What am I doing wrong?

[Robin-42]

I am finally getting useable prints, but I am still getting a high failure rate. I have had to resort to using heavy supports or my tank winds up a blob in the resin tank while the supports print away happily. You can see the base curves up at the front, obviously trying to peel away from the build plate. I am just accepting the default settings at this point from chitubox. The heavy supports also mean a lot of sanding. Mars3, water based resin. 

 

[Jo NZ]

It takes longer to print, but try it vertically. Only a few supports needed, so less clean up. It should print straight, too.

[Niall]

I have read the most common resin printer fails are because the resin is not warm enough, it needs to over 25C(77F) for most printers.

[Bangseat]

I would echo the above, I would say 90% of my printing problems have been caused by temperature. 

 

What strikes me about your picture are the support bottoms that seem to sit below the raft, I've not seen that before and I use chitubox exclusively. 

 

For a drop tank I would extrude a pillar ca 1mm diameter out of the top or bottom of the tank and attach that to a nice solid square base (ie make the base yourself). No support clean up then other than snipping off the pillar and a tiny bit of profiling of the tank tip. 

 

[Robin-42]

On 8/26/2022 at 12:53 AM, Jo NZ said:

It takes longer to print, but try it vertically. Only a few supports needed, so less clean up. It should print straight, too.

I’ll try that, I was trying to mimic the commercial prints I have, they all seem to have been printed on an angle.

On 8/26/2022 at 9:34 AM, Niall said:

I have read the most common resin printer fails are because the resin is not warm enough, it needs to over 25C(77F) for most printers.

Printed during a heatwave in my loft. It was over 25 for sure!

On 8/27/2022 at 3:16 PM, Bangseat said:

I would echo the above, I would say 90% of my printing problems have been caused by temperature. 

 

What strikes me about your picture are the support bottoms that seem to sit below the raft, I've not seen that before and I use chitubox exclusively. 

 

For a drop tank I would extrude a pillar ca 1mm diameter out of the top or bottom of the tank and attach that to a nice solid square base (ie make the base yourself). No support clean up then other than snipping off the pillar and a tiny bit of profiling of the tank tip. 

 

I am surprised that the default supports seem so random with the software. Some  supports wind up below the raft, because I manually add them after the raft is formed, they wind up outside the raft a bit. 

[RANDYLIZARD1978]

brand and type of resin are you using?

have you done calibration tests on your resin and setup?

I have a Saturn  and use Siraya tech resins and Elegoo resins so i can maybe give you some settings to try.

https://siraya.tech/pages/siraya-tech-test-model 

try this calibration test its very good, you will find you will only need medium supports at most for the model you are trying to print.

 

I can help but  I need the info above.

Edited September 7, 2022 by RANDYLIZARD1978

[Robin-42]

On 9/5/2022 at 11:43 AM, RANDYLIZARD1978 said:

brand and type of resin are you using?

have you done calibration tests on your resin and setup?

I have a Saturn  and use Siraya tech resins and Elegoo resins so i can maybe give you some settings to try.

https://siraya.tech/pages/siraya-tech-test-model 

try this calibration test its very good, you will find you will only need medium supports at most for the model you are trying to print.

 

I can help but  I need the info above.

A little too busy at the moment, but the calibration test will be done next time I have time to play with the printer.  Thanks for your help, I will report back.

[Ebf2k]

Is your raft curved while the print is still attached to the build plate?  If so that would be a problem with your supports, raft settings, or resin exposure settings.

Having the raft curve after taking it off the build plate can happen for several reasons most of which are benign:

• Before post-curing the resin is still soft, and the act of prying your model off the build plate can cause it to bend
• It looks like you don't remove the raft or supports before curing, which is fine, but if you only have UV light to cure the part coming from above or from the sides, there won't be as much light hitting the bottom of the raft, so it won't cure evenly, leading to a bend. As long as the model itself is not affected, it's not a problem.  This is quite common for me as I don't remove supports before curing either, and my curing station doesn't let much light get underneath the raft. 

If this still is an issue for you, experimenting with different raft thicknesses and/or how you orient the model when curing and try to get more UV to the bottom of the raft.  Prop up one side to expose more of the bottom.

[ElectroSoldier]

Change the orintation so its vertical or add a lot more much smaller supports.
Make sure your resin is at the correct operating/printing temperature. and the first thing I would do is make sure your exposure time is correct using a test print for that.

[Dave Roof]

Try this orientation and settings. Set your anti aliasing to 0 and 4.

 

For supports, use one medium for the center bottom and light supports for all others. As far as the temperature is concerned, I've been printing since February of 2020 and temperatures in our basement have ranged from 55F to 74F. I've never heated my resin and have never had issues. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flying Badger]

The calibration of exposure time is temperature dependant (its chemistry after all).

You have to get the exposure settings right for your printer resin combination. I tend to use Lychee as it has a resin settings database and once you pick your printer and resin you can see other people's settings and their success rate. This gives me my starting point for exposure...  then I use calibration boards at different exposures around the one I got from Lychee 's database to refine the perfect exposure for that resin. Having a heater in my enclosure set to 28.5 degrees C means I always have the same conditions so direct comparisons are reliable. This needs to be done for every resin type (Inc same resin but dufferent colour as that can alter the exposure esp. With transparent resins). Then I can print parts and don't get many failures. 

For yours I'd def. be increasing the raft depth (in the raft tool.) and change the raft type to a rectangle rather than the dish.  Also perhaps increase the exposure of the first few layers. E.g. for my current resin I have a standard exposure of 2.5sec but a bottom layers exposure of 32 sec! That helps with bed adhesion 

 

Then as others have said more upright with lots of the smallest supports. When you've washed the print, removing the supports in warm water before curing leaves the least support dimples / blemishes on your print.