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Thanks John. I think I'm going to model the upper stage 3 stringer section and instrument ring. I'm not too happy with the look of what I have from the kit. So now I have to find enough source pics to get as many of the features as I can. I think judging by the diameter of that, I could print it in 2 halves. Still haven't gotten to print the fairings yet but hope to do that soon.

 

Bill

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Very nice results indeed however I saw on the Anycubic web site that a bottle of resin costs $1000. That seems very expensive to me since I saw WANHAO resin for about $60. Is that really the price ?

Edited by Lunokhod 2
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The AnyCubic printer is really a good price compare to a formlabs 2 for instance. I am just wondering what would be the results with small and tiny parts, basically the one requiring Frosted Ultra or Extreme Detail on Shapeways. So if someone is willing to try printing this kind of part I am ready to send you an STL file. Any idea about the minimum thickness and rod diameter that can be printed ?

Edited by Lunokhod 2
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I was curious about that as well. I think I'm going to print something by downloading one of the .stl files I'd uploaded to Shapeways back onto my computer and see how it prints in comparion to a FUD part. I may try one of the Star Destroyer bridge domes or something fragile like that. As for the rod thickness. I'll have to research how that would work since it's using a DLP source. I would imagine the resolution of the light source would dictate the minimum print sizes

 

Bill

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Vincent, the price on the resin must be a mistake because normally a bottle of Wanhao at Amazon costs 66 Euros for 1000ml. I believe could use any resin designated for 3d printing, even the Formlabs one (for the Form 1 they still sell them in bottles but at 160 € per bottle). So for a 1 liter bottle at a 3d print shop you pay about 70 € for Photocentric3d resin.

To your second question, the is a video on you tube click me there is a review of the Photon at 13:25 he shows a small castle. Amazing detail. I think your models would look great with this. I will buy a Photon in the next few weeks, I could then print something for you. 

 

Ralf

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These printers have a UV light in them, and use a smartphone screen as a mask, or filter, to print each individual layer.  So technically, the minimum feature size should be equal to the dimensions of each pixel on the screen - about 47 micron for the Photon, apparently (.047mm).

 

However.

 

There will be a certain amount of light bleeding as each layer cures, both around the individual pixels and through the clear plastic film used as a print surface, so it will be bigger than .047mm.  More importantly, it's printing against a clear plastic film - the printer exposes a layer, then lifts the build platform straight up, separating the part off the plastic film, before resetting for the next layer.  But when it starts lifting the part up, it's physically attached to that clear plastic film, and it has to break the adhesive bond with the plastic.  So the biggest failure point is if your resin is stuck more to the clear film than to the rest of your part.  So a .047mm wire is going to be really delicate, and will likely fail because it sticks to the film.  

 

That said, I'd guess you would probably be fairly safe sticking to Shapeways' design guidelines for FUD, as they're relatively coarse, but ultimately it will depend on the resin and your settings.  It's NOT a plug-and-play device.  You will deal with a lot of frustration and failure as you figure out how to use it, and any time you try a new material.  Running the printer is almost a hobby unto itself.  And a big part of it is 'dialing in' the settings for each individual resin - how long each layer gets exposed, how long the initial layers get exposed, etc.  You'll also have to change this for different layer heights - the settings you use for 20 micron layers will be different from the settings for 40 micron layers.  Theoretically this should be streamlined using Anycubic's own resins on the Photon, but there is a wide range of cheaper/better 3rd party resins out there, so you can expect to experiment if you try anything different.  There ARE a lot of good communities for these printers, and you can find spreadsheets detailing suggested settings for a wide range of resins, but still, every machine will be a little different, so it's a lot more involved than simply "pour in resin, press print".  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1crvzMnt_8NJXAsABinoIhcOjE8l3h7s0L82Zlh1vkL8/htmlview#gid=0

 

-----

 

As for resin prices...  looks like they've just parked the listing on the Anycubic website (list a crazy-high price so nobody will buy it, but they can still keep the page up).  Pricing will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and formula to formula, but broadly speaking, you can expect to pay around $50 - 100 per liter for resin.  Not cheap, but you probably won't be printing massive items, and you can minimize resin usage by hollowing out objects.

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5 hours ago, Lunokhod 2 said:

The AnyCubic printer is really a good price compare to a formlabs 2 for instance. I am just wondering what would be the results with small and tiny parts, basically the one requiring Frosted Ultra or Extreme Detail on Shapeways. So if someone is willing to try printing this kind of part I am ready to send you an STL file. Any idea about the minimum thickness and rod diameter that can be printed ?

If you have something in specific you'd like to see how it prints I'd be happy to try it out for you. Just let me know.

 

Bill

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I just completed the design of the 1/32 CM handles and put the STL file on WeTransfer. The file is available for a week at the following address :

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/37f40246ad862e9d9de879794d145bc520180522203039/9c5cade973129c168e61fd949981e02520180522203039/f924ad

 

The part is really small and should probably be printed with a layer thickness of 0.01 to 0.05 mm. The dimensions of the part is in mm, roughly 18.5*19.6 mm by 1.9 mm. I am very interested to see if that can be printed. If successfull I will probably buy a printer myself. In the meantime I will also print it on Shapeways in order to make a comparison.

 

Tell me if you need an other format than STL

HANDLES.jpg

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Good deal. When I get a chance at my desktop at home I'll download and try them out. Hopefully they'll work out. I'll let you know soon as I can. And yeah, .stl files are what I need .

 

Bill

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Success! I think these came out pretty good. I printed it with a .03 layer resolution and added some supports. I couldn't get a great pic of them as I don't want to paint them, I'd rather send them to you in a state as they just came off the printer and cured. If you'd like to shoot me an address I can mail them to via PM I'll try to get them to you soon. That way you can compare them to the Shapeways parts to see how it stacks up.

 

Thanks,

Bill

 

 

handles.jpg

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Whoua, this is great, specially considering the size of the part (about 2 cm). The image below shows the real size for a 12.5 inches screen. I have ordered the same part on Shapeways and will do a comparison when I receive it.

handles.jpg.6a58a0b7b3c374ed4bff0a190b029a39.jpg.dec57bc18cadeaf4aa434ee4d0f365a0.jpg

Edited by Lunokhod 2
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Hi everyone

I am a little late to this party but I thought I should chime in with a comment or two. I am unfamiliar with the Anycubic printer mentioned earlier, but all UV curable 3D Printers use variations of the basic raw materials for their formulations. If you have one of these printers, I encourage you to access this link on the proper safety and handling of the resins uses in these printers: http://www.radtech.org/health-safety/proper-handling-of-uv-resins . I wrote this short guide with help from my colleagues in the business and I can help answer any questions you might have on the safety and handling of these materials. A good part of my company's business is developing formulations for UV curable 3D printers and I saw a need to get these guidelines out for people who are not experienced in handling this type of chemistry.

In regards to the different resins used, our experience is that the vast majority of resins are optimized for one or two printers and do not give the best performance on multiple platforms. In other words, resins should be tuned to an individual printer for the best performance. Some resins will work on multiple platforms (our PR-48 is an example of this) but it is really optimized for a single make of printer. We have 7 or 8 different makes of UV curable 3D printers in our lab so we see the differences in switching resins between printers. 

 

Buying resins for 3D printers is the typical "you get what you pay for" type scenario. While we develop and make/sell our own resins for multiple platforms (www.cpspolymers.com) , our technical team has not been impressed with any of the low cost resin formulations that we have picked up for comparison printing. 

 

Have fun modeling!

Mike

:cheers:

 

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Hi Mike, Thanks for the information and input about the various resins. So far I've had decent luck using the Wanhao resin in the Anycubic printer, although it did take some trial and error and messing around with the exposure settings. I'll likely try to only use Anycubic resin if I can find a good source and good price point. If you have any other recommendations for a good alternative I'm open to suggestions. But I do have to keep price in mind since it's just for hobby use. It looks like you guys are selling resin for pretty close to the same price as what I got. So far though, I'm very happy with my results.

 

Bill

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just received my shapeways part. This is a comparison between Anycubic and Shapeways, roughly the same size. One green square on the cutting board is 1 cm. The Anycubic part seems very close to the Shapeways one. Next step will be to show both parts on the same table, then primed and painted to see how they look. It is encouraging however.

 

compar10.jpg

 

Vincent

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Hey Vincent, sorry I have been meaning to get those to you in the post and have been sidetracked and dropped the ball. I will try to get them to you soon. I am very curious how the quality stacks up. Also a big benefit of the resin printed of the DLP is there doesn't appear to be any of the "frosting" issues that are associated with wax supported parts. So to me, if the quality is close enough then it's a huge win for one of these table top printers IMHO

 

Bill

 

 

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I'll have to load the .stl mesh back into my design program to get the exact volume but the supports aren't adding that much, at least on this part. Some parts it's quite a bit added.

 

That's a good point though. I'd have to do the math and figure out exactly cost to cost based on that. I'm pretty sure it would have to be cheaper with the DLP AFTER you've paid the price of the printer itself off. Just the set handling fee for a Shapeways part this small would put it over the material alone cost of the DLP resin. That ratio would likely go down as the size of the part gets larger since it's a fixed fee, but material cost would go up and....yada yada yada....so yeah, in short, I'll have to do the math,😁

 

Of course having said all that. one thing that does add to the cost is failures. With Shapeways they eat that up to a certain point. As my skills and understanding of supports and settings gets better, failure cost is going to be less of a factor. BUT it is a factor one should consider, all other things being equal if they are.

Bill

Edited by niart17
rambling more
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The parts showing at the end of this thread are from Vincent. I've done some of my own parts shown at the beginning of the thread. I'll try to get some more up showing my successes as well as my failed prints to give an idea of what to expect. I've a few frustrating parts that I'm troubleshooting right now, but that's part of the fun and challenge. Still worth it to me.

 

Bill

Edited by niart17
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