What printer did you print that on?

Just know what you are getting into before you choose to go the resin route.

Elegoo saturn.

goldeneye - helicopter blades
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5381659

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that is truly amazing! so smooth on the curved surfaces. Since the max printable size is 8 inches or so, I am assuming this is multiple pieces put together?

Yeah, overall in 14 sections. Base will take the longest since its 8 pieces

I use only filament. If you are new (I only been printing for a year), I had good success with my Prusa Mini. Not perfect but I use it all the time because we keep in on our kitchen counter. I printed resin at work it was always more of a hassle vs the benefit in most of my my situations. But it would be cool to get the added detail with resin.

I appreciate the link to this video - that was pretty informative. Just received my Elegoo Mars from Gogojohnnyquack (thanks man!) Now I've got to order a million more latex gloves, some resin and a curing station. (or UV light for nails, apparently?)

For those doing resin: is there a smell I need to be aware of? My wife is uber sensitive to smells, (and I am apparently not) and if I use the Glowforge or even TOUCH a can of spray paint within a mile near the house, we're opening every window in the place. I have a window vent but will need to get something more serious if the resin is real smelly.

Long story, yes...pretty smelly.

Three ways to mitigate it.

1. Not sure on the brand, but theres some formulas that have a more subtle smell. Would have to research that.
2. Elegoo sells a battery operated carbon air filter you place inside the shell next to the tank. This has reduced the smell for me by about 80% at least. Just have to keep charging that little bugger
3. Either build an air duct for the exhaust fans or enclose it in something like a grow tent.

I was using water washable at first, then found out that has a stronger smell than the normal stuff so had switched over. Going from that to Elegoo standard grey, and adding filters, we dont even notice it anymore. In the end, I'm moving it into a grow tent to feel safest in the setup. If you have one machine, a small kit is more than enough. I'm running 3 printers so I'm still figuring out how to get something big enough to work out of in the space we have.

That's great feedback - I'm checking out some videos as well, but wanted to hear some opinions from non-youtube shills! I'll definitely add the filter to the shopping list. Interesting the water washable is smellier - I'll have to bulk up on isopropyl. will look into the grow tent too. One of my friends came over the other day and saw my exhaust setup and the UV stuff, and said "what, are you setting up a grow farm down here?" Uh, no. LOL

Hah. My roommate has a grow tent next to my printer workbench for..stuff. But he stopped using it last year and its just filled with a bunch of crap. Been asking him to empty it out since he's not using it so I can take it over for at least a machine or two but he's been dragging his feet. Its a little narrow to put a table in there (guess the printers would just be on the floor), but at least it already has a ventilation duct attached to the window. I might push him further this weekend.

LOL.

How much isopropyl do you tend to use for washing a print? I'm trying to understand how much to order. Do you just dump it after a wash, or can you reuse?

I filter and reuse it, but there is a definite lifespan to each batch of alcohol. I use ethanol (denatured alcohol) ordered by the gallon, but really ought to find larger quantities.

Ok, clearly I under-ordered. I'll look into ethanol - isopropyl in large quantities is pretty expensive.

32oz bottles of 91% are currently $2.58 each at walmart, that's about $10 a gallon.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Equate-91-Isopropyl-Alcohol-Antiseptic-32-fl-oz/276040459

This is what I was buying for a while because I could never get more than 2 32oz bottles in store and visiting 10 stores is a pain.
https://www.amazon.com/Isopropyl-Alcohol-Grade-99-Anhydrous/dp/B08LNZWXMJ

Aah, thanks - I was looking at 99% which is way more. Still taking in all the data here...

I haven't seen a noticeable difference in cleaning between 91% and 99%. The 70% took longer to remove the extra resin and things always still felt tacky.

I’ve had pretty good success with the water clean up resin.

has anyone printed anything related to the Baywatch guard tower? I am looking for the handrails.
thanks.

Well it's been two weeks since I bought the Elegoo Mars 3 resin printer, the Elegoo Mercury X wash and cure station and the Anycubic Kobra FDM printer.

I'd like to thank bigguybbr and jalpert and sandro for recommending the self leveling Anycubic Vyper. I went with the Kobra since it's a newer model.

I have been using 3d printing for work for a number of years through vendors. I thought I'd learn and teach myself since I have a few weeks before my next project, so I'm a noob to it.

I bit in with FDM and Resin right away. Totally nailing it so far. I've been running the FDM non-stop and I've been running resin a ton as well. I've used up around 5 - 1000kg filament wheels and around 3 - 1000kg resin bottles. I'm doing a lot of prototyping in clear resin/filament and grey resin/filament. I ordered some metallic brass and silver resins from Dragon Resin in Hungary, but I haven't received it yet. I'll let you guys know how it works out when I get it.

For mark532011 and other newbie's like myself, I'm very happy with my setup and have had loads of success. I'm using Cura for FDM slicing and the Mars 3 is chained to Chitubox slicer, but it's very functional albeit subscription based.

The wash and cure stations are amazing, I'm using Mean Green to wash with. IPA is no good with the clear resins and tends to cloud them up. Mean Green does a top notch job and it only costs $5 to fill the huge vat on the Mercury X.

I bought the two pack of the Elegoo carbon rechargeable fans and run them with the Mars 3. I've been using Elegoo resin and a few other brands and have had no issues with fumes.

I'm using nitrile gloves, and a wham bam system on the resin, so easy.

I've found that 99% of the youtube video personalities associated with 3d printing are annoying as hell to me and I don't really respect that they are very knowledgable. I just don't care for them.

To contradict myself, I got the most use out of this video explaining the chemical makeup and handling of the resin. This guy has a PHD in Chemistry and is very thorough in his explanation.

Anyway, thanks to those folks who took the time to help me when I was ordering my first printers. I'll be upgrading them to more professional level models in a few weeks, since work will be paying for them.

the video mentions the resin is toxic and smells... thats enough for my wife. We are going filament...

Even with filament, there are some smells. Granted, I commonly use about 2kg per week, but it was enough that I could smell it throughout the house. I ended up building a printer with enclosure and fan with a duct to outside.

Prusa just announced a new enclosure. It’s pretty pricey, but looks like a premium assembly.

https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-enclosure-3/

My Cyclone has a broken end on one of the ramps. It seems like this is something I could do with a 3d printer. I am thinking the end inch or so could be cut off square and a sleeve designed that would slide on and butt up against the ramp where the ball goes but overlaps an inch or so around the outside for strength and to give a place to glue them together. Would something like that work?

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definitely do-able so long as the new piece is underneath the stock ramp (so theres no lip). if you can get a clean cut, scan it and give me a reference dimension be happy to model it and print it

I'm fairly sensitive to odors and my Prusa MK3 is in my office directly behind me about 5 feet. I print 90% PLA and the other 10% is mostly PETG. I don't notice any odor whatsoever, and neither my wife nor my son have ever said anything about it (they are much more sensitive than I am). I pretty much only use Prusa and 3D Solutech filaments (I have a few other spools), so can only speak to these.

Email hit my inbox this morning. Very nice enclosure and integrates well with the MK3. I rarely print anything other than PLA & PETG, so not really on my wish list at this time.

I notice very mild smells from PETG sometimes, but mild. PLA is odorless to me. And I'm typing this sitting 4 feet from an unenclosed printer that I run all the time.

I would not run a resin printer inside my house, personally.

Ditto here too, no PLA smell what-so-ever. Various vendors of filament, but mostly Sunlu and eSun.

I have 3 printers in a 12x14 room often running at the same time. Usually all PLA sometimes PETG and never notice a smell.

I run a Resin printer in my ventilated garage using low odor water cleanable resin and if you get real close to the printer it almost smells like a very faint urine smell.

3D Solutech clear PLA here as well, but if I run it a few days in a row without an enclosure, we can smell it over the entire house. It's not necessarily a bad smell, but I don't really like the idea of breathing it all the time, regardless of what the consensus on the safety is.

For your clear are you using the standard or the premium 3D Solutech? I've tried several different "clear" PLA filaments and the 3D Solutech Premium is by far the most translucent of them all.

BTW, I'm on my 4th or 5th spool of this, and I've not noticed any odors (btw, I print 3D Solutech filaments at 210 for first layer then 190 for remaining layers).

https://www.amazon.com/3D-Solutech-Natural-Printer-Filament/dp/B07VT7GMGB/ref=sr_1_3

Standard. I did use premium at one point, but it was actually too clear for my use, and I apparently got a bad batch with small black inclusions in it that clogged my nozzle so frequently that I went through 2 spools and was not able to finish a single print. I went back to Standard.

I don't know how many spools I've used, but see 26 separate orders on Amazon. Some of those are as many as 10 spools per order.

I had been printing it at 200C until recently, I got a batch (four spools so far) that would just shred after printing at 200C. By the time I got up to 215C, it was pretty good, but at 225C, it feels like the old stuff did at 200C. It's not the hotend thermistor, since I can go back to different colors and they still work well at 200C.

Your post had me thinking that I've never tabulated how many spools of filament I've purchased or the related costs. Just went through my orders and counted 98 spools of filament (I didn't do the exact math but that's at least $2,000 worth).

these are great. Would fit the theme of my gameroom perfectly.

I also printed one for my POTC, which integrated very well. I loved the idea of the twine around the barrel, makes it look really custom

yes, the twine is great. This will be some of the first things I print when I finally pull the trigger on a printer. Still deciding if i'm going resin or standard.

what software is easiest to learn to do your 3d images for creating things?

A lot of people like TinkerCad but it has limited functionality.

I like OnShape, which is a true CAD program. It is free for personal use, user friendly, and has great online tutorials. I was designing parts for a home brew after just a couple hours instruction.

that easy huh. TY. Easy to get the scale down as well?

If by scale, you mean dimensions, then yeah, pretty easy. Buy yourself some digital calipers if you don’t have them so you can accurately measure what you need. You can put all the measurements into the CAD program.

Now, getting your printer to print accurately, that may take some fiddling.

Even when you design injection molded parts, there's always some gap with mating parts because individual parts are never perfect. In fact sometimes injection molded parts need more clearance because mold shops want to crank up cycle time which makes parts warp. As a rule of thumb I typically don't go tighter than .010" gap between mates. If mating parts are on the surface touching the bed I usually go bigger because the squish shrinks the holes more.

Flexible filaments also offer some nice solutions. I printed a "flipperrubber" for our Hercules with Polymaker TPU90. Normally, you pull 2 standard 3" rings around the (wooden) bats.

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I have a rather nice model of "The Mandalorian" ship, taken from Thingiverse, printed as multiple parts (model here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5267987)

I printed it using resin, scaling it down at 45% to fit my Elegoo Mars, and details are still quite good.

However, some parts (especially the two "wing-like" portion at the front) have a big common surface, and of course because of shrinkage and warping, there's a tiny gap when assembling them (I did not glue them yet, just tested the fit), plus you see the assembly line

So what would be your recommendation to assemble them and remove the unavoidable gap that will appear, and ideally also remove the assembly line ?

Regards

Anyone have any luck scanning in an Attack From Mars martian? Would love to print a large version of it.

have tried to nick it from a vpin table?

i think it's not high res enough, but it was an idea

Alien3 (resized).png

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Yeah, good idea there. Sucks (bot not really) for games that save on system resources, it'll use low polygon models but masked by skin/texture renderings. Looks perfectly fine in game but cant really extract it for direct model use