3 ms·

I like resin but doesn’t that limit your choices of materials? And isn’t there a lot of post processing?

rkagerer 6y ago
An increasing library of materials is becoming available for SLA, e.g. I've used those with properties resembling clear acrylic, silicon, rubber, ABS-ish, bio-compatibility for dental, "nano-dispersions" for tinting and even some exotics infused with glass powder or with high temperature-resistance (HDT of 238°C @ 0.45 MPa). But FDM still offers more variety (e.g. carbon fiber infused filaments). There's post-processing if you do prints that require supports (overhangs, etc). I've gotten good at designing within the constraints of the process to eliminate that as much as possible, but yes, it's still a pain. A typical advantage of SLA over FDM or SLS is a smoother surface finish. But I think the industry will ultimately land on a material jetting design (akin to an inkjet) that can dispense multiple types of polymers and dissolvable supporting material. The NexD1 had promised to be the first consumer-grade printer to do this but it was a scam.
cfeduke 6y ago
I print a lot of miniatures which require tons of supports, but the support process most people in my space use result in supports that are incredibly easy to remove - it got to a point for me where I enjoyed removing supports that I was printing too much. Sort of like when we'd put Elmer's glue on our hands just to pull it off after it dried back in school. :) Post (or pre) support removal is an isopropyl or acetone (or other agent) bath to remove any liquid surface resin and then a final UV curing. I use an Anycubic curing station so that definitely speeds things up. To process a full build plate from my EPAX X10 it takes upwards of five minutes of my time [in terms of attention] (plus six minutes in the alcohol bath and six minutes in the UV cure chamber, which are both unattended processes).
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Interesting. How much faster is the print time vs fdm?
  - johnwalkr 6y ago
    It's much slower than FDM (at least in my experience using a formlabs printer).
  - sydd 6y ago
    It really depends. an LCD resin printer prints a single layer at once, but it prints much smaller layers than an FDM printer (resulting in better quality). So for something small like a minifigure FDM will be faster, but for something big (especially if it has lots of small features) resin is faster usually. And resin prints are always more detailed.

An increasing library of materials is becoming available for SLA, e.g. I've used those with properties resembling clear acrylic, silicon, rubber, ABS-ish, bio-compatibility for dental, "nano-dispersions" for tinting and even some exotics infused with glass powder or with high temperature-resistance (HDT of 238°C @ 0.45 MPa). But FDM still offers more variety (e.g. carbon fiber infused filaments). There's post-processing if you do prints that require supports (overhangs, etc). I've gotten good at designing within the constraints of the process to eliminate that as much as possible, but yes, it's still a pain. A typical advantage of SLA over FDM or SLS is a smoother surface finish. But I think the industry will ultimately land on a material jetting design (akin to an inkjet) that can dispense multiple types of polymers and dissolvable supporting material. The NexD1 had promised to be the first consumer-grade printer to do this but it was a scam.

cfeduke 6y ago

I print a lot of miniatures which require tons of supports, but the support process most people in my space use result in supports that are incredibly easy to remove - it got to a point for me where I enjoyed removing supports that I was printing too much. Sort of like when we'd put Elmer's glue on our hands just to pull it off after it dried back in school. :) Post (or pre) support removal is an isopropyl or acetone (or other agent) bath to remove any liquid surface resin and then a final UV curing. I use an Anycubic curing station so that definitely speeds things up. To process a full build plate from my EPAX X10 it takes upwards of five minutes of my time [in terms of attention] (plus six minutes in the alcohol bath and six minutes in the UV cure chamber, which are both unattended processes).

mrfusion 6y ago
Interesting. How much faster is the print time vs fdm?
- johnwalkr 6y ago
  It's much slower than FDM (at least in my experience using a formlabs printer).
- sydd 6y ago
  It really depends. an LCD resin printer prints a single layer at once, but it prints much smaller layers than an FDM printer (resulting in better quality). So for something small like a minifigure FDM will be faster, but for something big (especially if it has lots of small features) resin is faster usually. And resin prints are always more detailed.