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I've had an Anycubic Photon for quite a while, printing a bunch of stuff with it, but a few months back I dropped the build plate on the screen and broke it. Anycubic no longer sold replacement screens at this point so I decided to pick up a new printer. I settled on the Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K.

It sounded good on paper, but right from the start my prints were coming out quite poorly, with what initially looked like much more prominent layer lines than expected. I figured it was due to the whole "mono screen cures resin faster for faster prints" thing making the print settings more sensitive, so I spent a good long time experimenting with print settings and so on. That didn't fix it. Eventually I learned that PTFE lubricant can help with resin printers, so I ordered some and waited weeks for it to arrive (the joys of living in a distant land). It made no difference.

So I decided there might be something wrong with the printer. I contacted Phrozen, and after some back and forth with photos and videos and what-not, they said the issue must be the LCD screen. However, by this point it had been over three months, and their warranty for the LCD monitor is only for three months. So they refused to send me a replacement (even though it was broken right out of the box and I had ordered directly from their website), and told me I would have to pay for a new one. I pointed out that the printer had not failed in use but had arrived broken, but to no avail.

Now one of the advertising points for the Sonic Mini 4K was the mono screen, which was claimed to last four times as long as a normal LCD screen. Well, my Photon's normal screen lasted well over a year of use (keep in mind I'm the only guy in my local gaming group with a resin printer so I've printed a fair bit of stuff for my friends, as well as printing plenty of bits and pieces for myself). So why the hell does a "new improved screen that lasts four times as long" only have a three month warranty?

So yeah, I am extremely dissatisfied. What kind of company sends you a broken product then refuses to replace the broken part? I mean, this "three month warranty" is already a huge red flag as to the quality of their product. I refuse to throw good money after bad to buy a new screen that I have no reason to believe will last, assuming it ever works at all.

Basically, I do not recommend Phrozen. Their stuff looks good on paper, but my experience has been to the contrary. I suggest looking to other companies for your printer needs.

Thats an oof.
But I kinda suspected something like that... My Photon SE had a faulty LED Array, you know that thing that should last for thousands of hours, after 2 weeks of use.
Its all made in China with the appropriate quality it seems...

Just thinking, and I'm by far not a pro, I've got a printer for a few weeks and have some successful prints, the first thing I'd fault is the printer settings as well.
My Photon SE has a setting of 60 for the bottom layers and 2 for the rest. With anycubic resin stuff comes out fine.
Did you try a different resin? Maybe thats the faulty one?

It seems quite hit and miss with Phrozen. We have been going great guns with our Mighty 4K here in the office, and Nick has been running a mini 4K at his home for the last 6 months with no issues, yet we also hear a lot of people having issues with various parts not working properly. It seems we have been fortunate in our acquisitions as it really sounds like a 50-50 chance from anecdotal evidence.

This is the problem with buying from the Eastern print companies I hear. Customer service can be a little...iffy. I know at least two people who bought an EPAX for that reason. Apparently if it gaks up, you can call some bloke in the States who actually speaks English and have him help you.

 Thairne wrote:
Did you try a different resin? Maybe thats the faulty one?

It wasn't a resin problem, it was definitely the screen. When I placed a piece of paper on top of the screen and ran the exposure test, I could see the bottom edge of the screen shaking up and down (not the screen itself, just the lit area). Basically the image on the screen was shaking up and down along the X axis, leading to excessive layer lines (mainly on just one side) that got worse the larger the model was.

If you're interested here's the video of the exposure test:
https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzvQRXgKUgy0jcKDWWEYYFL7JgTLtk96-s2VE2tPnXvzDeVvQxisdP4zUDlrYDtnBxTkOl-uMDrRmnlhsQlobZpLUwKckwxOr5r7IRs5MJsBg4qlTyBJ5tNYolFaUiXXnLf4jk

And here's a sample print (the issue is much more subtle with smaller models, and since I was mainly trying to print 35mm human models it was much more subtle on my initial test pieces):

As you can see all surfaces on one side are very ugly, and what's more everthing is "wider" on the X axis than it should be.


The only issue my Photon had was that I could not get the bed level with the original level system, but the "easyZ0" fixed that... until the steel screws stripped out the aluminium screw holes, so I had to glue steel nuts onto the outside... sigh...

I know they've updated the bed level system on the newer models so I'm currently thinking about picking up another Anycubic. I am interested in the Orange Longer but I don't know when that will actually be available as I think they are still fulfilling Kickstarter pledges. I haven't really found any printers that look better that aren't much more expensive. I'm open to recommendations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Printable Scenery wrote:
It seems quite hit and miss with Phrozen. We have been going great guns with our Mighty 4K here in the office, and Nick has been running a mini 4K at his home for the last 6 months with no issues, yet we also hear a lot of people having issues with various parts not working properly. It seems we have been fortunate in our acquisitions as it really sounds like a 50-50 chance from anecdotal evidence.

I'm sure the failure rate is much lower than 50% (the vocal minority and all), but I suspect it's still much higher than it should be. Well, obviously my perspective is skewed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:
This is the problem with buying from the Eastern print companies I hear. Customer service can be a little...iffy. I know at least two people who bought an EPAX for that reason. Apparently if it gaks up, you can call some bloke in the States who actually speaks English and have him help you.

I believe there's very good Chinese manufacturers, but they aren't the ones who sell the cheapest products (for obvious reasons). Finances were pretty tight when I settled on the Phrozen Sonic (Covid and all), so a cheap printer with good advertised specs was very attractive. My situation is a bit better now, but I still don't want to spend too many hundreds of dollars when you can get a good printer for a pretty low price (at least if you're lucky I guess), you know?

I will say that Phrozen did a pretty good job helping to analyze the issue, although there were some language barrier problems; I still don't understand what "Film the LCD test with the clockwise direction on the boundaries of the LCD screen" means.

Oof. Yeah.. um... that exposure test and that model... they should have scurried in lightspeed to help you out there.
Thats definate hardware failure. And even if the warranty is out, that is a very dissatisfied customer which has pretty bad repercussions in todays world.
I know I've been eyeing the 4k Mighty, but with that kind of problems and anectodal evidence and support I'm pretty sure I wont. Lost sale right there.

 Thairne wrote:
Oof. Yeah.. um... that exposure test and that model... they should have scurried in lightspeed to help you out there.
Thats definate hardware failure. And even if the warranty is out, that is a very dissatisfied customer which has pretty bad repercussions in todays world.
I know I've been eyeing the 4k Mighty, but with that kind of problems and anectodal evidence and support I'm pretty sure I wont. Lost sale right there.

Let me know what you end up going with, I'm having a hard time deciding myself right now.

Well since for mid-sized printers you pretty much only have Phrozen, Anycubic and Elegoo in an affordable price range.. Phrozen being terrible by some accounts, Anycubic failing in my own experience that pretty much leaves like the Elegoo Saturn in the end.
But I'd wait for a newer version of that... and currently the Photon SE is workable, albeit a bit small for my tastes now. The Anycubic support was only once like "did you update the firmware" and then sent me a replacement LED Array. So I guess the Mono X could be an option too...

I'm glad to hear Anycubic did not give you any trouble with the replacement parts.

well the printer was literally 2 weeks old...
I dont know if they'd to the same after a few months. Then again, the LED array is NOT a consumable.

 Thairne wrote:
well the printer was literally 2 weeks old...
I dont know if they'd to the same after a few months. Then again, the LED array is NOT a consumable.

I mean, it is. It just takes longer to burn out.

Well by that logic a car engine is a consumable.
Yet I dont think you're expected to exchange and replace it during the standard lifetime of a car - usually thats a economic no-go.
LEDs last four thousands of hours usually. And compared to the LCD screen which you can replace via an access hatch basically, to replace the LED you have to take apart the entire printer.