welcome back to the channel today we're
gonna have a little bit of fun and go
back to the basics i'm gonna take you
through the absolute
basic beginner lessons of
resin printing
let's get started before we get into the
actual tutorial and lesson in this video
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with the recent kind of abundance of
super cheap
3d printers out there that i've been
seeing pop up i've been seeing some
resin based printers popping up for
99.99 out there on the internet with
that cheapness and ubiquitousness what
happens is you get tons and tons of
people that
will buy one just in case or buy one for
a friend and so there are a lot of
people entering into the 3d printing
community that don't necessarily know
how to operate them i've personally
received three messages of people asking
me
why won't the file i downloaded from
thingiverse print on my printer i put it
on the memory card i put it in the
printer and nothing happens and this
seems like a perfect opportunity to run
through the process from beginning to
end in the most basic terms to help
people figure out how these work so that
they can safely use them and get great
results and have fun 3d printing okay
let's go over the
outline of what i'm going to discuss in
this video
first up what is a resin printer how
does it compare to a filament based 3d
printer then we're going to talk about
where to get files for your printer
how to prepare those files for your
printer how to prepare your printer for
printing
then after printing how to finish the
print which is involved with a resin
based printer
and then how to clean out your printer
all right let's compare a filament-based
printer with a resin printer so over
here we have a filament-based printer
you can pretty much identify them at a
glance because they're all going to have
some very similar features they're going
to have an extruder that moves around
somehow that's a very hot little nozzle
and they shove filament through that hot
nozzle just like a hot glue gun then
they have a bed that they put the
plastic on and they build it up
layer by layer there's different
configurations different price ranges
different sizes but they all kind of
have those same things in common the
moving
extruder and the use of filament
a resin printer however there are
various styles types and technologies
the one that i'm going to focus on is
msla and here's the anatomy of a resin
printer
you typically have a
this is the bed this is where the the 3d
printed part is going to reside and it
is what you would think of as upside
down compared to a normal printer this
bed moves up and down
this right here is the reservoir this is
where all of your
resin is going to sit
and then below the reservoir which is
clear by the way
you can see some resin in there
you have your screen now there are
variations there are design variations
there's different styles but they all
basically have
all of the msla printers basically have
a screen
a reservoir and a bed that moves up and
down
so your your printer that you got for
dirt cheap probably has these same
things
so you've got a 3d printer to 3d print
stuff right but everybody comes to this
point and they wonder where do i get the
files to 3d print
there are a couple of options basically
you can make your own or you can go out
and find them
on the internet
uh i'm not going to get into how to
model your own files that's a that's a
big topic that is complicated and takes
a lot of practice
but that is one option the other option
of course is downloading them off the
internet and there are so many places
where you can get files and people put
files out there for free that you can
download
and print on your machine
there's all kinds of cool stuff out
there a few places to look would be
thingiverse.com
that's a probably the biggest
file repository out there it's probably
the oldest as well but a few others have
come up and grown up
over the past few years there's prusa
printers
which is actually the manufacturer of
both of these printers
there's umagin which i believe is
connected to ultimaker
thingiverse i didn't mention earlier is
connected to makerbot
um
and then there are some some search
engine style ones that search through
all of them i believe one of them is
called yegi i'm going to put the names
of a few of the search engine style ones
in the description below because i can't
remember them off the top of my head
so now you've downloaded your file or
modeled your own file and it's what's
called an stl file that's a model that's
the 3d shape and you know broken down
into programming languages or whatever
the fact is though your printer doesn't
know what to do with that so you have to
put it in something called a slicer
that's a piece of software
that creates all the layers based off of
the 3d information
this right here is prusa slicer it's the
slicer that i use for
my resin printer one of the more common
ones that you'll see out there is called
chi-2 box and a lot of the ones you see
for manufacturers are actually even
based off of
the qi2 box
slicer but basically it's a piece of
software that you load your model into
and it creates the layers based off of
the 3d information so that your printer
knows what to do this is also where
you'll do things like change the quality
based off of the layer thicknesses and
things like the amount of time that each
layer is exposed to light
and you'll find those settings are
important for different resins so if you
get a resin that needs longer curing
times it'll usually stay somewhere on
the bottle or on their website and you
can adjust those things in the slicer
the slicer then once you have your model
let me load a model
once you have your model loaded and
you've changed your settings to be how
they need to be that includes things
like the quality but also things like
supports if your model needs supports
for areas that are maybe going to be
printed out in midair
then you hit the slice button most of
these all have a slice button and that
creates what's called g-code or
for some
resin printers they call it something
else
the file suffix is something other than
g-code
but basically it's all the the
code that your printer needs to know to
print the file
you spit that out onto a usb stick for a
memory card depending on your resin
printer
now we get to the fun part where things
start to get dirty you've got your
printer hopefully you took it out of the
box and followed the instructions for
the initial calibration that's things
like getting the bed set up properly
and you know getting all the pieces in
the right places you should already have
done that and it's a little bit
different for each machine
but for printing what you're going to
find is that each machine usually has a
maximum
level on the
reservoir that you can fill it to you
want to do that with the bed out of the
tank
you fill it up to that maximum level
then you insert your memory stick with
the special code on it that tells your
printer what to do
and tell it to print that's really about
it as far as getting your printer ready
to go it handles the rest kind of keep
an eye on it to make sure it's printing
it's frustrating with resin printers
because you don't know immediately if
your print has failed until it's gotten
about this far into the print
but once you've verified that it's
printing fine you leave it alone until
it's done
all right now your print is done except
it's all gloopy and gross and slimy and
frankly
toxic now if you're printing on a
regular filament-based printer you could
call it done at this point you can pop
something off of a regular printer's
print bed and just
have it and be done with it and hold it
you know no issues but this is still
covered in uncured resin and needs to be
cleaned
to clean a resin printed part you're
going to need to use isopropyl alcohol
sometimes people just refer to it as
ipa you can buy this at your local
hardware store
it's good to look for 99
isopropyl alcohol if you go to a grocery
store even you can find uh rubbing
alcohol in places but look at the bottle
real close because some of them will be
like 50 or something like that the
higher the percentage of alcohol the
better though the others will work in a
pinch
there are some resins
that are water soluble but that's a
little bit more complicated because you
ideally don't want to be washing them
down the drain in your sink
and i'll i'll leave that for a later
video for now all you need to know is
that you have to clean
your print now
uh you can just take your print out and
dump it in a jug of isopropyl alcohol
scrub it off and then cure it there's a
second curing stage that comes after
printing it
to cure it
i will be using a curing station i'll
get into that in a moment but you really
could just set it out in the sun the uv
rays from the sun will cure it
eventually or you can buy a uv light
this is what i used before i had a
curing station it's just a high power uv
light in the right frequency
and um
i just set the part in front of this on
a little turntable and let it cure for a
few hours now since then i've gotten a
curing station these are getting to be
more and more common i've seen them as
cheap as a hundred dollars and even i
saw one with a coupon yesterday that
went down to 50 for a curing station
this is the prusa wash and cure which
means it does both washing
and curing this is a tub of
ipa
and what this will do is i'll throw the
part in here it will use magnets to stir
it and wash it and then i will take this
whole assembly apart and cure it
different people will tell you different
orders to do things and you really just
have to figure out what you like to do
on your own
this is just finished washing for the
first time and what i like to do is wash
it take it out and pull off the supports
and maybe clean up some spots that
need to be ground down a little bit wash
it again
set it out and let it fully dry
and then cure it so let's just take a
look at this after the first washing
now this is a fairly uh delicate print
that i modeled and normally what i would
do is come in with tweezers or needle
nose pliers and very delicately remove
these supports but for the sake of this
video i won't make you sit through that
what i will do is just
carefully
snap them off with my finger here
even if it's gonna
cause some of this very delicate file to
be maybe a little damaged
and you can see they come off fairly
easily for the most part
and then what i do is i wash it again to
get any of the resin that was kind of
trapped by the supports
and i let it fully dry before i cure it
now that step of letting it fully dry i
do because if i cure it while it's still
wet like this
it's kind of hard to see that on camera
i get kind of white splotches where any
little puddles of uh alcohol and resin
might have been so that's why i let it
dry fully before i cure it so we did one
wash
removed the supports i'm gonna do
another wash it's it's absolutely up to
you whether or not that's the method you
want to employ and then i will cure it
in the in the uv light
here you can see what this wash station
is doing there's magnets in there
that are spinning a stirrer inside here
that's causing turbulence in the uh
alcohol to clean it off i think wash and
care stations are
fantastic
like i said there's a few different
brands you can get
but i highly recommend them if you're
going to get
a resin based 3d printer
all right time to cure the part
so there are several ways to cure your
part like i was saying before if you
don't have a
washing and curing station you can just
use a uv light and a turntable i got
this little solar turntable on amazon
you put your part on there
and you turn on your light
it should be strong enough to power the
turntable put this inside of a cardboard
box lined with aluminum foil to bounce
the light around and leave it for an
hour or something it doesn't have to be
real scientific
i don't use this method anymore because
i got curing stations so let's do that
method now watch out this is uv light it
can be harmful to your eyes
and skin with long exposures so
you know don't sit around staring at
your uv light
with a curing station
they all kind of work very similarly
where you put your part in it it's got a
turntable it's got uv lights in it
you
tell it to go
and you can't really see from there you
might be able to see a little bit of a
glow around the edge here yeah
there's a uv light in there curing the
part after it's cured you're done unless
you of course want to then finish the
part by you know sanding it and painting
it and stuff like that
all right the last step is extremely
important and probably the least fun and
that's cleaning your machine
you don't have to do this after every
print if you're going to be doing a
bunch of prints with the same material
you can do them one after another but i
do recommend you clean out your machine
somewhat frequently because it will
save you some heartache if you're
encountering some problems
to clean out your machine generally what
i mean is you need to dump the resin out
of the vat and clean the the reservoir
this also gives you an opportunity to
inspect your fep foam
now
ideally you would have a mesh
filter of some kind and a
funnel this is a funnel i 3d printed and
i just rearranged my shop and can't find
my filters so this time i'm doing it
without a filter
uh you pour your resin back in
watch out you can make a horrible mess
doing this
and then what you're gonna do is use uh
ideally some soft shop wipes to wipe
this out
spray it with isopropyl alcohol and wipe
it out if you use a rough material like
a standard paper towel what you'll find
is that you're scratching up your fep
foam that's this clear material here
the fep foam will get scratched up and
degrade over time if you use rough
materials it'll probably degrade over
time anyway but it'll last longer if you
use softer shop towels
this also gives you an opportunity to
inspect four pinholes i recommend after
you drain it and wipe it down
you hold up a strong light behind it and
move it around and see if you can find
any pinholes a tiny little pinhole will
leak resin onto your screen and that
will ruin
your entire day and possibly your entire
machine
also pay attention when you're filming
videos because this bed is over here
dripping right onto my screen and
i'm gonna scream
thanks so much for joining us i hope you
learned something if you've got any more
tips for beginners be sure to leave them
in the comments down below and you know
be helpful to the the 3d printing
community that's just coming on board
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