11-17-2019, 05:25 PM
Hello,
Coming to you from Rockford, MI. I have plenty of Engineering experience, a bit of indirect experience with 3D printing that mostly involved asking others to do it for me and poked around asking questions in the process. I've watched 3D printers from the sidelines, been interested for years and given the price of 3D printers has come down so much I finally took the leap. I went with the Elegoo Mars resin printer due to good reviews and a low price. I went with a resin printer as opposed to the typical filament based printer because it seems to me that the end product visual quality is far superior on resin. I also like that the volume of the print doesn't necessarily have much impact on the print time (discounting taller things take more time). There are some sacrifices made by doing this it seems though, such as lower material strength and lower print volume for a similar cost... I will likely get a filament based printer in the future if this hobby / skill maintains my interest.
I've spent the bulk of this past weekend with the printer going. I started out with the included Rook file, which printed flawlessly. I then did a couple more prints with some things I've designed and a little unicorn model I downloaded from grabcad.com. I've had minor glitches and errors on every print past the first rook print. I'm learning as I go though and I'm so far confident that I will get reliable prints out.
For one, I had not stopped between prints to empty and clean out the resin reservoir. I didn't see anything that explicitly told me this is necessary, but I think that may have cause a couple small problems. I did clean everything before my current in-process print. However, during I noticed a strange 'stair-stepping' effect on the model. When watching it close, I realize it was likely my own fault. I didn't sufficiently tighten the set screws on the print plate and saw it was rocking slightly every time it went down. I was trying to avoid over-tightening things but I think I was too cautious in this case.
I'm enjoying myself so far, errors and all, and look forward to continue playing around.
- Chris
Coming to you from Rockford, MI. I have plenty of Engineering experience, a bit of indirect experience with 3D printing that mostly involved asking others to do it for me and poked around asking questions in the process. I've watched 3D printers from the sidelines, been interested for years and given the price of 3D printers has come down so much I finally took the leap. I went with the Elegoo Mars resin printer due to good reviews and a low price. I went with a resin printer as opposed to the typical filament based printer because it seems to me that the end product visual quality is far superior on resin. I also like that the volume of the print doesn't necessarily have much impact on the print time (discounting taller things take more time). There are some sacrifices made by doing this it seems though, such as lower material strength and lower print volume for a similar cost... I will likely get a filament based printer in the future if this hobby / skill maintains my interest.
I've spent the bulk of this past weekend with the printer going. I started out with the included Rook file, which printed flawlessly. I then did a couple more prints with some things I've designed and a little unicorn model I downloaded from grabcad.com. I've had minor glitches and errors on every print past the first rook print. I'm learning as I go though and I'm so far confident that I will get reliable prints out.
For one, I had not stopped between prints to empty and clean out the resin reservoir. I didn't see anything that explicitly told me this is necessary, but I think that may have cause a couple small problems. I did clean everything before my current in-process print. However, during I noticed a strange 'stair-stepping' effect on the model. When watching it close, I realize it was likely my own fault. I didn't sufficiently tighten the set screws on the print plate and saw it was rocking slightly every time it went down. I was trying to avoid over-tightening things but I think I was too cautious in this case.
I'm enjoying myself so far, errors and all, and look forward to continue playing around.
- Chris