Reply To: My First Resin Print

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My printer was brand new, from AnyCubic direct off ebay. I’m not sure I’d risk buying second hand – unless it was for really silly cheap. I went with ebay and PayPal to mitigate the possibilities of a maverick delivery guy drop kicking it into my front garden, instead of walking up and knocking on the door (ebay protection works really well for buyers).

The Elegoo Mars and Phrozen Sonic Mini have a lift off lid (I really like the Phrozen Mini and I think that’ll be my next purchase – not that I’ve anything against my Photon at all, I absolutely love it, I just fancied comparing print speed/quality) .

The Anycubic Photon has a lift-up opening front door – so any of them would fit in a relatively small space (I only ever access my printer from the front – the usb slot and on/off switch is on the right hand side, but I use a male-to-female usb extension cable to put that on the front, and have the machine on a mechanical timer switch which I use to power on/off). All are about the size of half-a-PC-tower case.

I don’t know the full power spec of the Photon, but it’s basically a UV LED array, a phone screen and a stepper motor and a couple of fans – it’s not going to draw more than a few tens of watts of power, I guess.

Noise comes from a large fan in the base; it’s not silent, but hardly a jet engine. There’s also a small fan inside the chamber which looks like a cheap pc/motherboard fan and they invariably start to groan after a few weeks (the bearings in them are terrible) – but only for a few minutes at start up, then they go quiet.

As for smell – I don’t find the Elegoo Mars ABS-like resin too offensive. Anycubic standard has a noticeable “something” when it’s printing (in the same way you can sniff out a capful of white spirit being left out in a room when you enter, the resin has a certain “tang” when you first walk into a room, but after a few seconds, I’ve stopped noticing it; some people, however, complain that it stinks – I guess it comes down to sensitivity to VOCs?). For me, the stench of the IPA (isopropyl alcohol) far exceeds any smell coming from the resin.

 

AnyCubic standard grey *does* go brittle with after-curing (I give my prints about 20 minutes under a UV nail lamp). There’s no way you can cleanly cut them with a scalpel – little shards will break off, almost like glass. The ABS-like resin gives a much more “plastic” like finish (though I somehow believe – and it’s only a belief – that the details are a tiny bit more crisp with the regular resin; I’m not sure though – the fact I can’t remember or tell which mini I printed with which resin after they’ve been primed tells you everything).

A coat of paint protects the minis from further UV exposure – but even if they were left unpainted, I wouldn’t expect them to fail – the only time I’ve seen this is when you print a large mini and hollow the inside out. What happens is the outside shell gets more UV exposure than the inside (which remains relatively gummy for longer). The different rates of the two sides curing can sometimes cause a mini to crack (since resin does shrink slightly during curing). Usually this kind of fault reveals itself either as cracking or as “weeping” (where uncured resin comes to the outer surface) within three or four days at most.

Like I said, I love my Photon. It’s the best £200 I’ve spent in a long time.

I’m fascinated by the Phrozen Mini which apparently is quicker (and has a longer screen life due to it being monochrome). It’s not without it’s faults though (the top of the build plate being flat, causing resin to pool being a major one) so if I was buying again right now, I’d probably still stick with the Photon. If I could get a Phrozen for the much-vaulted (but rarely seen) $200 price-tag, and they fixed the build plate and plastic tank issues in a second revision, I’d be very temped.