This week, I are mostly been printing in resin thanks to me finally summing up the courage to dive deeply into this new technology and buy a resin 3D Printer. My weapon of choice an Anycubic Photon Mono 4K
Anycubic Photon Cube - Thingiverse 213031
The first print should always be the supplied test print (or perhaps a Benchy) and it took 3 attempts to get this model to print. Bed levelling or more accurately the distance between the bed and the FEP film appears to be critical when it comes to getting your print to stick to the bed and not the FEP. I also found an article which recommends that you sand your bed to ensure that it is actually level in the first place. The center of mine is slightly concave which must have been having an impact on the peelability.
This was actually the first resin model I ever saw printed, many years ago, and thought wow I will have to get me one of those someday...
I have tried to print one of these before (much larger of course) on my FDM printer with little success. I guess it has to do with the tolerances involved in squirting hot melted plastic out of a nozzle at 200 degrees celsius. This one came out bloody lovely and is small enough that he fits on the end of a pencil.
Sadly, the other models I had on the bed failed to print entirely. I think this was down to the supports I added in the supplied Photon Workstation not having a thick enough platform to ensure that they made a solid connection to the bed and so they just stuck to the FEP. I have subsequently read that you can spray your FEP with Teflon PTFE Dry Lubricant to make it slippery. I will have to get some of that.
Space Adventurer - Loot Studios Free Miniature
The whole reason for me buying this printer is to print high quality miniatures for tabletop roleplaying games and so I went in search of some presupported miniatures thinking that these would fare much better. I found Loot Studios who do an excellent bundle for $15 a month. As this was my first stab at this I plumped for their freebie Space Adventurer who is almost as cool as Oswald the Overladen.
I downloaded the 32mm but scaled him down by 10% as I hate the GW scale and he only came out bloody lovely!!
Down loading this mini convinced me that the problem I am having with my unsupported minis is the crappy supports in the slicer software. In the same way that I learned the tips and tricks of FDM printing, it will take time to master this new medium and its idiosyncracies.
I'll say this though. Props to all the guys and girls out there that are busy modelling their own minis and going through the laborious task of adding supports. They are an absolute must.
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