Satisfaction?  

RE: Satisfaction?

I think we are playing with our new toys. 🙂

The .025mm prints have lines that are so small that they are hard to see except under specific lighting and either right in your face or with magnification.  The prints feel smooth, probably as an effect of the AA in the masking that Prusa uses combined with the small layer height.  The detail is amazing.  For example, my sister is making a figurine that will wear clothing that has a decorative bow made from rope.  I printed a test piece that I modeled and the combination of detail and small size is unmatched by either a FDM I print with or her handmade model ropes.  I am including a picture of my test.  I will redo the tassles at the ends and be more careful removing from the supports (the top right loop looks a bit off in the photo because I snapped it while removing the supports.  Something this small needs to be cut rather than pulled.)  The shrunken resolution of the forum does not do the print justice; the individual parts of the rope are clear when viewed in person, while this iphone picture makes it look like it kind of melted or something.  That is just the limits of the camera, lighting, unpainted transparent resin, etc.  Trust me, it looks awesome IRL.  Note that the 'rope' modeled in this is about 1.75mm, the same as the raw filament the mk3 uses!

The website still says the printer is capable of .01mm, but there are no presets for it in the slicer and I have not experimented with it yet.  I will try a print of this same knot at 0.010mm layer height, but it will take 6h to print for a 6.41mm tall print according to the slicer.  2.06ml of total material will be used.

Print quality: check

Print reliability: check  ( have never had a print fail midway; I did have some fail on the first layers before I cleaned the build plate thoroughly).

No vapor leaks: check

Solid software: check

Solid hardware: check  (this thing is heavy!)

In short:  Am I happy?  YES!

RE: Satisfaction?

NICE. Thanks!

RE: Satisfaction?

Test results from my test I mentioned in my earlier post are in.

The 0.01mm printed flawlessly, no visible layer issues were introduced by going this fine.   However, it takes much longer than 0.025mm and has no real benefit for this particular model because 0.025 printed excellent as well without visible layers.  Prusa said that they recommend not going below 0.025 on their ad; I guess that is because going finer takes about 3x as long and 0.025 is practically perfect anyway. Note that this is with NOVA3D clear, and I used the same settings for 0.01mm and 0.025mm except for layer height.

To give some additional perspective:  Prusa marketing states their 5.5" LCD is 2560x1440, which gives a 0.047mm pixel size.  That means X and Y dimensions are nearly 5x the size of the Z resolution when printing at 0.01mm!  So yeah, Z quality is not a problem. 🙂

Note that all of the above is with transparent resin, which makes layers more noticeable in general.  This is especially true of large, smooth surfaces.  In the picture below I am showing a part made at 0.05 with Prusa's Orange Tough resin.  There are no visible lines at all on this surface.  Smooth surfaces have a matt finish.  Again, my camera plus web downsizing of the image limit what you can see; it is actually flawless except for the support marks in a few places.  

Thoughts:

The degree of fine detail you can put on a model is amazing.  So much so that I think the acryllic paints used in the US are likely to cover up a lot of the detail.  Japanese model painters use a more 'watery' (low viscosity) paint that would be more appropriate, but it is expensive to import.  I know that some brick and mortar model shops have low viscosity modeling paints, but they are pretty expensive too.  You also apply them differently than the cheaper paints.  I am mentioning all this because it would be a shame to print a large, high detail piece and then destroy much of the detail with the cheaper paints available in the US.  A product like XTC3D would add nothing to this, as there are no really visible lines.  

Lessons learned:

1.  The Sl1 is perfectly capable of printing in 0.01mm layers, but it takes a long time even for small prints and is generally unnecessary.

2. 0.025mm is excellent for transparent resins.

3. 0.05mm is excellent for pigmented resins such as Prusa Orange.

4. 0.01mm prints are more rigid than 0.025mm, judging by the support and pad flexability of a few of my prints.  I only have the one .0.1mm print, but the pad printed

5.  Use the flush cutters to prevent dots that can be left when you pull apart the supports in stead of cutting them.

6.  There is no Z-wobble on any of the prints, unlike what that 'other' printer supposedly does.  😛

RE: Satisfaction?

OK, thanks for the confidence I have ordered my SL-1 kit. If I were only printing small parts, 5-20mm, do you think printing at .001mm layer height could be an advantage, you mentioned rigidity.

RE: Satisfaction?

I think you have the zero in the wrong place.  o.o1mm, not .001mm.  

Higher rigidity might be useful if you do not want a part to have any give to it.  However, if you are making non-functional parts like models, the lack of 'give' will make it break easier due to mishandling (dropping a mini, for example).  This rigidity difference is something I noticed in a modeling resin; it was not advertised as being a 'tough' resin so I do not know if this even applies to them.  The Prusa Orange Tough print I posted above is more resilient in general (less flexible and harder) at its 0.05mm layer height than the NOVA3D clear at any layer height.  

What is your application?  If you are printing mini's, then definitely go with the 0.025 mm as the smallest for fine things like the characters, with 0.05mm for things like walls.  Higher Z resolution will multiply the printing time several times over and gain you nothing useful.  If you are printing engineering stuff, there are tough and flexible varieties of resins out there that will let you print at 0.05mm to get them out quickly at while retaining quality.  

I just don't see 0.01mm as practical, even though the printer is well built enough to do it.  The gains over 0.025mm are basically invisible and the time is tripled.

RE: Satisfaction?

Great, thank you, yes.01mm, I will be using castable resin for producing jewelry components of my own design. 

RE: Satisfaction?

Also. You can mix flexible resin with tough resin to reduce brittleness.

Funtodo make a pigment set to tint resins.  Adding these can colour clear resins and change existing colours. 

I have a lot of orange. And on occasions I have added black or blue to make the orange less vivid and easier to paint

RE: Satisfaction?

Thanks Joan, the mini's are fun but I want to stay focused on bringing this into the workflow of my established studio jewelry production. I am only interested in producing my own 3D designs and I think this will be a WONDER. 

RE: Satisfaction?

Hmm.  I do not know much about the castable resins yet.  I can see why you would want the 0.01mm height just to be sure you are getting the greatest quality possible for the jewelry.  Casting resin has different timing from the 'normal' resins.  For example, at 0.05mm Prusa Casting resin is 13 seconds per layer.  I suspect different brands may have more variety of timing than the normal resins, so you are going to have to experiment a bit.  

I found that with at least some resins, layer height does not change the required exposure time by a whole lot.  So just to get an idea of timing, assume 13s exposure at 0.01mm on a 20mm tall print:

20mm * (13 seconds / 0.01mm) = 26,000 seconds = 7.2 hours

So potentially you can get three batches of prints per 24 hours.  Note that print time is only increased by Z height; larger X and Y makes no difference in print time.  This lets you print things like rings in batches without increasing your print time at all.  

20mm * (13 seconds / 0.05mm) = 5,200 seconds = 1.5 hours

This would be more for a 'rapid prototyping' kind of production.  

RE: Satisfaction?

A build plate full of settings or small rings would be a lot of items. I think the time to print  would be secondary to highest quality. The pieces will be burnt out for lost wax casting. I am thinking that this method of producing models could replace rubber molds and wax reproduction for me.

RE: Satisfaction?

Please be sure to upload some pics of your results. 🙂  If you have any more questions, be sure to let me know.

RE: Satisfaction?

There is a wait yet, I am working on my sketchup skills so that I have some relevant models ready to go. I found Prusa Slicer to be cleaned up and useable, likewise the DIRECTIONS were well done, for small scale makers Joseph Prusa is offering a powerful tool and leadership.

RE: Satisfaction?

unlike FDM printing,  MSLA resin printing is capable of exposing the whole print area in the same time as a single point on the print area, so a number of items on the same build plate will take the same time to expose as the tallest single item on the build plate. 

there are special casting resins which produce very little ash when they burn off the resin in a lost resin casting situation. 
these are some of the sample prints, the rings on the right and left are part of the bundled prints that I got with the Printer. 

regards Joan

RE: Satisfaction?

Joan, yes the potential is big.

RE: Satisfaction?

Thanks Maxwell, I will be around.

RE: Satisfaction?

@bayes, I think you will want to drop Sketchup and make the move to Fusion 360. It is free for hobbyists or startups that make less than $100 K / year and trust me, it is really better for designing. And it is not really difficult to learn.

RE: Satisfaction?

Julien, thanks for the encouragement, Sketchup is my first venture into CAD and I am just able to produce a solid object to my design. You have to learn to use your tools but I will look into Fusion 360, I started with Blender but found it confusing.

RE: Satisfaction?

Blender is for 'organic' shapes.  It is also known for having a steep learning curve, so you are not alone in finding it difficult.  Fusion 360 is more for 'technical' stuff and a quick google search shows that some people are using it for making jewelry.

RE: Satisfaction?

Posted by: joan.t

these are some of the sample prints, the rings on the right and left are part of the bundled prints that I got with the Printer. 

regards Joan

Are those stl's released yet? I can't find them anywhere on the prusa pages.