Last SLA printer I touched was the original Anycubic Photon with Anycubic cure & wash with Anycubic tough resin. Looking at all the current options I am lost what I should buy. Resin heating, pressure detection, vat tilting and all of this wasn’t a thing back than.
With the past experience in mind what printer, curing staton & resin should I get?
for the printer:
First three points have to be fullfiled. The others aspects are more nice to have.
- relaible!!! I want to start a print and return once it is done. Not worrying about print failures
- Works with a good slicer. Back in the day I used PrusaSlicer with UV-tools to convert it to Anycubic fileformat.
- resin vat mixing (vat tilting is good enough) to prevent resins from seperating during long prints
- decently sealed print volume: reducing the vapours/“smell”
- “speed”: should be faster than the original Anycubic photon
- build volume: at least 127×80×150 mm. Larger is better (ideally upto 160x160 mm parts)
- network connectivity instead of USB-sticks or SD-card.
- budget approx. 500€.
cure and washing:
- easy to keep clean
- at least two washing containers (first stage dirty IPA, second stage “clean” IPA)
- good solution to let the resin and washing fluid drip off the print
- smooth rotation. Had to modify the Anycubic cure and wash because prints kept falling
- uniform curing. This includes curing the top and bottom of prints
- I noticed none of the printers have magnetic/spring metal build platforms. Are they outdated/no longer required?
- budget depends but for a good solution, I would spend approx. 300€.
cleaning liquid: Is isopropanol alcohol (IPA) still the goto?
resin:
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Will be used for structural parts meaning impact resistance paired with decent rigidity is important. In Detail impact resistance on paar with Anycubic though resin. Ideally slightly more rigid. Some wear resistance is a benefit (e.g. gears).
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Decorative clear resin that won’t yellow
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“low cost”. Would pref an under 30€/kg resin with a budget of upto 50€/kg (approx. 5kg order volume/lot size)
What am I considering at the moment?
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used Prusa SL1S with CW1 for approx. 800€: Last experience with Prusa firmware was outstandingly bad. The Prusa mini had constant crashes/required reboots and had even to be removed before turning the printer on as otherwise it wouldn’t show firmware errors/wouldn’t start. Hardware on the other hand was pretty reliable so I hope that the SL1S is reliable, has bugfree firmware, and native prusaslicer support. Replacement parts should also be available for years to come which is great.
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elegoo saturn 4 ultra 16K: This printer got me thinking. Cost a fraction of the Prusa, is larger, has modern features and appears to be reliable. I remember that a while ago chitobox added DRM so I am not sure if I want to buy this if I am stuck with chitubox slicer.
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Anycubic Photon Mono M7 pro Instead of tilting they use a pump for resin circulation. How big of a pain is it to clean this? Anycubic slicer last time was uselss and I have no clue if Anycubic also pushed DRM meaning I couldn’t just switch to a good slicer. I really like the pressure detection to detect print failures.
Cure and wash?
No idea. all the solutions I have looked at seem to be still similar to the old anycubic cure and wash. The Prusa CW1 on the other hand looks like a well-thought-out solution.
Resin?
No idea.
Well, any printer will do that if you calibrate it well enough. I have seen many people not doing anything in that regard and complaining that they can’t get anything to print.
However, getting to that calibration can be easier or more involved.
I only used PrusaSlicer for FDM prints; for resin, I use Chitubox or, more often, Lychee Slicer. “Good” is fairly ambiguous here because what would a “good” slicer look like to you? Either of the ones I mentioned would be good and are fairly popular.
I don’t think that most consumer resin printers have this sort of feature. The Lift and retract of the built plate should be enough to keep the resin well-mixed and any resin that is separating because of that wouldn’t be something that I would consider buying again anyway. Funnily enough, since you mentioned Anycubic Resin, this was specifically my experience with it that it easily separated. Never had this problem with other manufacturers like Elegoo or Sunlu.
This would be hard to get “out of the box”, but you might be able to get a replacement container for the wash station separately (at least that is what I did).
This is mostly an upgrade that you can do to add a magnetic sheet on which you then can add this flexible built plate. This is still around like WhamBam Flex plates. I used that on two of my printers but never bothered to do that on my current printer because with the right raft and bottom exposure settings there isn’t much need to do that, also it is messier.
Pretty much for any “normal” resin. Water-washable resin has gotten more popular but the majority is still cleaned with more aggressive solvents like IPA.
I think this should be answered based on what printer you choose in the end. My first Printer was an Elegoo Mars 2 Pro with a combo wash and cure box from Anycubic. I always had to remove the models from the built plate before washing them, which made a mess and I used so many paper towels to clean that up.
With my Saturn 4 Ultra, I can just take the built plate and put it into the Wash bucket and let both the built plate and the models get clean which is so much more convenient and I have less of a mess to clean up because it is just IPA that I have to wipe up and not Resin and then clean the surface with IPA again and wipe that up too.
As for the Printer, I am pretty happy with my Saturn 4 Ultra at the moment. It is affordable and I could quickly get it to print because of the Auto levelling feature (which isn’t really auto levelling) and the integrated exposure test which is much faster than what UVTools would generate. The VAT tilt is a bit dangerous because of a potential resin leak of the release film, leaking into your printer’s internals, but it will speed up the printing process quite a bit.
The other features like the camera weren’t that interesting to me but the 16K version has, for example, a light (which the first gen was missing) so you would also be able to check the printer in a dark environment. On the other hand, the AI detection for print failures is still something I would consider a gimmick because it would only do that from one side, the side facing the camera. A failure on any other side would not be detected.
Unfortunately, I also don’t have any other experience with other brands or printers, I only ever had Elegoo printers from the Mars 2 Pro, the Original Saturn and now the Saturn 4 Ultra and was fairly happy with all of them in what they brought me.
Pain point in the past where the build platform. Prints frequently failed because they would lift from the aluminum plate.
After a lot of trouble, I switched to a flexible buildplate which first was blasted with course “sand” followed by fine glass beans. flexplate so I can remove the print. The course surface makes the print stick but not stick too well. Would like this time to avoid all of this troubleshooting.
Also considered buying one of those printers that work upside down by projecting the light onto the surface and the print is lowered into the resin vat.
Good workflow (UI design), decent automatic support generation, good tool for manually brushing/configuring support material and ideally an elephant foot compensation setting/calibration for the first layer which has a significantly longer exposure time.
Support generation and being able to manually edit those pushed me toward PrusaSlicer.
How big of an issue is that? Are there upgrades to seal the printer?
Back in the day, it was more or less a total economic loss for those cheap printers: LCD damaged, UV-array damaged and a complete mess within that was hard to clean.