Before building a DLP (bottom-up) printer, you'll need some idea's about the material properties. The main question is about:
I did some quick tests, for getting an idea about the adhesive & cohesive properties of the MakerJuice (green) resin. So I put about 3 drops of resin on different materials, lying around & shine with white light on those materials.
Conclusion potential materials:
During testing, the build platform made of stainless steel is working very well. After a good build, you could easialy remove the print, by cutting it with a (sharp) thin knife from the build platform.
I like glass above PS, because I expect better flatness & transperancy. But glass without any top coating will NOT work.
There are different options:
| Test: | Materials: | Tested: | Remarks: | Where to buy: |
| A | Glass | Quick test | This is good build platform material, w/o coating not for vat floor. | |
| B | Glass + HDPE-spray | #1 & #2 | Maybe I used a wrong process or wrong type (PTFE-spary instead?), but it doesn't work for me. | |
| C | PS (no coating) | #3 | Working, but realy need somekind of tilting system, because the resin will very easialy stick to the PS. It gets loose by some very hard 'bang' sounds.. | (HornBach) |
| D | PS + Teflon/FEP foil | See tripple vat section | Little less transparent, but working. | |
| E | PS + Sylgard 184 | See tripple vat section | Is working best (?), but it doesn't last for long.. | |
| F | PC + Generic Sylgard Substitute | Tested by: Jon | Seems to work | |
| G | Glass + Solaris Silicone Pint Kit | Not tested myself | ? | |
| H | Gorilla Glass | Not tested myself | ? | |
| I | PMP | Not tested myself | ? | |
| J | Solar acrylic + Sil-Gel612 | Tested by: RapApp | Seems to work | |
| K | FEP foil (50[um]) | #90 etc | Works great! | Here a list of suppliers. |
| L | ||||
| M | ||||
| N |
Before testing the glass, first having a ground layer of PS & dividing it into 3 sections. I'm currently in favor of PS, because I have a lot lying around. The tripple vat consist of:
The aim for this test, was to test those tripple sections in one go, so all printing settings & resin temperature will be the same.
Learnings:
Trying different parameters and experiment with different resin.
Learnings:
On the left, some resin below the Silgard is shown. On the right, a 'cleaned/damaged' PS section.
Time for a new vat floor..
So, time for the real deal. This configuration with Sylgard on glass should work best.
Time for some new shapes to test:
Then some frogs, which went great, so 4x6 frogs should also work, but it didn't, first the Z-shaft broke (it was not designed very ridgid), secondly there was not enough resin (oops) and with the third attempt...
So the Sylgard was partly fogged (or frogged) & also damaged with tiny little holes somehow.. Overexposures gives worse effects. There were 'still' some clear spots, so tryed also the black resin. Actually none of these frogs came out nicely, because of the already damaged vat floor..
Time for some new test results:
Somehow, after a month or so, the FunToDo resin starts to shift a bit to dark green instead of the (original) black... Not all FunToDo resins having this this bad. Maybe the resin was staying too long in the vat..?
Learnings:
Time for a new vat floor..
I'm not sure what to try next. Some people are using FEP instead of Sylgard. First I want that shutter ready, then it's time for a new vat... I was also thinking about getting more air on top of the vat or make a flexible vat floor (pillow vat) or getting back to active/passive tiling or go for Top-Down approach.. In the mean while, the old vat is still covered under some (black) resin. This will be a nice test, to see what's happening, after >>2 months without printing & without any air penetrating into the Sylgard...
I also need some more material to build new vat frames. I really like to test FEP on thin PolyCarbonate plates. Also dreaming about an only (FEP) foil solution. This should work best, although this will be a challenging construction..