MikeTrice

Chitubox Free 1.8.1 has now been released as a stable version.

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

Teak finish applied: I really need to change the support settings along the front cab roof:

There are some comparisons of end profiles here:

I have had the privilege of being able to try printing from @298's 3D model on my Anycubic Mono X and it is a real beauty in every respect. Just crying out for me to get the teak paints out.

If you are using Inkscape convert the text to an object, break apart and colour centre outline differently. Now when cutting do a score cut for centres then full cut for the exterior.

I mentioned above that I was reprinting the body on the Mono X with a 1.5sec exposure and no anti-aliasing enabled: Compared to the earlier version with anti-aliasing level of 4:

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

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: Lightly fixed in with stick tape, needs to be neater for real but promising: Once painted and fixed in some Glue and Glaze should make it look much better.

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

Can I ask where you got the NFEP?

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).

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

It is supposed to be like that. It is the LNER Coronation Beaver Tail Observation Car.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had aquired an Anycubic Mono X which I was waiting to set up and try. I have now had an opportunity to do so and will detail what I did to prepare the machine for use. If you read the various facebook groups for the machines you will probably be left with the impression that the machines are nothing but trouble however with a little bit of research forewarned is forearmed so to speak. Before I started I drew myself up a list of things to check/do. 1) Before doing anything I checked that the machine switched on and ran an exposure test to check the screen was OK. Staring into a strong UV light is probably not a good idea so I bought myself some protective UV glasses (shown next to some Kapton tape for use later). 2) Check that the build plate is flat. Various people have reported getting warped build plate and having to take remedial action to flatten them. I check mine against a couple of straight edges and was happy that mine was not a problem. I actually held the plate and ruler up against the light but only having two hands was unable to replicate it with the camera. 3) Check and install the latest firmware. There have been issues regarding problems with enabling anti-aliasing and as a result a new firmware release 3.4.7 is available for download. Not surprisingly my machine came with 3.4.6 installed so the new version was downloaded and applied. 4) ADD A SCREEN PROTECTOR. Unlike the earlier Photon machines the mono screens do not have a protective layer of glass on them. You hear sob stories of how people have used their machines only to get a resin spill on the screen and end up having to do some serious repairs. There is a good youtube video on how to protect your Mono X screen using plastic antiglare iPad screen guards. People have also used spare FEP sheets and overhead transparencies however I felt that a cover speciically for screens would probably be the best option. The TechGear protectors that I bought were for an iPad Air4/Pro 11 10.9inch and came as a twin pack. As supplied the Mono X has a screen protector ready fitted however this is not designed for optical clarity and is supposed to be removed. Some people advocate leaving it on as the first layer protection. Careful study of the screen shows that there is a recess for the screen covered by the black tape with the supplied screen protector fitted into the gap provided by the black screen protector. The build plate on the other had fits into the recess for the screen. The YouTube video cuts the lower protector to the same size as the build plate and discards the supplied protector. So I had to decide which option to choose. In the end I decided to follow the video and cut my first layer of protector to match the build plate and remove the supplied protector. Putting the first layer of protector on has the effect of making the whole plate level so a second screen protector is then layed across the lot. For this second layer of protection I did not cut the supplied protector just layed it over the whole plattern but leaving a small gap at the rear by the locating pins. This ended up being a mistake as it covered the side locating recesses and once the final Kapton tape applied would probably not stop any spillages. I took remedial action by trimming the length of the top screen to 230mm in place and peeling up the surplus. Finally 12mm Kapton tape was applied around the edges to add a final seal. 5) Final job was to check the UV power setting of the machine. As supplied mine was set to 50% and I wanted to try 80%. With done I was ready go. Or was I? So some strange behaviour. From the early days of the Anycubic Photons one major piece of advice is "Don't use the supplied USB drive, they are *****". Duly advised I purchased and have used a Sandisk 32Gb USB3 drive successfully for a few years. Thinking I might be able to use this in the Mono X I put it in the USB port and the interface freezes. Strange. Take it out and the interface works again. Back in, freezes, take it out and interface works again. Place the Anycubic supplied USB drive in and everything works. So short term I took the risk to use the supplied USB stick to attempt my first print. Some people have reported that the memory stick problem seems to be for drives over 4Gb. The supplied drive is indeed 4Gb. With that in mind I have just received via Amazon a Transcend 4Gb drive and can report that that works fine in the machine. So some further investigation required. The model printed was sliced using Chitubox 1.8.0 beta which worked beautifully. It was printed at 80%UV with 0.04mm layers exposed for 2secs per layer with 45secs for the base layers with the model raised 8mm from the buildplate. The model was orientated 45 degrees in x, 5 degrees in Y and 10 degrees in z and anti aliasing set to 4. It looks as if it has printed very well but there is some slight distortion where I added cross braces to combat warping. Hopefully I will now examine it in detail and think about any updates.

They were printed to order, however with the weather being generally colder, printing is more difficult. Requests were made via

Someone already is

Part of the prototype for comparison:

Having checked that Graham was talking about a Mono machine, you are correct, my settings do not apply.

Currently 8 secs with Anycubic Grey.

Your problem is likely to be the temperature you are printing at. At times like these I preheat my resin, build plate and VAT on a radiator until nice and warm then use a heat gun to warm up the interior of the machine and screen. I also increase the exposure times of the bottom layers. If you are attempting to print the supplied test file, which I assume is already sliced you may need to open it in the Photon File Validator and change the settings before saving it. For Anycubic resin I am currently using 90s bottom exposure.

A lot depends on what you are wanting to print. I have an Anycubic Photon (Original Generation) hence this thread. I do find the small size of the print volume can be limiting. I managed to print the 4mm LNER V2 body on the Photon but had to split the model into two halves to print. Likewise a 4mm coach might need splitting. This may, or may not, be a bad thing. By splitting in two I can orientate the two halves so the main supports go to the ends at the join leaving the detailed front and cabs requiring minimal support. If I printed the body in one piece then supports might be more difficult. The machine is quite slow and half a loco body can take 17 hours to print. 3D Printers like the Photon and Mars consider 3 things to be consumables, resin, FEP film and LCD screen. The LCD screen will eventually burn out or give you dead pixels partly due to the heat generated. The FEP eventually just wears out. Replacing the non-mono LCD screen and FEP is relatively easy and the parts are fairly easy to get and at reasonable cost. The mono machines as the name suggests use a mono LCD screen that generates far less heat so in theory should need replacing less often. From what I can tell FEP for these machines at the moment seems a thinner specification so may end up being damaged more easily. Mono screens currently do not come with a glass protector so are more easily damaged and the user needs to add further protection before using the machines. LCDs for the monos are currently much harder to find and are more expensive. Hopefully in time they will become easier/cheaper to source. They are capable of printing much faster than the previous generation of machines, requiring less time to expose each layer of resin. I do now have an Anycubic Mono X but have not fired it up yet. There have been teething issues with some supplied components (such as warped build pates) but I do not know if mine has this issue. Both Mars and Anycubic machines have had some form of quality issues at some point. The Mars machines do have a strong following, but then so do the Anycubic ones. I bought my Mono X via Aliexpress shipped to the UK from Spain BEFORE 31st December 2020, so the situation may have changed. It was far cheaper than buying from Amazon although I have used Amazon a lot, including the purchase of my original machine. As mentioned the slicer supplied by Anycubic is really not very good. Fortunately a free version of Chitubox can be downloaded that will support the earlier Anycubic and Mars machines. There is a beta version now available that supports the newer mono machines. There is also a free Lychee slicer that some people favour. If you do go for a non-mono Mars machine a number of 3rd parties are offering replacement Z rails that increase the height the machine is capable of accomodating. I don't recall seeing the same for the Photon. There are a number of facebook owner groups for the various machines and it might be worth visiting them to get a feel for the two machine suppliers. Unfortunately there is a lot of repetition on those groups and you only tend to hear when things go wrong. Hope that helps.

It is not just magazines that have suffered this "dumbing down" (I think Your Model Railway started the trend). One of my pet hates is TV documentaries which start the episode telling you what is going to be covered for the rest of the program then when ad breaks occur have a "coming up" segment before the break, then a recap after the break and finally a "next time" at the end.

True but there is evidence of other supports already removed so not quite as originally shown.

Lets wait and see how it prints first ;-) One must remember that these are N Gauge so the gap between supports is far less than it would be for 4mm.