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3D Printers

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Spectere:
Managed to score an Anycubic Photon S for $90 the other day. The original owner claimed that the LCD screen was bad, but I'm pretty sure the power cable wasn't plugged in securely as it works perfectly. From what I can tell the printer goes for about $270 new, so I was able to get the printer, a UV chamber (to cure the printed parts), and a bottle of resin for much less than the printer alone would cost.

It's pretty obvious why the printer is cheaper than upper end resin printers. While the electronics and mechanical bits seem a-okay, you can tell the places where they cut costs. The lid and plastic bits are kind of cheap and flimsy, but it does a good enough job sealing off the print chamber when in use. While the UI isn't great, it's very quick and responsive. The Z axis of the machine is whisper quiet. It didn't make a whole lot of noise in operation, and even my relatively quiet Prusa MK3S (which is hard to hear one room over) is cacophonous by comparison. The fan is the loudest part by far, so it'll probably be damn near silent if I upgrade that.

The Anycubic software is kinda balls by all accounts and doesn't run under Linux (which my trusty basement iMac now runs), so I wound up using ChiTuBox. It's not too bad, but it's a far cry from the level of polish of something like PrusaSlicer. Fortunately, it is possible to set up the print with supports using PrusaSlicer, export the results to an STL, and import that into ChiTuBox. Probably going to take that route moving forward.

It's my first resin printer, so I've been doing a lot of reading up on it. My first print wasn't exactly successful, but I found out that unlike FDM ("fused deposition modeling," or printers that take filament) printers, you don't want the build plate to be clean, otherwise the print will just sort of stick to the FEP film at the bottom of the resin tank. Whoops.

Resin is definitely stanky. It's not as bad as I heard it was (at least Inland standard resin isn't), and when you're dealing with small quantities it's not so bad. It's a bit more noticeable when you're funneling a tank of resin back into the bottle. Woof.

It's also worth noting that UV cured resin is toxic and certainly isn't something to take lightly. Someone on r/3DPrinting ended up getting resin all over themselves while moving a printer and ended up with some pretty nasty chemical burns as a result. The endgame is to put the printer in an filtered enclosure. The printer already has a couple of filters inside which do a surprisingly good job (you can't really smell it unless you're standing right in front of it), but the endgame is to install it in another enclosure to completely eliminate the odor.

If I remember I'll update this with a picture of my first successful print.

On an FDM-related note, FAME 3D pushed out another TAZ 6-compatible upgrade. The TAZ 6 came with a borosilicate glass build plate with PEI film on top. Good adhesion with the smooth properties of glass. The problem with that setup is that you need to take a scraper to the surface to get parts off. My Prusa MK3S, on the other hand, has a flex steel plate that I can remove and flex in order to detach the part, making it far easier to remove parts and eliminating the chance of scraper injuries (one slip == one hospital visit and very likely a bunch of physical therapy) at the expense of slightly less efficient heat transfer.

Well, they came out with an upgrade that adds a large flexible build plate to muh ol' boi, basically bring it up to snuff with the much newer Prusa MK3 platform in terms of QoL features. At this point I'm almost tempted to swap out the main board for one with quieter drivers to soothe the beast a bit.

The only real downside with the flex sheet upgrade in my case is that my TAZ 6 uses the classic heater design rather than the newer modular heater design. The old design features a silicone heater glued to the borosilicate glass, while the newer design is a modular heating system, with the build plate and heater being two distinct components. It's not difficult to swap any of this out, but it did make it a little more expensive. Definitely looking forward to getting that installed, since that basically removes the only minor annoyance that I have with that printer.

Spectere:

--- Quote from: Spectere on March 09, 2021, 02:41:22 AM ---Managed to score an Anycubic Photon S for $90 the other day. The original owner claimed that the LCD screen was bad, but I'm pretty sure the power cable wasn't plugged in securely as it works perfectly. From what I can tell the printer goes for about $270 new, so I was able to get the printer, a UV chamber (to cure the printed parts), and a bottle of resin for much less than the printer alone would cost.

--- End quote ---

Hoo boy. I'm not sure who had this printer before me, but they definitely didn't do their homework before trying to maintain this thing. Here's a quick rundown of why this thing wasn't printing, like, at all.

Instead of homing the printer, they just put spacers on the bottom of the resin tank to bring it up to the build plate. Easy enough to fix.

I dug in a bit deeper and found that they also tightened the FEP film (the film at the bottom of the tank) waaaaayyy too tightly. You're meant to tune it more or less like a drum, and it's supposed to be somewhere around 290-350hz when you rap it with your finger. It was hitting 490hz. Holy hell.

I cleaned it out thoroughly and replaced the film, dialing it in to a nice 333hz, and after starting a print I was able to hear it get pulled off of the FEP film between layers. Fingers crossed!

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