Sorry for taking too long to post something and answer some comments, I have been quite busy at work...
Right now there are two main issues in the printer:
1) The Teflon glass arrived and didn't work... :( The main reason is that the coated Teflon is not opaque and the surface is irregular. Still working to find a solution soon because the workaround of using Teflon and tape reduces a lot the quality. Additionally the process fail sometimes when the tape does not hold the Teflon... terrible
2) The resin is too sticky after printing and requires a complex post curing process, including chemical baths and sun bath. I am right now looking for some alternatives.
I will post some more details soon and answer the comments.
Hi all, just want to share a high resolution picture of the object... it is really good.. very smooth...
You can see some lines because the image was taken with powerful macro lens (microscope) as the space between the lines are 100 microns (human hair thickness). With naked eyes you see a very smooth object.
This resolution can be improved, currently I am using 100 microns and I believe I can go down to 25micros... I will test soon and post the results here...
The time to print the brain gear was same as to print Venus (around 5 hours)... most of the 3d printers in the market would need more time to print a very complex object.
That's is the main advantage of this process, the object complexity does not affect the printing time as you print full layer each time.
This weekend I decided to test the printer capability on printing very complex object that would need complex support structure. The "brain gear" was the select object...
There was a need for big number of support as you can see in the picture on the left.
One big mistake was the support thickness choice, I have used 1mm trickiness support, which was too much because in some places the support merged with the object and I damage a little bit removing it as you can see in the last picture.
This is the detail of building... huge number of supports....
Looks very nice... I will post short video on youtube soon...
The quality is amazing, I got very smooth surface without any finishing...
BTW, special thanks to my friend Daniel Alenquer who join me these weekend for tests and brought his brand new super macro lens. Also thanks to Tiagao e Gustavao, who came here to see the printer... I hope having you guys back here soon and some other friends visiting us as well.
This is the final object, it is around 6cm tall. As you can see I damaged the bottom part of the object while removing the support...
Additionaly, while cleaning the printed object, I damaged the bottom part using isopropyl alcoho ... still looking for perfect post printing solvent.... I got some suggestions from Malu... let's try!!!
I will print this object again soon, and improve the quality with the lessons learned so far... but I think is pretty good for second object.
I have been dreaming about having a 3D Printer at home for many years, but the ones with good quality are not affordable and the low costs just deliver poor quality. Sounds crazy but I decided to build a high resolution 3D Printer by myself at home (people actually said that I was crazy and this was impossible). The funny thing I never saw this type of machines in real life, and still haven’t seen one besides the one I built.
Now that I succeed building the first prototype, the target is to bring this low cost 3D Printer to every home, so we are developing the first affordable one with high resolution.
I hope you enjoy our blog, follow us and you can have this printer in your home soon.
