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Made in de
Daring Dark Eldar Raider Rider





Germany

Hello,
I have finally caved in and a Mars 3 Pro is on the way, together with a wash and cure station and some standard resin (alcohol washeable).
Now while I have looked at many tutorials, unboxings and XY-mistakes-I-made-with-my-first-print videos, there are a few things that still seem very ominous...

Are there some solid settings that will produce consistantly OK results, or do you have to fiddle around with the settings each time, depending on object, weather etc.?

Also, do the settings differ depending on how much you print at once? Say, a single figure versus a dozend? And how about different sizes? If I put 3 28mm models and 3 50mm models in one scene, will that ruin the print?

Failed prints seem to be rather normal it seems, but it would still be great to avoid as many as possible.

Thank you!

Human ambassador of Cats on earth. All hail our feline overlords!!! 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

So most of the slicer settings are things that are built upon theory and thus you can fairly easily lock them down to pretty much either fixed values or easy theory that you can adapt as required.


Burn/bottom/base layers - you want to cover 0.2mm of depth at your chosen layer height.

For example if you've a layer height of 0.05mm then you'd need 4 layers to cover 0.2mm of depth.


Transitional layers - you want to cover the rest of the depth of your raft with these, plus a little more for the start of the support columns.

Most standard rafts are 0.5mm deep and you've already 0.2mm from your bottom/burn layers.

So you'd need a further 0.3mm depth with your chosen layer height. Then you want to add a few more layers just so that the start of the columns gets a little more exposure.



Note on raft thickness. Most presupports use a 0.5mm thick raft for the standard layer height of 0.05mm. If you use a lower layer height you can use a thinner raft (if you've a lychee lys file or chitubox project file where supports and model are separate entities and thus you can edit the supports and raft values).

Rough values
0.05 layer height = 0.5mm raft
0.04 layer height = 0.4mm raft
0.03 layer height = 0.3mm raft
0.02 layer height = 0.3mm raft


Lift speeds are basically built on plaster theory. Either you peel slowly or you rip fast; both work, but you don't want to be in the middle.
So its 60 or slower; 180 or faster. With no lower nor upper limits on those speeds.

Typically I have a slow speed for the burn/base layers then shift to faster for regular.

Two Step lift speeds are a thing now which make it a little more complicated. Two step just means that it uses 2 speeds; first one then the other; for different parts of the total lifting distance.




For lift heights that's fairly standard, I tend to err toward 7mm and that would be more than enough for a Mars 3 Pro.


Burn/base exposure time is typically 10X your regular exposure time; sometimes plus a little.


Exposure time - this is the one that varies the most. This is the one you use test prints for and which varies the most based on temperature, humidity, specific components in your printer; the mix of the resin you are using (yes different batches of the same resin can vary in performance).

One you get dialled in most variation is slight and often, eg using a new resin bottle, you'd just do a test to make sure and then carry on. If you buy resin in bulk then its normally the same batch so you can even skip testing entirely till you get a new batch.



Wait time before print. This lets the resin settle out under the build plate before exposing to UV light. Its generally set to 1 second.
Note sometimes you have to toggle a value to get this or you have to use light-off-delay which gets a bit more fiddle; so I'd wait to see what your settings page in chitu/lychee looks like before going any further on this.




So in general those are the theories I work with for exposure. I do tests with the Ameralabs Town print which gives you a range of properties of your resin to read from the results.
It's popular because it has an upright profile and thus captures actual exposures; whilst many of the super fast flat test prints can be influenced by the burn/bottom layer exposures.

For the Town Print simply open it, slice it and print it. No presupports.
Once printed, wash it, let it dry and then take photos of all 4 sides and the top for review. Then cure it.

NOTE because uncured resin is a skin hazard you have to keep your nitrile gloves on when handling even when part cured and dried, but not fully cured.

For more health and safety tips and also some tips on heating check out:
https://printhunter.org/3d-printing-articles/

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in de
Daring Dark Eldar Raider Rider





Germany

Thanks alot for the extensive answer!
I guess then I will start with the test Town or some other meassurement print as the resin I ordered is from a smaller brand (3dJake) and I am not sure how temperature will affect my prints the next weeks.

Can I leave resin in the printer for a few hours or a day? Or do I need to clean after each use?
And does the build plate need to be thoroughly cleaned after each go, or is it enough if the prints are off?
It would be nice being able to cut down on the time used.

Human ambassador of Cats on earth. All hail our feline overlords!!! 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

So you can leave resin in the VAT for as long as you want so long as no light gets on it; as that will cause it to cure. If its in an enclosure or other dark spot that's fine; some people also print lids for their vats (typically using an FDM printer).

The build plate does not have to be cleaned extensively after every print. After getting the print off I give mine a wipe down with a paper towel (which is then put in a container for curing later before disposal) and that's it.

Cutting down on time kind of happens with practice at the process; after that there's a few things you can do to help.

Using fast lift speeds (the 180 or faster) on your regular layers
Using a thicker layer thickness - 0.05 is the standard top limit most use and gives great results. Going to thinner layer heights can improve some smoothness of curves and such; but comes with an increased printing time.

Also link for the town print
atlas3dss.com/learn

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in gb
Leader of the Sept







Another perspective on raft thickness. I use flexi-plates as the build surface and so I use. 1mm thick raft to make it easier to pop the raft off the build plate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Covering some of your other questions.

Curing of the resin can be affected if it gets really cold. This is only a problem if you plan to keep your printer in an outdoors space in winter. Normal indoors temperatures shouldn't affect it that much, unless you are aiming for absolutely perfect prints.

The number and size of models will have no effect on whether a print succeeds or fails, as long as they are all properly supported. Learning a bit about supports is super useful so you can set your own supports up entirely, or be able to critically appraise pre-supported files. Quite often you will find that pre-supported stuff is either poorly supported in general, or the supports might not work with your particular curing settings or resin product. Sometimes you might just want to add a few more to capture detail or give a more rigid support, other times its easier to start again from scratch! This takes time, trial and error and doing a bit of research into supports can help minimise frustrating failures.

Where different model sizes can make a different is the layer height you might want to use. You are stuck with one layer height per build plate, so if you have some big stuff you want to print at a bigger layer height for speed (or whatever) then you might not want to also print some small delicate detailed bits on the same plate as you might lose some of the details.

The most important ting about the build plate is to make sure that you have removed all bits of hardened resin. Make sure you've run over it well with a good metal scraper to make sure its smooth, otherwise there is a big risk of puncturing the FEP. similarly, if you do get a failed print, make sure you remove all hardened bits of the FEP.

Better to spend a bit more time draining the vat so you can clearly see if there is any debris (or running an auto cleaning cycle if your machine does that), rather than risking the horror of resin flooding your lovely new toy

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/05/15 19:38:32


Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

Terranwing - w3;d1;l1
51st Dunedinw2;d0;l0
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Don't overthink things. Put some presupported gak on the plate and yolo it, start on the high end of exposure for your layer height (like 2.5 seconds for 30 microns) and drop it by 0.1 for every print until you start getting failures (usually models ripped from supports).

As Flinty said, the one thing that must never ever happen is having solid particles anywhere between the FEP and the build plate when you start a print, that will kill your machine easily. Always inspect your prints for any missing bits, scrape the build plate clean, clean your FEP if necessary (Elegoo has a nifty function for this - place a bit of old supports in a corner of the vat, run vat clean (somewhere under Tools) for 40 seconds, pull up the solid film of resin by the support and you've cleaned everything off the FEP), if you're unsure if there's bits floating loose in the vat, filter the resin.

Once you're comfortable with the machine you'll literally just be scraping off your prints and hitting print on the next file with no upkeep.

Eventually due to seasonal weather changes and stuff like that you might need to up exposure again (if you get failures) or lower it (if supports are hard to remove) a tiny bit.

Regarding mixing sizes, nothing matters, but to optimize print time and screen life you want to have all objects in one print run close to the same height. You don't want to cover a build plate in shoulder pads and then have a random upright spear in the middle that will have you burning your screen for an extra 10 hours just for that one part. You will also want to be mindful of a layer's solid cross section (individual parts and total), this determines the pull forces exerted on parts when the build plate lifts and the strain on the printer, respectively.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2023/05/16 17:26:59


The old meta is dead and the new meta struggles to be born. Now is the time of munchkins. 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Don't overthink things. Put some presupported gak on the plate and yolo it, start on the high end of exposure for your layer height (like 2.5 seconds for 30 microns) and drop it by 0.1 for every print until you start getting failures (usually models ripped from supports).



I mean that can work, but presupports come in all different kinds and that's before you consider that different resins perform differently. Presupports designed for a very flexible (when printing) resin can be different to those designed with a very firm (when printing) resin.
So you could get fails and keep upping your exposure, without realising that the issue isn't your exposure, but that the resin just needs a few more presupports to stabilize things because the presupports were originally designed with a different resin.



So the best thing is to use the calibration prints. These give you a a known level of standard performance that you can measure and work with. Then (assuming all else is good) if you start getting fails you can address it as a support failure issue and fix things.

The best thing with 3D printing and settings is to get as many variables locked down with theory/standard practice so that when you do get fails you can work out what's the likely cause by elimination of variables and thus apply fixes in a more specific way. Otherwise you can be increasing exposures and changing supports and varying this and that all over the place.

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in de
Daring Dark Eldar Raider Rider





Germany

Thanks all for all the great advice!
Printer arrived and the first test was... complete failure
I actually enjoy doing the supports, at least in Lychee, but I went for light supports initially. So I got some supports with nothing else...
Yeah, the tank cleaning function directly came handy.
After that I just printed the default test pieces, the Elegoo Rooks, which came out perfect.
Now I am trying some presupported models, to see if the "pro" version is working better. Of course I erased all islands and added some extra support first.
If my next tries with big rafts and thick supports don't yield good results, I will have to look at the settings and the fiddly and confusing stuff begins...

Human ambassador of Cats on earth. All hail our feline overlords!!! 
   
Made in cn
Fresh-Faced New User




 Overread wrote:
So most of the slicer settings are things that are built upon theory and thus you can fairly easily lock them down to pretty much either fixed values or easy theory that you can adapt as required.


Burn/bottom/base layers - you want to cover 0.2mm of depth at your chosen layer height.

For example if you've a layer height of 0.05mm then you'd need 4 layers to cover 0.2mm of depth.


Transitional layers - you want to cover the rest of the depth of your raft with these, plus a little more for the start of the support columns.

Most standard rafts are 0.5mm deep and you've already 0.2mm from your bottom/burn layers.

So you'd need a further 0.3mm depth with your chosen layer height. Then you want to add a few more layers just so that the start of the columns gets a little more exposure.



Note on raft thickness. Most presupports use a 0.5mm thick raft for the standard layer height of 0.05mm. If you use a lower layer height you can use a thinner raft (if you've a lychee lys file or chitubox project file where supports and model are separate entities and thus you can edit the supports and raft values).

Rough values
0.05 layer height = 0.5mm raft
0.04 layer height = 0.4mm raft
0.03 layer height = 0.3mm raft
0.02 layer height = 0.3mm raft


Lift speeds are basically built on plaster theory. Either you peel slowly or you rip fast; both work, but you don't want to be in the middle.
So its 60 or slower; 180 or faster. With no lower nor upper limits on those speeds.

Typically I have a slow speed for the burn/base layers then shift to faster for regular.

Two Step lift speeds are a thing now which make it a little more complicated. Two step just means that it uses 2 speeds; first one then the other; for different parts of the total lifting distance.




For lift heights that's fairly standard, I tend to err toward 7mm and that would be more than enough for a Mars 3 Pro.


Burn/base exposure time is typically 10X your regular exposure time; sometimes plus a little.


Exposure time - this is the one that varies the most. This is the one you use test prints for and which varies the most based on temperature, humidity, specific components in your printer; the mix of the resin you are using (yes different batches of the same resin can vary in performance).

One you get dialled in most variation is slight and often, eg using a new resin bottle, you'd just do a test to make sure and then carry on. If you buy resin in bulk then its normally the same batch so you can even skip testing entirely till you get a new batch.



Wait time before print. This lets the resin settle out under the build plate before exposing to UV light. Its generally set to 1 second.
Note sometimes you have to toggle a value to get this or you have to use light-off-delay which gets a bit more fiddle; so I'd wait to see what your settings page in chitu/lychee looks like before going any further on this.




So in general those are the theories I work with for exposure. I do tests with the Ameralabs Town print which gives you a range of properties of your resin to read from the results.
It's popular because it has an upright profile and thus captures actual exposures; whilst many of the super fast flat test prints can be influenced by the burn/bottom layer exposures.

For the Town Print simply open it, slice it and print it. No presupports.
Once printed, wash it, let it dry and then take photos of all 4 sides and the top for review. Then cure it.

NOTE because uncured resin is a skin hazard you have to keep your nitrile gloves on when handling even when part cured and dried, but not fully cured.

For more health and safety tips and also some tips on heating check out:


Thanks alot for such a great and elaborative answer. Though I don't own the main thread but it helped me a lot.
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Garfield666 wrote:Thanks all for all the great advice!
Printer arrived and the first test was... complete failure
I actually enjoy doing the supports, at least in Lychee, but I went for light supports initially. So I got some supports with nothing else...
Yeah, the tank cleaning function directly came handy.
After that I just printed the default test pieces, the Elegoo Rooks, which came out perfect.
Now I am trying some presupported models, to see if the "pro" version is working better. Of course I erased all islands and added some extra support first.
If my next tries with big rafts and thick supports don't yield good results, I will have to look at the settings and the fiddly and confusing stuff begins...


I still recommend reading my earlier post and going here: Atlas Learn
To get the Town print and using that to help calibrate your printer.
It's much more reliable than doing your own presupports and messing with exposure at the same time as you won't know when the fail is because of exposure values; other values or the supports not being good enough.

That said if you're after good models what kind do you like? There's loads of great creators out there now with good models and presupports


ButtShani369 wrote:

Thanks alot for such a great and elaborative answer. Though I don't own the main thread but it helped me a lot.


Glad to help!

A Blog in Miniature

3D Printing, hobbying and model fun! 
   
Made in de
Daring Dark Eldar Raider Rider





Germany

Ok, I set the supports to medium and from there on - smooth sailing. Printed a 28mm FPW french soldier, a 30mm G.I.Joe Cobra trooper, a mech and some 6mm tanks - all perfect.
Even antennas the size of a hair get printed flawlessly.

Thanks again guys, I'm off to print some more!

Human ambassador of Cats on earth. All hail our feline overlords!!! 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Nottingham

 Garfield666 wrote:
Ok, I set the supports to medium and from there on - smooth sailing. Printed a 28mm FPW french soldier, a 30mm G.I.Joe Cobra trooper, a mech and some 6mm tanks - all perfect.
Even antennas the size of a hair get printed flawlessly.

Thanks again guys, I'm off to print some more!


Don't forget to share pictures!

Have a look at my P&M blog - currently working on Sons of Horus

Have a look at my 3d Printed Mierce Miniatures

Previous projects
30k Iron Warriors (11k+)
Full first company Crimson Fists
Zone Mortalis (unfinished)
Classic high elf bloodbowl team 
   
Made in gb
Is 'Eavy Metal Calling?





UK

 Garfield666 wrote:
Ok, I set the supports to medium and from there on - smooth sailing. Printed a 28mm FPW french soldier, a 30mm G.I.Joe Cobra trooper, a mech and some 6mm tanks - all perfect.
Even antennas the size of a hair get printed flawlessly.

Thanks again guys, I'm off to print some more!


Once you're more comfortable with the process, you'll want to start using more than one support type on a model. Heavy supports with a .6 to .8mm tip for the points holding the most weight, and where scarring will be least noticable, like the undersides of feet. Medium supports with /3 to .4mm tips to hold up any load-bearing extremities or appendages such as arms or weapons. Light supports with .2 to .25mm tips for small islands and overhangs that only need to hold on for a few layers before they join the main model.

3dPrintingPro on Youtube has an excellent set of guides for this for both Lychee and Chitubox that will take you through the settings, process and thought behind using different kinds of supports, and you'll find you get much better results with a few minutes of manual supporting using various types than you will with simple auto-supports.

That said, I do find Lychee's island detection to be good enough 9 times out of 10, so rather than using auto-supports, try using Heavy supports to achor your model, add medium supports to any outstretched and load-bearing parts that stick out from the main model, and then running an island detection pass and auto-adding lights to any that are highlighted. Add a raft and auto-bracings and you should be good to go, and it's still faster than manually placing every single support.

 
   
 
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