Ive been 3D printing for over a decade, SLA printers are just not worth it IMO. There useful for certain applications, especially industry but for home hobbyist, FDM + 0.2mm nozzle would go further as a first 3D printer
You can wash manually with some isopropyl alcohol in a wash basin and then cure in the sun. It will be a pain to do, and somewhat inconsistent, but its possible. You can also get a cheaper wash and cure station for other 3D printers that would likely work well enough with some tuning.
My first printer was resin without a dedicated wash/cure set up and it was difficult enough that I sold the printer and got an FDM. Currently I'm using an Snapmaker U1 and it's really awesome and much easier. It also prints in multicolor seamlessly.
That said, if you do spend the extra for this along with the wash/cure and the voc extractor, the demos are really impressive. It seems like this printer is blazing fast, for single color prints it will print basically anything at better resolution than an FDM in <2 hours, whereas FDM could take anywhere from 4-12+ for a similar part with bigger layer lines.
Please, please do NOT buy a resin printer as your first printer; IF you want to print intricate details (where resin excels) at least start with an FDM printer anda 0.2mm nozzle. Lots of information can be found here at r/fdmminiatures.
Resin is extremely toxic and requires a dedicated area and handling and care.
Wow this price is interesting. I guess the Chinese competition is really driving prices down. I do miss the first generation (I think second was too) where they were "true" SLA but they got sued into oblivion by 3D Systems.
Stereo lithography using lasers, vs "sla" now has nothing stereo about it nor lasers, just an lcd screen that exposes a 2d slice.
Why it's better is a little complicated and maybe not all one-way.
Definitely there are a lot of difficulties inherent in the way the lcd type has to move the part for every layer and fight a lot of suction every time, damaging a film that needs to stay optically perfect, frothing up the resin with bubbles yet another source of optical defects.
Maybe the laser machines have their own problems but not having to move the part (or move it much less and in a different less violent way) and not having to physically abuse an optical part has to make some difference.
Formlabs uses a proprietary resin cartridge... it's the paper printers situation all over again, the printers themselves are not that expensive but the disposable ink costs an arm and a leg.
Don't go with Formlabs, support any of the open-platform alternatives.
And also, be aware that these printers require some serious development work (you need solvent to wash away uncured resin (if you ask me, this basically necessitates a chemical hood... Formlabs will happily upsell the "Form Wash" for this for another 699). If uncured resin falls on your floor (which has happened to me a little too many times), boy is it a horror cleaning it up even if you have industrial grade solvents); FDM printers are faster, easier and their "ink" is much, much less expensive by comparison.
What are the open-platform alternatives? I was under the impression that the majority of printers used the CHITUBOX hardware platform internally, which was now locked to the CHITUBOX slicer. Has this changed? That would be wonderful news.
I don't think that Formlabs locks you into their wash and cure stations. Some of their printers lock you into their resin, but it looks like the Form Studio 1 discussed above and the Form 3, 3L, 4, and 4L let you use resin of your choice, although the Studio 1 does require you to buy a special $80 tray.
> I don't think that Formlabs locks you into their wash and cure stations.
I would posit from the the getgo the average joe shouldn't consider resin printers, they should opt for FDM printers, because with FDM printers when the printer finishes printing a part... that's it! You more or less just pick it up from the printbed and there you have it... with resin printers, you -HAVE- to wash away the surrounding uncured resin. So, sure, it doesn't lock you into the wash and cure station, but doing it manually is an absolute chore any which way and chances of getting gooey resin on your hands, your clothes, your furniture goes way up and it is the most profoundly annoying thing when it does.
Try out a resin printer at your local makerspace to see what they're all about and the work that's required to print a part and develop it with solvents; for yourself get an FDM printer, they're plenty good enough for the average joe.
I have a noob "reverse" resin creation question. The product page says it has low VOC emissions. Could certain recyclables(e.g. 4,5 HDPE types) create the resin from my stuff at home with low VoC that I could use/sell etc?
My gut would say economically/technologically prohibitive but a low throughput table top recycler seems like a great way to reduce my recyclable garbage.
From the hobbyist perspective, the main thing this gets you is much more precise and detailed prints, so they're very popular in the model making community.
From a professional perspective, this gives you access to a bunch of different materials that open up all kinds of options for prototyping.
Wrote this elsewhere, but this printer prints a full volume in 2 hours. In many scenarios it's 10x faster than FDM with better resolution and compatibility with advanced materials, like food grade / skin contact, ultra strength and rubber-like consistency.
You actually would probably want the wash/cure and VOC extractor upgrades so it's more like 1200$ before it's useful, but if you have the clean room space and ability to handle the toxic resin, functionally resin printing is typically better than fdm for single color prints.
As someone who got into FDM printing about a year ago, and still finds it very exciting, this is a really compelling resin printer. It's priced very well for the capabilities, especially in terms of providing everything a beginner might need to be comfortable with resin printing.
That said, I just noticed Costco online has some FDM stuff, which I think is a pretty exciting development, so if I have any money to spend on 3d printing stuff in the near future, I'll probably spend it there. :)
Your regular printer, like mine, presumably puts down a line of melted plastic material with an extruder, bit by bit, so the print time is guided by complexity as well as size.
Resin printers, basically:
- dip a plate (upside down) into a thin tray of resin
- push it all the way onto onto a screen at the bottom of the tray
- blast that screen with UV through a translucent LCD display that contains a mask image of the current "slice" of the whole plate
- lift the plate out of the resin so it peels off the screen and the resin replenishes below it
- repeat, with the next slice.
- then the whole model is taken out by hand, blasted with UV light to completely cure it, washed off and the (more or less inevitable) supports snipped off.
So instead of printing line by line, the entire plate prints layer by layer — a small print takes (approximately) the same time as a full plate.
There are several big differences, notably that it is single-colour, much higher resolution, the various peel/adhesion forces are managed differently, the parts need to be hollow so uncured resin drains out, most resin prints are quite brittle, and the whole process is traditionally really rather cytotoxic.
There are eco resins, tough resins, and printers that do a better job of not being chemically evil; this is one.
I used to use an older, more expensive version from FormLabs in my last company to print our (more accurate) version of Invisalign negatives, and we'd thermoform the aligners over the top of the cured resin (with a barrier).
The accuracy was great. They'd hold up. Printing took a while, but generally pretty solid as we scaled from in-house to full lab setup. They're great as resin printers go.
Jeff Geerling has a great video about this printer that got me up to speed on resin printing as well - coming from the 3d printing world I'm stoked to see the price dropping but it also seems like a lot more hassle to me at this stage
How stiff can you make the resin with those 3d printers ? Probably not as much as carbon fiber, but how does it hold against aluminium or fiberglass? Also, can you do composite fibreglass/resin with 3d printers ?
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3D-printed, alcohol-powered, Einstein-Szilard absorption refrigerator https://youtu.be/doZ5e4YVdEs?si=WNiw0_R7efE6M_jM
We have a UV cure cube, but often I just cure under a $20 amazon desktop UV light.
Then cure using a UV LED strip (5m w USB plug ~2 EUR) inside an empty can (another 2-5 EUR) and a solar-powered rotating base [2].
The light from the LEDs is cures as well as powers the base. All four will set you back less than 50 EUR.
[1] https://aliexpress.com/item/1005010131053964.html [2] https://aliexpress.com/item/1005012796313088.html
That said, if you do spend the extra for this along with the wash/cure and the voc extractor, the demos are really impressive. It seems like this printer is blazing fast, for single color prints it will print basically anything at better resolution than an FDM in <2 hours, whereas FDM could take anywhere from 4-12+ for a similar part with bigger layer lines.
Resin is extremely toxic and requires a dedicated area and handling and care.
What is that? Why is it better?
Why it's better is a little complicated and maybe not all one-way.
Definitely there are a lot of difficulties inherent in the way the lcd type has to move the part for every layer and fight a lot of suction every time, damaging a film that needs to stay optically perfect, frothing up the resin with bubbles yet another source of optical defects.
Maybe the laser machines have their own problems but not having to move the part (or move it much less and in a different less violent way) and not having to physically abuse an optical part has to make some difference.
Don't go with Formlabs, support any of the open-platform alternatives.
And also, be aware that these printers require some serious development work (you need solvent to wash away uncured resin (if you ask me, this basically necessitates a chemical hood... Formlabs will happily upsell the "Form Wash" for this for another 699). If uncured resin falls on your floor (which has happened to me a little too many times), boy is it a horror cleaning it up even if you have industrial grade solvents); FDM printers are faster, easier and their "ink" is much, much less expensive by comparison.
I don't think that Formlabs locks you into their wash and cure stations. Some of their printers lock you into their resin, but it looks like the Form Studio 1 discussed above and the Form 3, 3L, 4, and 4L let you use resin of your choice, although the Studio 1 does require you to buy a special $80 tray.
I would posit from the the getgo the average joe shouldn't consider resin printers, they should opt for FDM printers, because with FDM printers when the printer finishes printing a part... that's it! You more or less just pick it up from the printbed and there you have it... with resin printers, you -HAVE- to wash away the surrounding uncured resin. So, sure, it doesn't lock you into the wash and cure station, but doing it manually is an absolute chore any which way and chances of getting gooey resin on your hands, your clothes, your furniture goes way up and it is the most profoundly annoying thing when it does.
Try out a resin printer at your local makerspace to see what they're all about and the work that's required to print a part and develop it with solvents; for yourself get an FDM printer, they're plenty good enough for the average joe.
Anything small and aesthetic is going to basically require resin. Warhammer minis and jewelry (tiny filigree) come to mind.
FDMs have gotten better, but you're still not going to get those fine sub-millimeter details like you can with resin.
My gut would say economically/technologically prohibitive but a low throughput table top recycler seems like a great way to reduce my recyclable garbage.
From a professional perspective, this gives you access to a bunch of different materials that open up all kinds of options for prototyping.
You actually would probably want the wash/cure and VOC extractor upgrades so it's more like 1200$ before it's useful, but if you have the clean room space and ability to handle the toxic resin, functionally resin printing is typically better than fdm for single color prints.
That said, I just noticed Costco online has some FDM stuff, which I think is a pretty exciting development, so if I have any money to spend on 3d printing stuff in the near future, I'll probably spend it there. :)
Resin printers, basically:
- dip a plate (upside down) into a thin tray of resin
- push it all the way onto onto a screen at the bottom of the tray
- blast that screen with UV through a translucent LCD display that contains a mask image of the current "slice" of the whole plate
- lift the plate out of the resin so it peels off the screen and the resin replenishes below it
- repeat, with the next slice.
- then the whole model is taken out by hand, blasted with UV light to completely cure it, washed off and the (more or less inevitable) supports snipped off.
So instead of printing line by line, the entire plate prints layer by layer — a small print takes (approximately) the same time as a full plate.
There are several big differences, notably that it is single-colour, much higher resolution, the various peel/adhesion forces are managed differently, the parts need to be hollow so uncured resin drains out, most resin prints are quite brittle, and the whole process is traditionally really rather cytotoxic.
There are eco resins, tough resins, and printers that do a better job of not being chemically evil; this is one.
The accuracy was great. They'd hold up. Printing took a while, but generally pretty solid as we scaled from in-house to full lab setup. They're great as resin printers go.
Pretty cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l9xU3_36Xs