KJC's 3D Printing

[kjc733]

Given a lot of my work lately has been geared towards printing on Shapeways and as I am eagerly awaiting an Elegoo Mars 2 resin printer, I thought that I would kick off a new thread dedicated to the subject of 3D printing. My living room looks like a bit of a jumble sale with Amazon boxes and boxes of gloves, filters and all the other stuff needed.
Actually, that may not be a bad place to start. I've discovered that resin printing requires a metric ass tonne of consumables and support equipment. What I have so far...
- 1 litre of Elegoo ceramic grey water washable resin. It's a bit more expensive but I didn't want the hassle of also needing to use IPA to wash things down (ie one toxic chemical is better than 2).
- 1 Elegoo Mercury Plus combined wash and cure station. Hopefully a bit of a cleaner workflow than dunking between buckets. Also contains the UV array to quickly cure the resin.
- 1 pair of safety glasses, tinted to look cool (actually I find a tint helps in viewing small detail, maybe it's just me)
- 1 box of nitrile powder free gloves. Resin is nasty stuff, I don't want it cooking on my skin. Apparently this is better than rubber gloves, not sure why.
- Masks. Already had these anyway. Depending on how bad the fumes are I may switch to a respirator.
- a pack of 100 filters plus funnel. Needed when removing excess resin from the vat to make sure there's no solid bits in there if you want to reuse it, as this could damage the FEP film in the base of the vat.
- a pair of flexible mini squeegees. To help clean the vat without damaging the delicate FEP surface.

What I'm missing, is a printer!
As the resin gives off fumes and there is the potential for spillages, I'll be doing the printing in the conservatory. This is likely to mean I'll be constrained in when I can print due to temperature, but it's the only well ventilated room in the house. I have a nice heavy set of drawers in there I intend to use as a stable base... unfortunately I have discovered it isn't level so I'll need to jack that up first. Then put down some plastic sheeting or some trays of some type (silicone mats used for animal food bowls were suggested so I may pick up a couple).

I've been watching a lot of youtube videos over the weekend, it seems the key to a good resin print is good supports. This channel provides a lot of good advice.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbv2mDrRqXovPdahRyoCFhA/videos

To anyone building models for the purpose of 3D printing, I suggest this one in particular.

And just to finish off, here's a photo of my Shapeways fleet (most of them anyway).
Hopefully I'll provide updates later this week...

 

[-RJB-]

Look forward to seeing what you print and nice fleet so far.

 

[Hellkite]

Resin printing is something that I have not got into yet, but filament 3d printing I have three printers
set up in my garage and the set up of your work area is key to get a good print

 

[kjc733]

Three?!?! Are you setting up a production line?
Anyway, it's finally arrived!

 

[Hellkite]

If I need to LOL

It's just that I have gotten more over the years, that and I have a son that into printing as well helps not to have to wait for a printer to be open.

 

[kjc733]

For those that don't know what I mean by "supports", the model when it is printed is suspended beneath a platform that gets lowered into a vat of resin. Each time it does so UV lights harden a layer on the bottom of the vat, and when the platform is raised it pulls the model back out plus new layer. The support structure is necessary to ensure the model adheres to the platform (and not the vat!!) and also to ensure any protrusions are anchored as the parts of the model they attach to may not exist yet.
For example, the barrel of a gun may start printing before the turret does, so it would be free floating and the supports are needed to ensure it stays in the correct position relative to the rest of the model.

I'm doing my supports in chitubox. The blue is the hull of the Victory, and the grey tubes are the "scaffolding" to support it.
(Yes I'm building the drydock after the ship is completed )

 

[Hellkite]

Yes scaffolding is a necessary evil of printing

For Me filament 3d printing it is reversed plate building up as the head lays layers , Were your is plate builds down towards the vat and uv head.

 

[kjc733]

Looking at that I'm wondering if I've gone overkill on my supports.
Anyway, problem #1 - it uses an EU plug

UPDATE 16:00
A trip to PC world to pick up an adapter and set it going around 12:30. About 3hrs later the test print was complete. Dunked it in the washer for 6 minutes then tried to remove it from the base plate. Damned thing did not want to come off (damage on the model from metal scraper not bad printing)! Anyway, eventually did, and then 2mins at the cure station. Job done. Have a feeling it's a little over exposed, the settings seem a little high compared to my research.

One of my own models is in now (complete with scaffolding) with adjusted settings. Should be done in another 3hrs 20...

UPDATE 20:00
Ok, now I'm really impressed. I did not expect this to print!

 

[Hellkite]

Welcome to a grater brave new world Kjc

 

[kjc733]

Todays print, the Victory.
I just did a shapeways check, that would have cost me £48 (and they say its not printable ).
Add in a pair of Hyperions at £5.40 each, plus the £14 p&p, that takes me to about £73. Nearly paid off the washer

 

[Hellkite]

See it was as I told you, it's cheaper and better to own your own printer in the long run.

 

[kjc733]

These T-85s took a lot of work to get a successful print! 11 failed prototypes to get 4 successful prints! That'll teach me to be lazy and not make my own meshes.
Still, a T-85 costs £25 on Mel's Miniatures

 

[Hellkite]

Failed prototypes are not real failures as long as you learned something

That and you still under cost of having someone print them for you

 

[kjc733]

Such as... Don't leave the Wash/Cure machine set to Cure when you put it the model in to wash. After a 3.5hr print I have two wrecked Hyperions because I forgot to switch the setting. Seems like a design flaw to me to set the default as cure when a. You do a wash first and b. having it set to wash when you try to cure isn't going to do much (except possible spin the models at high speed...) whereas setting to cure when it's in a bucket of water wrecks the model. Oh well.

EDIT 03/06/2021
Attached a photo of the outcome. Plus a close-up of a good primed T-85

 

[kjc733]

Had a few hours to kill so I painted two (of my five!!) Hyperion cruisers.
Not sure yet how I'm going to paint my Victory...

 

[kjc733]

Printed and painted an Avenger carrier I found (and painted the rest of my Hyperion's). The printer is churning away again today so hopefully my EA fleet will soon be complete...

 

[kjc733]

Today adds a pair of Olympus Corvettes. I think that's a nice sizable, well rounded Earth fleet.
Again the Olympus was a model I downloaded, and again (despite being on a 3D print site) the model wasn't really made for printing, so they both ended up with a little damage despite my modifications.

 

[kjc733]

The coming of Shadows...
The Scout was one I downloaded and worked pretty much out the box. The cruiser is my own, but scaled up a little from what I sell on shapeways (when they let me sell it).

 

[Lutz]

Oh wow, pretty cool to see someone printing Babylon 5 ships. Did you already primed them? I mean I know you using a resin printer but this miniatures look amazingly clean.

 

[kjc733]

If you are referring to the Shadow ships, it is hard to tell in that light but the two scouts and the cruiser on the stand are primed in Halfords grey primer. The cruiser on the floor is unprimed. If you really look you can see it's slightly lighter and shinier.
The resin I'm using is Elegoo water-washable ceramic grey. With (almost) default settings it does come out very smooth and good on the detail. However, the key to it is good supports. I'm still learning as I go along but in short:
You need larger supports to support heavier parts of the model.
Larger supports are more likely to cause damage on removal, so hide them where possible.
Use lighter supports to ensure that detail is maintained.
Sometimes you do need a fine file to clean off the remains of the supports, but so far I haven't had to do much of that.

The problem with the B5 ships is that people post really nice models online, but they are just too finely detailed for printing at this scale. I've been printing some Minbari frigates and the fins keep getting damaged because they are only 0.4mm thick - this is after I've bulked them out significantly!

 

[Lutz]

Holy... half a mm... uff.
I heared that resin print is much cleaner then printing with filament like PLA. But I actualy never saw a resin print in this scale.
I curious to see how they look with your finished paintjob. It sucks that the B5 models brake that easy and don't have the detail. Form what I can remember it will be pretty difficult to paint the pattern of the hull.

 

[kjc733]

Resin printers are capable of much finer detail but the trade-off is smaller overall volumes. Mine maxes out the height at about 15cm I think, and you run the risk of separation from the build plate. Plus, until very recently, lots of nasty chemicals involved. I'm still determining the optimum way to dispose of my waste water.
The frigate only breaks easily because I took a short cut and used someone else's mesh rather than make my own. If I had done my own the find would have been much thicker and they would have been fine. I did thicken the tail significantly but I couldn't easily do the "wings"for various reasons.
As for my Shadow paint scheme, oh ye of little faith
I'm debating whether or not to go over it with PVA to give a shiny appearance.

 

[Hellkite]

I think it looks good as is my friend

 

[Lutz]

Oh you're sprying little dark drips on the shadow cruiser. That looks incredible!

Do you have to use UV-light to cure the resin?

 

[kjc733]

Yep, the good ol' toothbrush method.
I figure I'll leave it overnight to properly set and see how I feel about it tomorrow.
The Shadow ship was primed in grey, then a coat of leadbelcher, then two coats of nuln oil, followed by a black spray.

Yes, uv to cure the resin. I have a combined wash/uv station, have to remember to make sure to use the correct setting as I found out the hard way...

 

[Lutz]

Ha.. how could I miss your earthgov ships. Just realized your intire fleet. Sometimes I'm just blind xD
I hope you will keep us updated on this miniatures especially the paintjob!

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
I like a lot the painting you gave your Shadow battleship .

 

[kjc733]

Minbari reinforcements, a pair of completed shadow scouts, and a pair of failed whitestars. Judging from the lines on the lower ends of the supports and how the print quality improved later, I suspect the vat was too cold and needed warming and mixing first. Have another pair in the printer right now so we'll see.

EDIT - nope, failed in exactly the same way. The support structure can't be sturdy enough...
EDIT Again - tried a different Whitestar setup, failed in pretty much the same way. I discovered a couple of things:
1. The support settings had got messed up somehow, so my medium supports actually had the same contact size as the lights, which means I was trying to print a Whitestar on 90% light supports!!!
2. The last Tinashi I printed actually has some similar delamination lines in part of the tail, so possibly it did actually suffer the same problem.
So I cleaned out the vat, replaced the resin (and pre-warmed it) and tried another Shadow Cruiser, which has printed out perfectly. So time to finish up yet another Whitestar support structure and try again...

 

[kjc733]

Success! Lucky number seven!

 

[Lutz]

What an awesome little Whitestar