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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • does everyone always print onto the bed at ~60°C?

    That depends entirely on the result you get and the Filament you use. Also, keep in mind that whatever you set your bed temperature to and what the printer reports, very likely isn’t what you actually print on. For example, on my Ender 5 Plus, I have a glass bed and had to set my printer to 75°C while on my Voron 2.4, I can simply set it to 66°C and get the surface temperature to around 60°C.

    which means that you need to measure the temperature on the surface of the printer and not rely on what the printer is reporting (unless you actually measured the temperature and can guess the actual temperature). The more mass that the print has to heat up, the longer it will take for the print surface to actually reach that temperature.

    Personally, I aim for around 60-65°C for the print surface for PLA. I always had good adhesion for my prints at that temperature.


  • As someone who got the “Kit” version, I must add something that drove me nuts.

    The Voron Documentation is extremely good, while I had some instances in which I would have liked more detail, the instructions are easy to follow.

    However, the LDO documentation is abysmal and missing quite a bit of stuff. They do have a wiki that lists things to skip but the replacement instructions are very short and barely understandable. They don’t even mention things that you might need to print in addition to what the Voron needs. A specific example of this is the exhaust, the “Voron way” would be to print a cap that goes on the top at the back of the printer with a fan and a HEPA filter but the LDO kit doesn’t have that because it should come with the Nevermore filter. But this isn’t really mentioned there in the documentation and you need to dig through the wiki and the github project to find the right files for what needs to be printed.

    I also had some trouble with the cables on the stepper motor that controls the X axis, they seem to be loose inside or don’t make full contact which means that, depending on the wires position, could make the stepper motor not work that well.

    Lastly, I am currently building the Box Turtle AFC (automatic filament changer) System also from LDO and, from what I can find, there is absolutely NO documentation about it. I was in the beginning of ordering some TPU spools because the build instructions of the Box Turtle say that you need some before I saw that they provide those in the Kit.

    With that being said, would I source the stuff all by myself? Hell no.


  • relaible!!! I want to start a print and return once it is done. Not worrying about print failures

    Well, any printer will do that if you calibrate it well enough. I have seen many people not doing anything in that regard and complaining that they can’t get anything to print.

    However, getting to that calibration can be easier or more involved.

    Works with a good slicer. Back in the day I used PrusaSlicer with UV-tools to convert it to Anycubic fileformat.

    I only used PrusaSlicer for FDM prints; for resin, I use Chitubox or, more often, Lychee Slicer. “Good” is fairly ambiguous here because what would a “good” slicer look like to you? Either of the ones I mentioned would be good and are fairly popular.

    resin vat mixing (vat tilting is good enough) to prevent resins from seperating during long prints

    I don’t think that most consumer resin printers have this sort of feature. The Lift and retract of the built plate should be enough to keep the resin well-mixed and any resin that is separating because of that wouldn’t be something that I would consider buying again anyway. Funnily enough, since you mentioned Anycubic Resin, this was specifically my experience with it that it easily separated. Never had this problem with other manufacturers like Elegoo or Sunlu.

    at least two washing containers (first stage dirty IPA, second stage “clean” IPA)

    This would be hard to get “out of the box”, but you might be able to get a replacement container for the wash station separately (at least that is what I did).

    I noticed none of the printers have magnetic/spring metal build platforms. Are they outdated/no longer required?

    This is mostly an upgrade that you can do to add a magnetic sheet on which you then can add this flexible built plate. This is still around like WhamBam Flex plates. I used that on two of my printers but never bothered to do that on my current printer because with the right raft and bottom exposure settings there isn’t much need to do that, also it is messier.

    cleaning liquid: Is isopropanol alcohol (IPA) still the goto?

    Pretty much for any “normal” resin. Water-washable resin has gotten more popular but the majority is still cleaned with more aggressive solvents like IPA.

    Cure and Wash? No idea. all the solutions I have looked at seem to be still similar to the old anycubic cure and wash. The Prusa CW1 on the other hand looks like a well-thought-out solution.

    I think this should be answered based on what printer you choose in the end. My first Printer was an Elegoo Mars 2 Pro with a combo wash and cure box from Anycubic. I always had to remove the models from the built plate before washing them, which made a mess and I used so many paper towels to clean that up.

    With my Saturn 4 Ultra, I can just take the built plate and put it into the Wash bucket and let both the built plate and the models get clean which is so much more convenient and I have less of a mess to clean up because it is just IPA that I have to wipe up and not Resin and then clean the surface with IPA again and wipe that up too.

    As for the Printer, I am pretty happy with my Saturn 4 Ultra at the moment. It is affordable and I could quickly get it to print because of the Auto levelling feature (which isn’t really auto levelling) and the integrated exposure test which is much faster than what UVTools would generate. The VAT tilt is a bit dangerous because of a potential resin leak of the release film, leaking into your printer’s internals, but it will speed up the printing process quite a bit.

    The other features like the camera weren’t that interesting to me but the 16K version has, for example, a light (which the first gen was missing) so you would also be able to check the printer in a dark environment. On the other hand, the AI detection for print failures is still something I would consider a gimmick because it would only do that from one side, the side facing the camera. A failure on any other side would not be detected.

    Unfortunately, I also don’t have any other experience with other brands or printers, I only ever had Elegoo printers from the Mars 2 Pro, the Original Saturn and now the Saturn 4 Ultra and was fairly happy with all of them in what they brought me.




  • I can think of two problems:

    First, not every Release Film is the same. You are talking specifically of FEP which is mostly used to describe the Release film and was commonly used for that but is the material that the Release film is made from. There are different types like the already mentioned FEP but also nFEP, PFA, ACF and probably others as well. Each of those materials has a different rigidity which would mean that they peel away from the Model sooner or later. According to this, FEP is much more flexible than PFA or ACF.

    Second, the durability of the Release Film. Over time, the Release film will wear out and need to be replaced. They could become more flexible the more you use them. Cutting it too close could mean that your models will fail from one print to another.

    Some other thoughts:

    • How much the Release film flexes could also depend on the surface area being printed. More surface area could mean that the layer is sticking to the release film longer
    • The same would apply to the Exposure rate because higher exposure rates make your layers stick more, including to your Release film
    • Assembly also plays a role in this. Since you need to replace the Release film at some point, you could add more or less “slack” on the film which would throw off your previous test massively.

    While I like the idea, I think it would signal a false sense of confidence in your printer because if you “dial in” your lift distance and the model then fails, people could start looking in the completely wrong direction to fix a problem. I mean, with that many variables to consider, people still download the validation matrix without adjusting their bottom and transition layers based on the description and then ask why their exposure test doesn’t work.



  • It goes even beyond that.

    With a dedicated app, you go into the store and install it and then you have it in your apps that you then can place everywhere.

    With a website, you need to have the browser, navigate to that website each time. And yes, you could put a link to that website on your home screen as well but not many user are probably aware of that being an option.

    I know that but I still would prefer a dedicated app because it is easier to manage and use more features of my phone. For example, I just tried it on my android phone and the link to a website always opened a new tab in my Firefox.

    Then I can manage the notifications of that app depending on what I want it to notify me about.

    I can’t do that specifically for a single app or website in a browser.

    On the other hand, I also wouldn’t want to miss a website because I am not always on my phone and, in some cases, it is way more annoying to do something over the phone because I am just not used to it (like writing this comment). Doing that over a website version that I can access on my PC is much easier and convenient.


  • The problem with brushing on resin is actually not that great because resin for printers will need to be cured. Unless that material is letting the UV light through, only the outer parts will get cured and hold onto the models but when you open it up again the whole middle part would be liquid resin again which stinks and is toxic.

    I had this misunderstanding for quite a while myself and though that I can just weld resin party with resin together until I did that with a larger piece and it broke quite easily and seeing that the whole inside wasn’t even touched at all by the UV light.

    Hence also why you should shine some UV light into a hollowed model to fully cure it.

    CA/superglue should do fine if applied correctly.


  • I don’t know where I read it but IIRC religion is being used as a simple answer to very difficult and possibly uncomfortable questions: why are we here and what is our purpose?

    It is fairly easy to believe that something, a god, created us instead of that the existence of humanity was just a fluke, a stroke of luck enabling us to evolve were we are now because it is just easier to grasp even if it is proven. That we evolved from simple beings into more complex organisms instead of just “being created”. Evolution creates so many quite difficult questions that it is easier to understand and believe that someone just wanted us to exist.

    When someone is believing in a religion they also always have some form of " it won’t be over" scenario like when you die, there is nothing truly “the end”. You just won’t vanish and this can be terrifying for many because the following question could be, what sense does it make to live at all when our existence is just so insignificant in comparison to everything else?

    So, in short, it is an easy too to make sense of things that almost everyone can understand it.

    Unfortunately, things like this can and will be abused.





  • Connectivity or rather the lack of it…

    I have a Samsung TV and recently got a new cooling fan and now when I start the fan when my TV is on, it says it detected a new device. I don’t know what my TV would want with a fan maybe control the speed for more immersion?

    But there is also no way for me to disable that. I also got regular requests of my neighbor’s to connect to my TV until I disabled the notification for it. No, I couldn’t disable that my TV doesn’t even allow it to be seen, I had to enable to not automatically connect devices and disable that notifications are being shown. That thing isn’t even connected to the internet.