Garden Railway Forum

Following a couple of queries on another thread, I thought a few bits of info from a complete novice might be of assistance in the future. I must acknowledge -steves- patience and assistance in my decision to get one of these machines in the first place.

There are a number of machines on the market and as with all technology they are evolving all the time. My choice was between the Elegoo Mars and the Anycubic Photon S. Reviews etc showed very little to choose between them, so in the end I went with the Photon S simply because that what Steve has and I thought that if I needed any help, that was a good place to start!

Trevor Thompson wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 10:25 pm
So I am intrigued by the details:

You mentioned that the print had to be post cured and then washed.

Does that need special equipment or can the curing be done in the printer after it has finished building?

Is the washing just ordinary water and a tap?

Ok, firstly please remember that I am still very much a novice with this machine and much of what I know is still book learning!

I found that there are quite a few accessories that are helpful to go with a resin printer, because of the way it works.
First thing to remember is that the resin is cured by UV light which means that even in the UK, sunlight is enough to slowly cure it.
The printer works by shining focused UV light through the transparent bottom of a vat of resin and curing a fine layer of resin onto the build plate, followed by the plate moving up fractionally and a second layer fusing onto the first layer, and so on. During this activity any stray UV will have a slight curing effect on material in the tank and eventually some of this will become solid/large enough to interfere with subsequent prints. For these reasons it is essential to only pour the remaining resin back into a uv proof container ( its bottle) through a filter funnel.

The resin itself is slightly viscous and draining it out of the resin vat/tank/tray takes some time so I made a stand to hold it whilst it drips. There are a number of designs on Thingviverse, one of which I modified slightly so that I could print the parts on my Qidi.


When a print is finished, although much of the resin will have drained off, it will still be wet on the outside. This resin film needs to be washed off and the commonly used wash liquid is IPA, which can be bought in 5litre bottles online. There are resins which claim to be water washable but I have no experience of them and they are more expensive. How the price compares with ordinary resin plus IPA I have no idea.

Once washed it is recommended to give a final overall UV cure to ensure that the outer surface is hard. Although sunlight will do it, we don't get huge amounts of that and I'm impatient, so to speed it up requires a small UV light of the type used to cure false fingernails ( I'm told!), plus ideally a small turntable. Place the print on the T/T , put the light close to it, enclose it all in a reflective box, switch everything on and leave it for half an hour.
IT IS VITAL THAT THIS PROCESS IS ALL INSIDE A UV-PROOF BOX TO AVOID DAMAGING YOUR EYES.




It is possible to get combined washing and curing boxes. Anycubic do one which costs about £120. When I was looking at buying my printer I asked Steve about these and he suggested that they aren't necessary. He's right, my lash-up seems to work ok, although part of me thinks it would be nice to have it all in one piece of kit, rather than makeshift bits spread around the bench.

A very in depth and informative post, very well articulated .

Philip, very helpful, i am considering a 3D printer and followed a number of threads, and although I am impressed with what I have seen, I am still not sure, it would seem that the resin printer leaves less striations, than the filament type printers, is that correct. Oh, and happy printing.

Jimmyb wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:41 pm Philip, very helpful, i am considering a 3D printer and followed a number of threads, and although I am impressed with what I have seen, I am still not sure, it would seem that the resin printer leaves less striations, than the filament type printers, is that correct. Oh, and happy printing.

Yes, very much correct, but with a resin printer unless you are paying BIG bucks, you are stuck with about a 4" x 6" build area, where as a FMD printer generally has around 300mm x 300mm. Also resin printing is WAY more expensive in comparison. Pro's and con's for both, having both is ideal as they really cover different things.

On top of what Steve said, I would add that Ithink the resin m/c is more difficult to get to grips with - less intuitive in slicing, for example.

Thanks Steve and Philip, food for thought

I'm using a Form3 from time to time. One important point not mentioned in the original post is that it is important to wear gloves when handling uncured parts, and the resin tanks. The resin is nasty stuff, and you don't want to be getting it in your eyes, or regularly getting it on your skin.

thanks Ted, you are right, I should have mentioned that.

I am a bit late adding this.

Thanks - it was really helpful and of course I have taken the plunge and followed in your footsteps

trevor

Trevor Thompson wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:17 am I am a bit late adding this.

Thanks - it was really helpful and of course I have taken the plunge and followed in your footsteps

trevor

Good choice Trevor

I've found the posts in this thread very useful in understanding the business of running a resin printer... and I've been keen for a while to get into this, so the time has come to bow to the inevitable.

Current situation: I have a filament printer (Flashforge Adventurer 3) and I've been tinkering away at 3D drawing and printing with that. I'm very happy with the printer, which I chose because it's the same one Trevor has and he has guided me in making the most of it. And I'm quite happy with the process of drawing and printing in general terms. But I'm totally unfamiliar with the business of handling and printing with resin.

So what make to get? It seems that not only Trevor but most of you on the forum who are resin printing are doing so on an Anycubic Photon of some description. So for the same reason I think it makes sense (unless there's an obvious reason not to) to go for one of those. Answering my own question: Anycubic.

What model to get? Here is where I have my main question I'd love some advice from those of you with printers on... What are the disadvantages of getting a larger print bed? The obvious one is the greater cost, but if that is all, then logic would suggest I go for the biggest bed I can afford. Are there other disadvantages though? Does a bigger bed mean slower printing, lower efficiency, wasted resin, or anything else I should consider? Are the advantages of being able to print larger pieces in one go tempered by any considerations around the strength of resin (e.g. if a large item in resin is too fragile to use, what's the point of being able to print it)?

Minor consideration - I do like being able to send prints to the Flashforge over the network (and not have to fiddle with transferring to and from a USB stick). Do any of the printers you all use have the option for that? (It's not going to be a deal breaker, but all things being equal might sway my choice!)

Grateful for any advice you may be able to give!

Simon, I can't answer some of your questions but others I can throw my two pennorth into.

I've been very happy with my Anycubic Photon S but it is now obsolete I think. Steve has a couple of more recent models I believe so I'll leave it to him to comment on that aspect.

Bed size is the most limiting factor that I've found ocasionally, but I don't often need to print big items - although the DeWinton chassis is a current case in point where I had to print the sideframes in two halves and then printed a shorter 'liner' to the same profile, to reinforce it from the inside.

Having a bigger bed/vat will, of course, mean putting more resin in it, even if you are only printing something very small. The resin isn't wasted though. Depending on how often you use the machine, you can either leave it in the vat 'for tomorrow' or filter it back into a container ( don't put it back in the original bottle with virgin resin).

The largest item I've printed was the slate wagon that I did as an early experiment. I suspect that the ability to print things with a bigger footprint would also equate to things with a taller profile as well! That will impact the print time significantly, but the mere fact that bed A is twice as large as bed B, makes no difference to the print time of any given object - it is the number of layers that defines the print time, not what is on each layer, and the standard layer height is 0.05mm.

In the early days resins were very brittle, as you have suggested, but there are now nearly as many resins as there are filaments! My limited experience suggest that fiddling with machine settings is necessary to get the best out of any given material and fiddling with resin printer settings is more complex than fdm settings. I am currently using Anycubic "Tough" resin, which I find much more forgiving than their old Standard resin. It is softer and can actually be carved with a sharp scalpel which helps with minor mods.
The other thing to be aware of with resin parts is that solvents don't affect them so gluing has to be with epoxy of superglue.

I would agree with you that getting a machine with network connectivity is highly desirable. I have my two machines sitting next to each other on the bench and with Octoprint I can do everything apart from removing a print from the FDM print bed without having to move from our living room, and watching it's CCTV allows me to have early warning of any problems. In contrast, for the resin printer, I have to do the drawing, save it to a USB stick, take that to the machine, plug it in, find the file and then set it to print. It would be so much simpler if I could send it direct over our network, but I believe that more recent machines do have that capability.

Hope that helps a bit, but I think Steve's input woudl be very helpful.

Thanks Philip, that’s answered a lot of my questions in regards to speed, waste and efficiency. I’m still inclined towards the biggest I can afford then…

I've got an Elegoo Mars 2 pro which has been excellent....I too also have a filament printer and originally thought I'd only use the resin machine for oo9 models and small details parts in 16mm but I now find myself hardly using the filament printer. With hindsight, I wish I had gone for a larger machine (a Saturn or similar) as it opens up more options in "garden railway" scales.

I have heard very good things about the Elegoo Mars 2 Pro. Very useful to know you’d have gone bigger. Another point in favour of going as big as my budget will stretch to.

I picked up one of these the other week for under £200 at a reduction from £600. They are still on offer at £270 as they have a £330 voucher to add. It's very big, infact huge! Printing Size 192mm(L) x120mm(W) x250mm(H)

The only downside is the wi-fi is a bit week so it needs to be close to the router or connected via ethernet. Also I have not managed to successfully import the settings into Chitubox and I am having to use their own slicing software, even though you can import the converter, it still doesn't let you output the right file type.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NOVA3D-Printer ... C72&sr=8-2

That's an absolute bargain! It took a lot of willpower not to press the buy button on that!

Garethep wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 1:57 pm That's an absolute bargain! It took a lot of willpower not to press the buy button on that!

It's a very good printer with awesome reviews, no one would blame you

That is an incredible price for a printer of that size.

I am now comparing it to the Anycubic Photon M3 Plus which is a comparable size, but more expensive. However there’s possibly one other advantage besides my preference for the make as mentioned above, and that is it has a higher resolution (6K rather than 4K, so 34 microns rather than ~50 microns). However I’m not sure how big a difference this might make in real world use…

I’ve ordered a Whale 2. As far as I can see 50 micron resolution is more than adequate for my needs, and the saving over the Photon M3 Plus will pay for a wash and cure station which I am sure will make a difference to my real life use! Many thanks Steve for putting me onto this deal. (I also rediscovered another thread on buying a resin printer which has also been useful in these decisions.)

So now to see if there are any wash and cure Black Friday deals… currently looking at the Anycubic Plus and the Elgoo Mercury X/XS…