3D printing (resin) and design - minatures

Good luck! 👍 Seems a very competitive market, like you say though big rewards for the few who make it at the top!

Can't really help, although I have a resin printer (which I don't really use anywhere near as much as my FDM ones) and have printed the Gargoyle from the old Hero Quest game, which came out great 😃 Figures seem quite easy to print actually, especially if designed with resin printing in mind, especially the "Warhammer" style which favours chunky elements! It did take me a while to get my head around resin in general though as it's very different to FDM (you literally print upside-down for a start)

I just use whatever the default settings are for curing. Can't go too far wrong tbh. Choice of resin might be more important, not really my area of expertise, maybe something with a tiny bit more flex to it to make the models less brittle?

Yes I believe Z-brush is the go-to app. I wonder if there's anything on the iPad (or Android equivalent) that can use the Pencil, that would be pretty cool.

This guy talks about resin around 7m in

I started trying to follow this but then got distracted with other projects. Might give you something to start with though:

thanks watched all of fauxhammers stuff one of the reasons I chose elegoo.

printers turned up, looks smart but has a bloody stupid lid ( I think they all do).  So this means if you are building an enclosure it needs to be at least twice the height of the printer for you to be able to remove the lid.  That or you have to take the printer out of the enclosure each time.

Currently sketching up something with a hinged lid which means it can stay in situ and not be massive.  I'm tight on space and would expect a smaller enclosure is easier to keep to the right temperature.  Going to have to set it up in the shed rather than the attic, just way too much dust up there for it to work.  I'd have to build a small walk in cupboard up there to try and keep it clean enough.

Going to be a few weeks until I'm up and running I reckon which is a pain when its sat there.  Looks nice though.

How tolerant are resin prints to heat? I need to make a precise part that will tolerate continual use at 60-70C, and I think PLA will start to deform at that temperature.

Resin is not generally the right material for functional parts (regular resin is not heat-resistant at all, and heat-resistant resin is extremely brittle!) But then neither is PLA! You should be FDM printing PETG as a minimum for functional parts, then stepping up to ASA, Nylon or PC etc if you need more durable materials.

Otherwise look into a more industrial 3d printing process like Sintering, but this isn't doable on home/hobby machines! (but plenty of online places doing it e.g. Shapeways will do it in PA12 Nylon for you)

ideally you need to be printing around room temp is my understanding, so the enclosure I am building will be as small as I can make it and I'll be using a load of 100mm kingspan to insulate it as well as I can.  Though it can't be sealed as you need airflow for fume extraction.  Seems many use a grow tent and a heater in winter, but I'd like to not spend too much on heating the enclosure if i can. Having 100mm + a layer of ply walls makes it a bit of a beast hence me being grumpy about the printers lid design.  I could probably get away with no lid in a proper temp controlled enclosure but thats not ideal

I have a small fermentation belt which some use to put around the vat to keep the resin a steady temperature during printing.

Going to be  alot of experiementation going on till I get it right.  Personally I'd love to just have it in the house in a cupboard somewhere but wife has veto'd

ah I misunderstood your quesiton!  you meant tolerant to temp once printed, not during!  Dunno I'm afraid how stable it is to temp once printed.  I imagine it would let off some nasty fumes if it did start to melt

ideally you need to be printing around room temp is my understanding

yes, most printers will probably refuse to even start if they detect the ambient temp is too low (and they wouldn't work properly anyway) so you're making life difficult for yourself doing it in an unheated garage at this time of year! Obviously normally there's no need for an enclosure for resin printers as by default they are all enclosed anyway!

I have used a resin printer in an unheated environment (not as cold as it is at the moment though!!) with some success by carefully warming the resin in the tank with a heat gun and taking the temp with a IR thermometer. Although the heat belt thing around the tank could be a good idea (as well maybe?) It's all about getting the temp right, and keeping it stable. You need to get it sorted though or you'll not have much fun trying to learn the basics of resin printing as it'll be an additional cause of failures!

yes I know!  its not like I haven't got enough projects on the go at the moment....really I should have waited until next year as planned.  Well I like a challenge

I wonder what my chances are of getting a knock from the local police when their infrared drones spot a suspicious looking heat signature from a shed!

I need to make a precise part that will tolerate continual use at 60-70C, and I think PLA will start to deform at that temperature.

Yeah, as above there are loads of materials besides PLA. Thats just the basic stuff that's easy to mess about with.

However 3D printing at home isn't the most precise affair.

zilog6128

Resin is not generally the right material for functional parts (regular resin is not heat-resistant at all, and heat-resistant resin is extremely brittle!) But then neither is PLA! You should be FDM printing PETG as a minimum for functional parts, then stepping up to ASA, Nylon or PC etc if you need more durable materials.

molgrips

Yeah, as above there are loads of materials besides PLA. Thats just the basic stuff that’s easy to mess about with.

It absolutely depends what you are doing with the parts.
I solely use PLA and have created many functional parts that have survived for several years without issue; indoors & out. You just need to use the correct material for the requirements & also potentially base the design around the material being used.
PLA has the advantage that it remains very dimensionally stable after printing (low shrinkage),is very stiff and doesn't suffer from moisture absorption, so can be stored easily without degradation. I have some reels that are 4 years old now & still print fine. The PETG we use sometimes at work is garbage after a couple of months, even when stored in sealed bags with some silica inside.

There are other materials with 'superior' properties, and yes, PLA is not suited to any sort of conditions where elevated temperatures will be experienced, but it should not be dismissed out of hand.
Most other materials have a steep learning curve, can be tricky to print well & learn the intricacies of; a well as needing dedicated extraction (ABS, for example). You generally also need a much more expensive printer for anything other than PLA & PETG, to print it well.

molgrips

However 3D printing at home isn’t the most precise affair.

Really?! What sort of precision are we talking about here?
My CR-10 Mini which is a bit of a dinosaur nowadays (and cost £225) prints very accurately & consistently. In terms of precision, it is comparable to the Ultimaker we have at work.

I recently designed & made a mould to make small clay bricks for my Daughter's stone age shelter home work.
I conservatively gave the two parts 0.3mm clearance to ensure that they fitted together first time, with no fiddling about or iterating.
They went together fine & I was a little annoyed I didn't trust the printer more, because there would have been no problem bring the clearance down a bit more. I reckon I could have got away with 0.15mm.

Ultimakers are total dinosaurs nowadays as well 😃 But yeah “precision” is relative. I regularly make replacement mechanical parts which have to work with existing components and rarely have problems. But you’re not going to 3d print a watch movement 😂

 No idea how good/useful it is, but there’s a 3d printing forum on Britmodeller

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/697-modelling-using-3d-printing/

thanks will take a look!

lol at 3d printing moulds for kids school stoneage project!  we had the same challenge with my eldest so I got him some sculpty clay and got him to roll out stone shapes with his hands to make a roundhouse.  few twigs and moss from the garden and it looked pretty good I'd say!

typically it's gone so bloody cold.  no point in even risking it till I have a heated enclosure.  going to be weeks till I have the time I reckon, Christmas us taking over any spare time I has:(

DT78

thanks will take a look!

lol at 3d printing moulds for kids school stoneage project! we had the same challenge with my eldest so I got him some sculpty clay and got him to roll out stone shapes with his hands to make a roundhouse. few twigs and moss from the garden and it looked pretty good I’d say!

It's all part of the learning. How shall we make it? How large should it be? How do we join it all together? Etc. We discussed various options including making the bricks by hand.
She wanted to do some 3D printing, so we then got to discuss how the mould would look. Would we make one at a time, or multiple? How would we remove the bricks from the mould?
I did the design with her guidance and she then helped get the printer going.

We ended up with a Papier mache roof, covered with straw. 😀

Good luck with the resin printer. I'd quite like to get one at some point.

all part of the fun 🙂  hopefully once I've learnt I can get my boys involved.

that forum is actually really good, people asking alot of the same questions I have.  Thanks!  would have never found it via google.

if you looking to sell these things rather than print your own for fun, the self promotion will at least as important as the design and print!

thats true, that phase is a long way off.  it would be really nice to have a hobby the 'wipes its face' in a couple of years

I'm quite into business models so it is really interesting to have a good look at some of those in the field and see how they make money.  The one I'm most impressed with so far is Emang, he (she?) creates some awesome models and basically does no PR that I can see as he has basically attained god level in the 3D print fantasy model world.  Also he gives away a whole bunch of his stuff for free, but unsupported, and to join his patreon is so little per month (compared to if you say buy *anything* GW makes) it seems silly not to support him.

Test fiddle with printer has shown it seems to do everything its supposed to.  Itching to try it out.

Now going to have a play with chitubox and something called voxeldancetango.  I'm half expecting to find out by ancient laptop needs replacing to run the software which will make this a much more expensive endeavour than anticipated....

Now going to have a play with chitubox

does anyone still use that lol? (or indeed pay for any slicer these days?) I'm massively biased as I've only ever used Prusa hardware/software, but PrusaSlicer is really good for resin slicing. There was a massive resin-related update a while back that added loads of features, plus a new feature added generally (FDM & resin) recently allows you to add text or vector graphics to emboss/deboss an STL which makes it mega easy to customise models without actually having to faff around with the base model e.g. you could have a knight with a blank shield and just add a vector to the shield to customise it with whatever crest.

had a quick look at prusaslicer, looks like it doesn't support elegoo from what I could tell, so I'd have to export it into something else to use it.  Ideally I want the least amount of faff possible 🙂

voxeldancetango looks pretty nice with the auto supports which to start with is all I really need till I get more experienced.  Will probably start out with  few presupported files anyway

blender and meshmix next on my research list.

had a quick look at prusaslicer, looks like it doesn’t support elegoo from what I could tell, so I’d have to export it into something else to use it.

ah, didn't realise that was the case but yeah, looks like Prusa Slicer only exports their specific format at the moment for resin printers, which is a shame. Looks like a lot of people are still using it though to prep the model for printing, then exporting it to Chitubox for printing, so seems to be worth it for some people!

Supports really are the key to resin printing though and getting them right makes any post-processing so much easier (plus saves resin & failed prints) so anything that improves them is worth it IMO!

So been having a bit of trial and error and actually had quite a few successful prints, but within a couple of weeks I’ve already threaded a vat screw, and seemingly damaged the fep and cracked the corner of the screen protector so I get small resin leaks now.  Elegoo support have been responsive and have told me to try tapping the thread and said they’d send a new fep and protector.  So good support, but I’d rather be printing than trying to fix and maintain the printer!

I’m getting weird results with lychee, it’s estimating 3hrs for large models, and they are taking 6

im sold on printing, quite enjoying sourcing the files and getting the plates set up.  Not got started on blender yet.

wish I’d gone for a bigger build plate like the Saturn.  Going to see if they do a January sale, I got the mars4 significantly cheaper than rrp during their Black Friday deals