A Tea between friends :-) How was Your Day

[ivan.akapulko]

What about toughness? As far as the product produced by the method of stereolithography is stronger (or not) then a standard FDM printing?

[LePaul]

Well my day is just starting and I am thinking.....tonight, I will take a break from the CNC machines and flying aluminum debris and perhaps do some work on my Ultimaker Original. It has been two weeks since I messed with it and those two new fans are staring at me, waiting for me to solder the wires up. I'm hopeful both fans fire up after the first layer....then I can try the many suggestions Neotko has made. (He's right, I overthink these things sometimes, I'm very cautious preparing my strategies!)

I have quite a queue of people waiting for the aluminum parts I make but I think a night off for fun is well deserved

[Anders Olsson]

What about toughness? As far as the product produced by the method of stereolithography is stronger (or not) then a standard FDM printing?

Haven't had time to do destructive testing yet on the Form 2 prints yet. I will do some testing for sure though when we get one of those machines at my workplace

[Anders Olsson]

Received the Form 2 at work today
Had to hack the cartridge sensor with copper tape to make it print, the contact inside the printer appears to sit slightly higher than it should.

After that fix, it seems to be working flawlessly

It's really quite a nice machine, looking forward to continue playing with it tomorrow
Very different from filament based printers, more expensive to operate and a bit sticky process, but the resolution is way better!
Not sure I would like to have one in my living room, our chemistry lab at work on the other hand is a very suitable place for it to live.

[Meduza]

I have a formlabs printer in my room... It prints very nice but the messy process make me use the Ultimakers way more.

I cannot deny that the Form2 is a really nice printer tough

[Anders Olsson]

Having fun with the Form 2

[martin-bienz]

Wow... so cool. How big are they and how long took it?

[Meduza]

Well, the aluminium build platform you see is approx 150x150mm from side to side

[Anders Olsson]

I think the Ultimaker robot was scaled to 50% and the medieval castle (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:862724) to 12%
It took a little more than five hours if I remember correctly.
Resin printing is very different really, one learns a lot of new things, what do to and what not to do

[LePaul]

I've been really impressed with the FormLabs printers. There's some really high detail pieces in R2 and other props I use that could take advantage of that detail. One builder told me he noted a lot of warping with the parts he made with his. Maybe the new resins fix this?

And the size is small for a majority of the parts I would want to make. If it could do the same volume as an Ultimaker, that would be neat. But it seems to be extremely popular with the jewelry people

How hard is the clean up? I get the after print clean up for the part. What I wonder about is the cleaning of the machine and build plate for between prints?

[Anders Olsson]

I did not clean the build plate yet as we only used clear resin so far. I guess it should be quite easy to clean though.

The resin is kept in the cartridge and added automatically before the print starts and while printing if needed.
I would recommend buying a separate resin tank for each resin type and just swap both tank and cartridge when changing color/type.
That way only the build plate will need cleaning.

One thing I quickly realized is why support structures is recommended: It is simply much easier to remove the print from the platform if it is build on a support structure The medieval castle was really tricky to break free..

The post processing includes rinsing the printed objects in isopropanol twice, letting them dry and then using a suitable UV-source to harden the surface.
I would say that the stickiness of the resin is the main drawback with this technique. The resin tends to end up everywhere and it feels quite uncomfortable and unhealthy if you get it on your fingers.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the resin is much more expensive than the same amount of filament, so the Form 2 printer I would say is most suitable for small objects where you really need the high resolution.

I haven't printed enough yet to have any conclusions about warping. I can only say that large thin surfaces seems problematic. everything else that I printed came out really nice with quite accurate dimensions.

Here is the robot in the previous picture next to a standard size robot, sorry for the grainy picture, need a better camera.

[Amedee]

Waiting for the dust to setlle today...

[LePaul]

In preparation for the release of Batman vs Superman, I had to take the Batman suit/armor out and make sure everything still fit. Mesh portion of the suit likes to stretch and requires a little hemming to keep the armor in place.

The theater wanted me to appear for the Thursday night showing but I have too much going on. I did agree to be there Friday evening for the "official" opening of the movie. I also worked out an arrangement with Children's Miracle Network so they would have a volunteer with me and for a donation, the professional photographer would get our picture My God Son died of brain cancer when he was 5 and this charity was wonderful to him. This is my "unique" way (along with many R2 events over the years) the give back.

Good news...everything fits fine, a minor spots needed repair. It's a heavy "suit".

[Amedee]

Hmmm, you guys have any experience with your glass bed getting chips out of it? I only print with PLA and just noticed there's a chip out of the glass!

Came across this one today...

[Izzy]

Interesting, I'd be interested if they have the right size for my UM2