After getting frustrated with some mechanical issues in my FDM printer lately, and realizing that most of what I do with it are jobs probably more appropriate for a resin printer, I impulse ordered a cheap resin printer just to try if they are a better fit for me.
I have read that you need to be a bit more careful with a resin printer in certain aspects. I haven’t informed myself much about it yet, but from what I understand:
1 - You really don’t want to be in the same room while printing, and it should be in a room with a window open or in a balcony or something similar.
2 - Always wear gloves and a mask when dealing with the material or the prints.
3 - You don’t want the sun to ever hit the material for long until you have completed the print.
4 - Optionally you can get a curing machine that does a “second pass” of light, if you don’t get this you should expect prints to be somewhat “gooey” and less defined.
5 - Always clean the prints with alcohol and scrub them with some sort of brush to get residues off. This would come after the last past of curing.
6 - The prints are done “upside down” and you should set your supports accordingly.
Is there anything else I’m missing? Is any of that wrong, or are there any caveats about it? I would greatly appreciate any info about the particularities, and also any stories and experiences that you wanna share about resin printing.
Thanks!
Dang that’s a lot of useful info, thanks!
So am I understanding correctly that you can leave all the cleaning/curing process for another day? I can print a set of figures and store them somewhere fresh off the plate on monday, and do all the post-processing stuff on friday? Because if that’s possible that is pretty great, I had kinda assumed that the curing and cleaning was required immediately.
As long as they stay shielded from UV you probably can, but I wouldn’t leave them for days. I’ll often leave prints running overnight, they finish sometime while I’m sleeping and I’ll hang them on the drip adapter for a few hours once I wake up and then clean and cure them later in the day without issues. I also typically print in the basement where’s there’s no windows or light so no real way for UV to leak in and partially cure the resin. If you’re printing in a room with windows you have more of a chance of sunlight impacting the prints before you wash them so keep that in mind (the orange/yellow covers block the vast majority of UV but aren’t 100% perfect).