Failed Prints

[warren]

I've had the Solus for a couple of weeks and I'm having mixed results.

I've been using the BR Emerald with 3 models supported separately and brought together in CW. The first print ran out of memory, which I presume was down to a memory leak. The CWS file was 120meg. I rebooted and made a note of the starting memory size and resliced. The print was a success. I tried again yesterday twice, and both failed in different areas. No problems with memory leaks if I rebooted CW before slicing. All the models were Netfabbed and supported in Meshmixer and then Netfabbed again.

The only successful print was after I changed over to the spare vat that came with the printer. Both the films on the vats looked pretty 'scuffed' to me. Is that the way they should appear from the factory? I'm running Win 8.1 over hdmi.

Any help would be very appreciated as the quality when it has worked was very good but trying to use something so inconsistent in a production environment is hard work!

I've downloaded the test ring and will try again this morning and post back the results.

[Archerm]

Really not enough information. Did you clean your vat after each fail? If not you should. You should also strain your resin after a fail. Could you post a pic of the fail? I know I bumped the ram up on both of my laptops to 16gbs. Do you have everything turned off on your computer? Updates, Sleep, Internet, WiFi, ETC? This make a huge difference. Really need more information.

[reify]

Hi,

For something as large 120MB you should probably pre-slice. This is explained in the Saving Slice Files.pdf you should have received.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/94wndbu7a9ujkqj/Saving%20Slice%20Files.pdf?dl=0

I don't recommend Meshmixer for supports, use Rhino, Matrix or the B9 software.

The film can look scuffed, we've been told this is due to the manufacturing process.

[warren]

thanks for the reply archem...

Everythings turned off on win 8 inc wifi. USB sleep etc. Failed prints are in the bin so no pics. But will do next time.

One thing I hadnt been doing was cleaning the vat out after every print or cleaning the film. I've tried a little 100% IPA on the film and fingers crossed the sample ring is on its way out.

I hadnt cleaned the film as I'd spotted a few comments on here to just wipe it out with a silicone spatula.

I've also pre compiled the slices and the memory usage is down from 4.5gig to 700meg when printing.

Hopefully just the learning curve kicking in

[Archerm]

After a fail you must empty the vat ,strain the resin, and remove any cured resin off the bottom of the vat(Remove with care.) If you dont your prints will keep on failing. One little piece of cured resin will make your next print fail.

[warren]

I had been sieving the resin but not cleaning the film. The sample ring as just popped out looking mighty fine. Looks like giving the film a wipe with IPA is the answer.

I'm about to run the 120 meg CWS scene after cleaning and sieving again. Lets see if I can get some consistency. Thanks for the help guys

[reify]

Happy to hear but I suggest redoing the supports with something other than Meshmixer.

Be very careful not to contaminate the resin with IPA and be careful not to get IPA on the acrylic. Even a tiny amount of IPA mixed with the resin can cause problems.

[warren]

It was Angus' tip to give the film a clean and mentioned the same as yourself about making sure there was no contamination. Ie keep the area being cleaned in the centre and dont splash it all over.

Am I safe to clean the Quartz with IPA?

I'd be interested in your reasons for not using meshmixer for the supports?

[reify]

No problem to clean the quartz with IPA.

Tried Meshmixer a few times but found we got much more consistent results when doing the supports manually. Mark (aka Archerm) wrote a very helpful post about creating supports:

http://reify-3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=105&start=20#p970

And Emil made some tutorials:

http://reify-3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46

In my experience, the vast majority of fails are caused by incorrect supports or mesh issues.