mars Saturn in 0.15mm thickness so submitted an order on Tuesday for it to arrive safely this morning (Friday).

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19 hours ago, MikeTrice said:

I recently spotted that 3DPrintMonkey advertise FEP sheet for the Mars Saturn in 0.15mm thickness so submitted an order on Tuesday for it to arrive safely this morning (Friday).

 

I recently tried some of that on the MonoX and didn't have much luck with it so I'll be interested to see how you get on. Yesterday I fitted some EPAX NFEP and a print that partially failed (1/2 stuck to the FEP) on the 3DPM 0.15 stuff has come out perfectly on the NFEP.

 

Tom. 

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16 minutes ago, TomE said:

 

I recently tried some of that on the MonoX and didn't have much luck with it so I'll be interested to see how you get on. Yesterday I fitted some EPAX NFEP and a print that partially failed (1/2 stuck to the FEP) on the 3DPM 0.15 stuff has come out perfectly on the NFEP.

 

Tom. 

Can I ask where you got the NFEP?

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The three main body components have now been printed on the Mono X. There is slight warping which immersion in hot water should fix. Also printed on the Photon in clear resin are some rear windows for me to experiment with.

 

IMG_3599.JPG.9126974480d4b6e7fe7567b3c258af62.JPG

 

Now running some belated exposure tests so you never know, I might reprint.

 

 

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A quick experiment with the transparent glazing. Moulding cleaned up and given a couple of coats of Rustoleum Gloss Crystal Clear on right, untreated on left:

IMG_3604.JPG.d216bbbb477dda6887c6d1c22378f58b.JPG

 

Lightly fixed in with stick tape, needs to be neater for real but promising:

IMG_3606.JPG.cb051239a5a85d3a88fcf708e96b26ba.JPG

 

Once painted and fixed in some Glue and Glaze should make it look much better.

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I mentioned previously that I should run some belated exposure tests using the Mono X. There are a number of different ones out there but the one that looked the most useful and easiest to read is this one:

IMG_3607.JPG.ae005905aa726e317d88dd204dd5cdf7.JPG

 

I ran three tests as my usual 2 secs and also tried 1.5 seconds and 1. 2 seconds was definately over exposing. Of the 3 1 second looked the most promising:

IMG_3610.JPG.784c2bc0d869720e53bfdc50504bcbde.JPG

 

In reality it is still over exposed and I could probably drop still further.

 

At the same time as the above I also printed some tests using the AmeraLabs Town test piece. Here is the 1.5 second looking pretty good:

IMG_3613.JPG.0643c74fdbdfa80d28820be8ad1dde46.JPG

 

The 1 second exposure told a different story with some of the parts not printing properly:

IMG_3614.JPG.1db126d97e324c141ce4ccf306b412b5.JPG

 

I took a risk and tried running an Observation Car print at 1 second exposure and it was not a success, a lot of the supports failed and I ended up cancelling the print after 1 hour. Cleaned the resin vat out and reprinted at 1.5 seconds without a problem. I am now running an exposure test at 1.25 seconds before putting the Mono X to bed for a while. The above exposure tests were all printed at 0.04mm layer height with no AA.

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39 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

A quick experiment with the transparent glazing. Moulding cleaned up and given a couple of coats of Rustoleum Gloss Crystal Clear on right, untreated on left:

 

 

 

Another way of making a transparent surface is to dip the piece into resin and then cure it. You only need a thin coat so warming the resin a little my help and a spigot or two on the edge to hold it while curing would be useful. 

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Mike, with regards to clearing items sticking to the FEP, obviously it’s easy to damage the FEP if you dig at the stuck object with the spatula. If you know there’s nothing also floating in your vat, then an easy way of clearing the FEP is to run a 30 second exposure on your machine. This creates a thin rectangle of cured resin that can be peaked off very easily. You just push a corner up from underneath, and then when you hear it separating from the FEP, you place your plastic spatula underneath it and slowly prise it off. I’ve done this a few times without problem, and without having to empty and filter the vat. But as I say, you’d need to be happy there’s nothing also floating around.

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My wife has a curing device for specialist nail varnish and I use that. It has two lamps either side of a hand-sized cavity with a reflective floor, so gets good, all-round coverage without a turntable and motor. I find that two runs of 120s each does the job; the device has a timer for that duration.

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10 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

image.png.c06690f86f204237452c659f81440823.png

 

It'll change your life!

 

Yep, I got one for Christmas, it's so much better than doing it by hand. And a lot less messy as well. It works well combined with a draining bracket, which drains off most of the resin from the build plate before you then start processing it. I printed the bracket using the printer as it's very strong, and doesn't look like it's going to crack anytime soon.

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4627080

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11 hours ago, Tricky said:

Just wondering what methods and equipment people use for curing?

 

See this post of mine for photos of my home built equipment - it's an adapted bread bin!

 

Edited by Alan_LSWR
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12 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

It'll change your life!

The wash and cure was what convinced me to give resin printing a go. It is a super device and very effective but you cannot escape, it's all a bit more messy than FDM.

 

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On 25/01/2021 at 10:02, MikeTrice said:

A quick experiment with the transparent glazing. Moulding cleaned up and given a couple of coats of Rustoleum Gloss Crystal Clear on right, untreated on left:

IMG_3604.JPG.d216bbbb477dda6887c6d1c22378f58b.JPG

 

Lightly fixed in with stick tape, needs to be neater for real but promising:

IMG_3606.JPG.cb051239a5a85d3a88fcf708e96b26ba.JPG

 

Once painted and fixed in some Glue and Glaze should make it look much better.

I had a go at printing clear resin for windows a while back. I then got some thin clear unscratched plastic sheet similar to the stuff they wrap around chocolate cake which has a very smooth surface and brushed some resin on it. I then placed the printed window on it and gave it a blast with a UV lamp to cure before peeling the plastic off.


By using the same resin the refractive index is the same so all the rough surface from the print vanishes and you are left with a perfectly clear window with no prismatic effect.

 

I haven’t had much time to follow this up and was worried about the resin yellowing over time so I haven’t used the parts yet or done any more.

 

Mark

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Time for some updates. I just need to decide where to begin.

 

Lets start with a bug in the free beta version of Chitubox 1.8.0. When I printed the clear rear windows for the beaver tail I wanted to use my OG Photon. No problem I thought, I can open Chitubox 1.8.0 beta, change to point to the Photon than slice and save as normal. Well not quite. Having sliced the files, when I tried to save the resulting photon file, photon did not appear as an option in the save dialogue. After scratching my head over this one I thought I would manually append the .photon suffix to the suggested filename and see if it worked. It did. Phew!

 

When I developed the parts for the beaver tail I did not give a great deal of thought to how the various parts would be joined together to hold them firm and still allow access to the interior. I realised I could combine the chassis and interior into a single unit but still needed a fixing method. Rather than trial this on full size print with a 10hr print time I though I would sensibly just use part of the model to test some ideas and clearances out. I can out with a combination of methods, one using M2 screws to hold together, the rest using tab and slot to stop the sides bowing out:

IMG_3680.JPG.15cd8f040605701bcdbb98521b011689.JPG

 

IMG_3682.JPG.c0a15b39830e5a1469235281e75f61ef.JPG

 

I only had some long screws at this point but have since order some shorter ones. The holes for the screw were opened up to 1.6mm then tapped M2. Success:

IMG_3683.JPG.a7b403c05a8cb23cdf03ba5309d9ec5f.JPG

 

I was very happy with the quality of the sample prints having played around with the AA settings. Following that success I modified the original model and got ready to print the new version. Open Chitubox, arrange, slice and save. Or not. For some reason although no error was displayed the sliced file refused to physically save to disk. Now I had not had this problem before so more head scratching and I decided to save the supported files as a .stl file then open it in Photon Workshop, slice and save from that. As far as I could I replicated the print and AA settings and managed to get a save Mono X print file.

 

10 hrs later I had a revised set of body parts which fitted quite well:

IMG_3685.JPG.0cac0f06df05cc37503f4186bff80a94.JPG

 

IMG_3687.JPG.54b55676b60dd73a888a1dd3cda37766.JPG

 

The problem though was the stepping evident on the print, not the smooth finish I got from Chitubox:

IMG_3688.JPG.b44d933da601642a52947518d7e02af0.JPG

 

I then had another thought. If Chitubox would not let me slice and save the prints as they were what would happen if I opened the previous saved stl in Chitubox? Well that actually worked so I am now attempting yet another 10 hour print!

 

2 hours into the print we had a minor flicker of our power supply resulting in my computer shutting down and various clocks to reset. Dreading the worst I checked the printer and it is still running and does not appear to have lost its place. I could have stopped the print and restarted but foolishly decided to let it complete and see if it created any problems.

 

I have tried to create this moulding for some time now and am on my 5th iteration. Being so large and angled at 45 degrees to the build plate it is getting through a lot of resin so proving quite expensive.

 

Oh yes, trying to get one of the prints off of the build plate I had to resort to using the supplied metal scraper to free the moulding. Steel scaper on Aluminium build plate, well the scraper won and I now have some scatches on the build plate, hopefully none to worry about. Have now order some plastic razor blades and holder to provide a more genteel approach.

 

As an aside I had a go at shrinking the model by 50% to see if it would print. It does but is a bit fragile:

IMG_3676.JPG.db3fe68163ced6654533e6d8e27cd830.JPG

 

 

 

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44 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

Oh yes, trying to get one of the prints off of the build plate I had to resort to using the supplied metal scraper to free the moulding. Steel scaper on Aluminium build plate, well the scraper won and I now have some scatches on the build plate, hopefully none to worry about. Have now order some plastic razor blades and holder to provide a more genteel approach.

The scratches might even help adhesion. Elegoo are now making build plates with an engraved pattern to this end.

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51 minutes ago, MikeTrice said:

Oh yes, trying to get one of the prints off of the build plate I had to resort to using the supplied metal scraper to free the moulding. Steel scaper on Aluminium build plate, well the scraper won and I now have some scatches on the build plate, hopefully none to worry about. Have now order some plastic razor blades and holder to provide a more genteel approach.

 

I had a similar issue when I was using the 3D Print Monkey FEP and Frozen 4K resin with the mono X. Fortunately the few scratches and gouges to the plate don't seem to have had any adverse impact. Since I switched to the EPAX NFEP and went back to Phrozen ABS like I haven't had that issue and models just pop off with the plastic scraper. 

 

Tom.  

 

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3 hours ago, Guy Rixon said:

The scratches might even help adhesion. Elegoo are now making build plates with an engraved pattern to this end.

The build plate on my Phrozen Shuffle was quite heavily scratched from new such that you can see the scratch pattern on anything printed on the plate.

 

Jim.

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