So it was my Birthday..

For my Birthday this year I asked for Money towards a resin printer, now I am a very lucky man and my family and friends kindly gifted me £300. My Birthday is early November so I decided to wait for Black friday and see what kind of deal I could get.

I previously had an FDM printer, a Cel Robox printer, alas a power spike caused by a localised blackout killed its motherboard and it had to be consigned to the great recycling space in the sky. So I made the decision to get in to resin printing.

In the Black Friday sale I managed to pick up an Elegoo Mars 4 9k resin printer and the Elegoo Cure and Clean station for my budget, and my adventure into Resin 3d printing began.

So some things I wish I had known from the outset.

There are UV protecting films on the Resin bath and over the LCD screen – you need to remove these before you try and print any thing- Yes 3 hours later I found them, removed them and then managed a print.
The Rook model that comes for a test print is NOT READY TO PRINT. You need to install the software on a friendly desktop, set up the software, load the file, add supports, reslice it for your printer and resin, export it and then use it as a test print.
Talking of the software – Voxeldance is a good tool – but to activate it (for free) you need your printer plugged in and switched on. Also it is easy to find the settings for your printer, but what is not so easy to identify is the script for the resin – in part this is because I don’t read chinese and as such although there are a load of resin scripts available identifying the correct one takes a bit of effort.
Talking of Resin – to start with buy grey resin and for miniatures get the ABS like as it is slightly less brittle and easier to remove supports with. Luckily I did this by accident.
The cure and clean station, for me, was worth the extra expense. Admittedly I got it at a 30% discount but still it is a lot similar to cure and clean with a machine built to do it than with a home made setup, although I did get some great suggestions from friends at my local gaming club.
The plastic spatula is for cleaning the resin bath – the metal spatula is for cleaning the print plate.
You will also need to have to hand
- Lots of disposable rubber gloves – you will get through at least 2 pair per print run
- Either a decent work safety respirator mask or loads of disposable face masks.
- 5L of 99.9% alcohol – at least – and no this is not for drinking.
- lint free/low particle release paper towels – toilet roll will do and so will decent kitchen roll.
- I’d recommend a load of grip seal bags for waste from printing, curing and cleaning runs such as resin and alcohol soaked paper towels to stop you work area becoming a haze of smells.
Invest in spare FEL sheets for the resin bath – as early on you are likely to accidentally damage it.
A Flex build plate- such as this one makes it much easier to remove models and clean the build plate, as you can put it and the model into the cleaning solution then flex the models off and wipe the build plate down.
One of your earliest prints should be a Build plate hanger like this one https://cults3d.com/:412507. Having one of these allows you post print to put your model and plate to drip back into the resin bath saving waste and mess.