Like anything there is a learning curve, but basically it is good so far. The print speed is unbelievable! It has three print speed settings/profiles: Fast Resin Fast, Standard Resin Fast, and Standard Resin Normal. The Fast Resin Fast requires a special high speed resin and for both 'Fasts' they suggest printing at 0.1mm layers rather than 0.05mm which is the 'Normal' speed.
As a starter test, I printed a 4-wh coach bench seat, on end on the plate, and at 80mm high it printed in only about 1 hour 10 mins, using standard Anycubic water washable resin and 0.1mm layer height (i.e the 'Standard Resin Fast' setting). Normally I'd use the 0.05mm layer but to test the speed I tried the 'Standard Resin Fast' and it seems fine although there isn't great deal of detail on this model to really test it, just the plank/board lines, but they look perfect. I've also got a bottle of their high speed resin to try, which should be even faster but that isn't top of my list right now.
Anyway, I'm probably the only one who never previously knew about this, but whilst fiddling about with the printer setup, I came across something in Chitubox 2.3 that I had vaguely noticed previously but had no idea what it was so had left it alone. The setting is called "Bottom Tolerance Compensation" but basically it works as built in Elephants Foot removal! So instead of either having to mess about with chamfers on the bottom of the model, or filing it off after printing, the slicer effectively does it for you. It took me quite a while to get the right settings (and there is probably still room for tweaking), and of course they may be different for different printers and different resins, but having got it, I simply saved it in a new profile for future reference. ( I believe that Lychee slicer has a similar setting).
This is the test bench seat, the one on the right was printed on end with no attempt to lose the Elephants Foot, which shows as the bulging rim all round the end, and the one on the left is exactly the same but with the corrections applied. It isn't perfect, it still shows as a small scar, but it's much much better. Both use the same drawing and the same stl, just different slicer settings, and both took 1hr10mins to print.
- IMG_1014.jpg (257.87 KiB) Viewed 56430 times
https://docs.chitubox.com/en-US/chitubo ... parameters
Also, as a bonus, this seems to have corrected some shrinkage in the z direction. The drawing is exactly 80mm, but with no corrections it printed at about 79mm with an Elephants Foot. With these new settings, exactly the same drawing printed at about 79.75mm with no EF.
Now I have just done a print of a complete 4-wh coach body in one go. It took just 1.5 hours to produce this:
- Coach.jpg (389.92 KiB) Viewed 56429 times
Whilst I was looking at which printer to get, I saw that the Anycubic Photon Mono M7 Pro has a built in resin heater system. This consists of a pump, heater and then channels under the bottom edge of the vat to distribute the heated resin. I thought that sounds like a lot to go wrong and a lot to have to clean out, so I opted for the plain M7, not the M7 Pro. However, I then discovered that Anycubic do a standalone heater which simply sits inside the m/c and heats the air to whatever you decide and the resin gets heated at the same time.
https://uk.anycubic.com/products/air-heat-pure
Having seen other mentions of heating resin, I got one of these heaters and it's brilliant. It seems to heat the resin easily and I'm amazed at how much more fluid the resin is at 25deg, which should help tremendously with resin flows during printing and also lets it drip much more easily at the end. It could be of great assistance to those of you who struggle with printing in cold sheds and garages, and even in warmer locations, to never print below whatever temp you decide, should aid print consistency - plus it also contains a small charcoal block to reduce any resin smell.
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