[SOLVED] Slaggy Prints With Flaps Everywhere -- Possible background exposure?

[Devlin]

Maybe I am missing something. I have not placed the orange plastic in front of the projector lens.

Was that temporary or does everybody do that?
Thanks!

[samatheang]

You are not suppose to put the Orange plastic there when printing. It is only used to block the light from curing the resin when it is not printing.

[M-Williams]

Not sure I'm expert enough to jump in here, but I've certainly had enough failures to sympathise!

First thing to note is that when I do everything right the results are stunning (Solus proto or B9 emerald). 'Right' covers a fairly broad range - it isn't that tight a process, but there are certainly places where you can go wrong.

In your case that floating vat will be the problem. Mine doesn't float at all, the thumbscrews are snugged tight and the vat is hard down. My understanding is that it isn't supposed to move (jump in Emil and tell me if I'm wrong!). I did play with a tight film and using the thumbscrews to adjust tension - but it was not a success. If you snug the screws right down then you do have to get the film tension right to start with - I just follow Mark's video.

I've been doing this through a couple of litres of resin now and detail levels are excellent.

Hope this helps.

Lawrence

Well said Lawrence.
[size=150]
The biggest problem I have encountered was the Film tension . How tight or loose should it be. One think I now do now to have it fines tuned, with some Emil's like prints, Is to print a 20mm long pipe and to inspect the lines,and than finely play with the tension. Marc.[/size]

[mongerdesigns]

Anyway. One with "chicken leg" supports and one with lots of "air" supports on the inside.

[M-Williams]

Flawless prints !!!!!!!!!!

What I have notice form this forum. The bulk of misprints are due mostly to a bad support strategy.

[rsaldivar]

I disagree , I think its mainly the combo of the film tension and the way the resin is kept , the supports structure are mainly not an issue with the couture system , in my opinion , now without contour , then yes , bad supports structure are mainly the reason

[flameswithin]

Hey again. Thank you everyone for your input, and Monger I'm glad you were able to get successful grows. With my experience with the solus thus far, I would never expect a long thin structure like that support to grow successfully. They almost never have for us.

After recalibrating our build plate (mentioned the last time I commented), the flashing issue disappeared. I can only assume I was putting too much downward pressure on the build plate when doing the calibration previously.

I took your suggestion (Monger) and snugged down our vat more. Again, in the past, we have kept our vat high, with the screws just barely locked into the threads, with perfect results. Why this isn't working now is still a mystery. Even after doing this, I was still getting failures, starting in my support grid. So, I skeptically removed them and grew the ring with no inside supports whatsoever and the ring grew perfectly. I'd provide a picture, but our jeweler I grew it for snatched it up as soon as it hit the curing unit (it was just to show the customer, not to be cast). I find this completely confounding. In the past, we got *consistent* grow failures until we started putting these grids in our rings. I would never have imagined that such a large heavy ring would grow without them.

For now, our machine is printing reliably, but the prints are coming out slightly skewed/distorted. I'm working on ironing that out, both with scale adjustments and with barrel distortion but I haven't gotten it fixed yet. I may post about this in another thread if I can't get it resolved. For now, I'm going to mark this solved, as the flashing seemed to be a result of a bad build plate height calibration. Thank you, Monger, et al, for your help!