3D printing - What a difference a setting makes...

Since the first excursion into 3D printing left me with a bit of mixed feelings, I haven't been doing a lot with my Anycubic Photon 3D printer lately.

When I was drawing up a part for the Aston Martin DBS I'm currently working on I thought I might as well give the Motegi wheel for the Ferrari F458 GT2 (my first project on the Anycubic) another go.

As I was convinced that the part I drew in OnShape shouldn't pose a problem for it.

I adapted the 3D model a bit to prevent the resin liquid from pooling up in smaller areas hoping that this would fix the issue of residue clogging the said areas as happened with my first attempt.

I also played around with the settings, giving the respective layers a longer exposure time.

Where I used the blue framed settings for the first print, I opted for the red framed one this time.

The values are taken from a public document available on the internet where people can contribute their settings.

And boy did that work.

Okay. Maybe it was a combination of room temperature and exposure time. I'm not sure. But I'll definitely be using these setting again for future prints.

I'm completely astonished at how good this print turned out. No flash, no residue, just a nearly perfect wheel. Below are pictures of the first attempt (left) and the second attempt (right)

As can be seen on the right image, the spokes are now open and not the tiniest bit of residue in sight. I'm going to print this wheel again, this time with the spokes closed again.

The other thing I'm going to change is the wheel nut. I'll be printing the wheel without the nut and will print the nut separately. I'm going to redesign the nut slightly to give it some more detail. This will come at the sacrifice of realism, but I think that won't be such a drama.

All this gives me confidence to try and print some more parts in the near future.

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Axel's corner

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