New resin 3d printer

[Darren Wright]

I picked up a Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra resin printer on a prime day deal. Just got around to making some space to set it up last night.


The yellow and clear containers to the right are the UV Curing station and wash stations, purchased separately.

I'm trying out the water washable resins to begin with. Normally you would need to rinse or wash off your printed pieces in alcohol to remove excess resin before curing. I'll just need to use water to clean the parts before curing. The fumes are a bit stronger with the normal resins as well. I've ordered a separate uv light and container to put the wash water into, which will cure the washed off resin and help it drop out of suspension. Many folks just put their wash water out in the sun and let the sun do the curing and evaporate the water. They'll also do this with the alcohol wash to do mostly the same for disposal of the waste.

I'm looking to maybe do some metal casting and these printers create very high resolution prints. There are resins for doing lost wax casting, which I'll use for doing those projects, where you can print the parts with sprues and runners, then cast the part with investment plaster, melt out the printed casting in a kiln, and pour metal in to make the cast.

I'll also be interested to see how well the clear resins print for doing clear/translucent parts, which the FDM printers don't do very well. My wife is interesting is seeing how this works for making jewelry pieces/parts as well.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

I never knew resin printers existed. I can see lots of possibilities.

 

[Darren Wright]

I never knew resin printers existed. I can see lots of possibilities.

They've been around a while and even the older/cheaper ones have pretty decent resolution. I've put off getting one as I didn't want to mess with all the chemicals and disposal. I figured I'd give the water clean-up resins a try. They also have been around for a while, but have been improving for strength and quality. We'll see how it all goes. I think I have another 60 days to decide before the return window closes.

 

[Darren Wright]

I got a small project going finally. I don't use the usb drives that come with these printers, but apparently there is a size limit for the drive and the 32 gb ones I have must be too large. I did finally figure out how to send the slice job via wifi, we'll see how it goes.

 

[Darren Wright]

Looks like it completed OK. It didn't complete until after midnight, so I have left it on the print plate to allow the excess resin to drip back off and into the resin tray. From what I've read, I can leave the print 24 - 48 hours and have no quality issues. I'll still need to wash, clean-up, and cure the print under UV light for a few minutes. Obviously these prints aren't going to be something you want to leave out in the sunlight, unless they've got a UV protective coating or been painted.

I printed a ring I drew for my wife's friend in Fusion as the test. The thin vertical bars are all supports and will be removed. The resin was a translucent red.

 

[Darren Wright]

Looks like I need to get a magnify glass and do some clean-up before final curing. I can still see some of the support locations. There is some minor stair stepping between layers on the outer curves, but easily enough polished out.


My wife has already requested one in size 7 for her.

 

[Brent Dowell]

What slicer do you use for that?

I wonder if you could get away with fewer supports with a resin printer since it's pretty much just 'floating' anyway?

That turned out really nice.

 

[Don Baer]

I have often thought about a resin 3D printer for lithophanes. how long did the ring take to make. ?

 

[Darren Wright]

What slicer do you use for that?

I wonder if you could get away with fewer supports with a resin printer since it's pretty much just 'floating' anyway?

That turned out really nice.

I use the Elegoo Satellite slicer that came with the printer, Chitubox is another highly recommended slicer, but is a subscription based slicer for more than basic use, so testing out the Satellite software for a bit until I know enough to grow an opinion. I'll have to play around with supports, I agree there were probably way to many, but does help with distortion when the parts are thin. Can add too few and cause issues if the final part is way to heavy also, with separation and parts coming loose.

I have often thought about a resin 3D printer for lithophanes. how long did the ring take to make. ?

It was about a 27 minute print, but not sure how long the resin tank heating and other tasks take for each print. It took well over 40 minutes total, so if I had printed a bed full of them all at the same height and same support, it would have taken the same amount of time. The lcd screen has to come on just the same for every layer across the entire print bed area, so multiples don't take any longer to print than just one.

How quickly you remove it from the printer will determine how long the cleanup process takes as leaving it for a while will allow excess resin to drip off the plate and parts back into the tank.

 

[Darren Wright]

I came across this video this morning and another I'll post in a separate thread. I may have to setup where I can plate with copper and silver, or similar at some point.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

I came across this video this morning and another I'll post in a separate thread. I may have to setup where I can plate with copper and silver, or similar at some point.

That's pretty cool!