The Ship Model Forum

I know some of you have posted the print/slice settings you use somewhere on the forum in various build logs. However, this information is essentially buried in multiple threads and dozens of pages. It would help others adjust their settings for specific printers and resins if the information was in one thread. Right now I am trying to use the Phrozen Fast Black resin and I can find no information for my printer so I am starting with their test pattern and guessing at the settings.

Here is an example of the Chitubox settings I have been using (the original values are marked as "default"):

Machine
Printer: Anycubic Photon Mono
Resolution: X 1620 pixels, Y 2560 pixels
Size: X 82.62 mm, Y 130.56 mm, Z 165 mm [anyone know what this is the "size" of?]

Resin
Resin: Anycubic Basic Grey
Resin Density: 1.1 g/ml [the default setting - I don't know what the actual density is]

Print
Layer Height: 0.030 mm [0.050 mm is the default]
Bottom Layer Count: 6
Exposure Time: 2.0 seconds [default was 5.0 seconds]
Bottom Exposure Time: 40 seconds
Transition Layer Count: 0 [Default - what is this?]
Transition Type: Linear [default]
Waiting Mode During Printing: Light [default]
Light Off Delay: 0.500 seconds [default]
Bottom Light Off Display: 0 [default]
Bottom Lift Distance: 6.0 + 0.0 mm [default]
Lifting Distance: 6.0 + 0.0 mm [default]
Bottom retract Distance: 6.0 + 0.0 mm [default]
Retract Distance: 6.0 + 0.0 mm [default]
Bottom Lift Speed: 240.0 & 0.0 mm/sec [default]
Lifting Speed: 240.0 & 0.0 mm/sec [default]
Bottom Retract Speed: 360.0 & 0.0 mm/sec [default]
Retract Speed: 360.0 & 0.0 mm/sec [default]

Advanced
Bottom Light PWM:255 / [default]
Light PWM: 255 / [default]
Anti-aliasing: ON
Anti-aliasing Level: 2
Grey Level: 4
Image Blur: ON
Image Blur Pixel: 3

Note: anti-aliasing and image blur will compromise the finest detail but produces much smoother surfaces without the aliasing "jaggies."

Different resin manufacturers list very different settings or characteristics for different resins. Even for a single manufacturer they often list different "profiles" or characteristics of their different resins, often using different units for the same setting with different resins. It is all pretty incoherent and often not much help.

And each printer manufacturer tells how to use its brand of resins for their different printers, but finding information for resin from manufacturer X on a printer from manufacturer Y is a futile effort.

Phil

Tom,

How do you "dry" the printed parts? How long?

Phil

Hank,

I dyed a bunch more chains last night - after an hour in the dye they air dried overnight on a paper towel. This morning I held each under a faucet in a stream of warm water for a quick rinse. There was a short (one second?) plume of pigment followed by clear water. The chains are suitably black and flexible after drying.

Phil

For my part I use Isopropyl Alcohol.

It dries in maximum 10 - 15 minutes.

Phil:

I rinse in a bowl of alcohol (this is a water washable resin) then go through several fresh water baths. Submerge in a bowl and agitate by swirling. Then I dab any excess off the base with paper towel, blow dry then place on a hot air register till everything looks dull matt and small bits, rails and ladders have tightened up.

This applies to the water based "Rapid Black".

Good Luck! Tom

Though a lot of accessories could be printed in place, it is sometimes advantageous to print them separately and add on Here I printed a number of the M36 Jackson Tank Destroyers for my amphibious fleet. The turret is separate and has a more of less detailed interior, since it's open. The 50 BMG on the turret bustle of course prints much better individually and the added items such as gas cans, spare tracks, road wheels etc vary from vehicle to vehicle. They of course as separate items can be used elsewhere as well. The only thing I printed as a single piece that would have been better separate was the shell storage in the bustle which ran together a bit.

Amazing that the 50 BMG, an over 100 year old design is still probably the world's best heavy MG?

DrPR wrote:Hank,
I dyed a bunch more chains last night - after an hour in the dye they air dried overnight on a paper towel. This morning I held each under a faucet in a stream of warm water for a quick rinse. There was a short (one second?) plume of pigment followed by clear water. The chains are suitably black and flexible after drying.
Phil

Phil,
Excellent
Glad that works - I'll keep that in mind the next batch I run. I think this could be a better way to "paint" parts that need to be black all over..

Hank

I am printing the Mk37 director with the Phrozen Fast Black resin right now. It has been printing for eight hours, with another four hours to go!!! It is taking more than twice as long as with the Anycubic Basic Grey resin that I have been using.

I am just guessing at the appropriate settings. But it is an educated guess. I found printing information for Fast Black resin on the Phrozen web site. They list the parameters for the Phrozen line of printers, and many of the numbers (lift times, retract times, etc.) are the same for all of their printers.

I used the parameters for printers with a 2.5 second exposure time, and printed the Phrozen test piece. Almost everything printed perfectly the first time! The only failure was the tiniest post, and their YouTube video said to expect that. It did print but broke off while I was washing the piece. Everything else was very crisp.

The lift and retract speeds (60/150 mm/minute) are much slower than for the Basic Grey resin (240/360 mm/minute). What speeds do those of you who have experience with Fast Black use?

Phil

Phil:

I use more like 4 seconds exposure, however that's with a different printer so the exposures would vary quite a bit with the light intensity available.

Hope it works well for you!

Cheers: Tom

The Phrozen Fast Black resin print of the Mk37 director finally finished after 12.5 hours!
This is the "spider" antenna support. The "jaggies" are horrible! This is much worse than the results with the Anycubic Basic Grey resin, even though I used the same vertical step/slice thickness (0.03 mm), anti-aliasing and image blur to try to produce smooth surfaces. This was a 2.5 second exposure.
The director shell is just as bad! It reminds me of the German tanks of WWII with the gunk applied to the surface to prevent magnetic "mines" from being attached - or the grout used for laying linoleum!
The Basic Grey resin version has a very smooth surface with the same printing parameters except for 2 second exposure.
The Fast Black barbette. The water washdown piping and the 1MC speaker horn printed correctly, but the surface shows lots of jaggies and the horizontal hand/foot rails look like wet noodles. This is after drying in air overnight and then curing.
Basic grey barbette. Same angles, same supports.
The antenna disk also shows lots of jaggies, and has a hole like the Basic Grey version. What is odd about this is that the antenna was printed with the dish horizontal, so if the hole is the result of a pixel diameter and layer thickness issue, there should be four holes arranged symmetrically around the vertical axis. I'll have to scratch my head a bit to figure this one out.

Well, to say these results were disappointing is an understatement!

The ship's big binoculars: Lots of jaggies, and not nearly as smooth as the Basic Grey version. The saluting gun was the same story: I am getting the same extremely small details like nuts and bolts, the saluting gun breech handle and binoculars handles with both resins, but the Basic Grey versions are a LOT smoother. These things were printed at the same angles with both resins and with the same anti-aliasing settings. The Basic Black parts are unusable.

Tom said he used 4 second exposures with the Basic Black resin. I used the 2.5 second exposure that Phrozen recommended for some of its printers. I suppose this could contribute to the jaggies. Both resins are translucent in very this sections like the antenna dish. More UV light may be penetrating the Basic Grey resin, causing more exposure and resin curing in the "jaggies" areas.

U could use more Image Blur (4 instead of 3) in the Chitubox Advanced settings, but I doubt that this would help much.

Both the Basic Grey and Rapid Black prints were done with a step/slice thickness of 0.03 mm. This is just a bit more than the minimum 0.025 mm Phrozen claims for the Rapid Black resin. I have demonstrated that 0.01 mm layer height produces a much smoother surface with the Basic Grey resin. But if I used 0.01 mm with the "Rapid" Black resin the layer count would triple and it would take over 36 hours to print these things! It takes about 6 hours with the Basic Grey resin.

The extraordinarily long print times with the "Fast" Black resin are caused by the very slow movement of the print platform recommended by Phrozen for its printers.

Given these horrible results I see no reason to waste more time messing with the "Fast" Black resin.

I would really appreciate it if someone who has had good experience with the Fast Black resin would post the Lift Speed and Retract Speed they are using.

Phil

Import an existing .PHZ file back into Chitubox and enlarge. You will see that the slicer has really turned what you though was a smooth surface into a structure resembling LEGO blocks. I am using by now an ancient (2 yr) printer which can use what I think is a high resolution resin and come out with acceptable forms in print. Take a new more capable printer and using a resin that delivers a higher accutance (edge sharpness, a film photography property similar in effect to "Unsharp mask" in photoshop) and you are going to end up with something closer to exactly what the slicer has told the printer to make. So if you don't like the LEGO effects you are getting, go back to a goopy lower resolution resin.

Well, the hulls are complete on the Liberty Ships. Now the details are in progress.

Tom,

That may be the issue, but my Anycubic Photon Mono is hardly a "high resolution" printer. In fact, it is near the bottom of resolution capabilities.

It has a 0.05 mm pixel size (XY) and that limits the XY resolution. In some of my test prints with the Anycubc Basic Grey resin and a 0.05 mm vertical step size I do see the slice steps. And the vertical streaks in the Phrozen Fast Black prints are the "jaggies" caused by the 0.05 mm pixel size. So the Basic Grey resin obviously isn't so "goopy" that it prevents jaggies.

I was able to create smooth surfaces with Basic Grey by adopting a 0.3 mm vertical step height for most things, and 0.01 mm for nearly horizontal surfaces. In addition, I found the Chitubox Advanced Settings anti-aliasing features helped to blur the edges a bit and produce very nice smooth surfaces.

For the Fast Black director prints I used the same anti-aliasing settings that I used with the Basic Grey resin, but they don't seem to have helped much. I could reduce the vertical step size to 0.01 mm (the limit of the printer) to smooth things out a bit but that would triple the already excruciatingly long print time. And I could increase exposure time to let more UV light penetrate the current layer to allow the anti-aliasing features a better opportunity to smooth out the jaggies.

For these tests I will use something a lot smaller than the director because the "Fast" Black resin is anything but fast using the lift and retract speeds recommended by Phrozen. Having to wait days for results does not induce me to run many tests.

****

I have asked this question several times before, and I will ask it again.

What lift and retract speeds are you using with the Phrozen Fast Black resin?

Phil

There is something else going on here that I do not understand!

Here is an image from Chitubox showing the Fast Black resin print project:
Notice that the director shell is rotated 15 degrees from horizontal on both the X and Y axes. So any jaggies caused by the vertical step size (slices) should be diagonal across the faces of the part.

Now look at the printed part again:
Notice that the "jaggies" are not angled 15 degrees to the faces of the part! Those lines are parallel to the bottom of the director, and it was angled to the horizontal.

Interrogative Whisky Tango Foxtrot!

However, a close look at the picture of the front of the director does show some faint lines angled to the base of the director - similar to what I have seen in some Basic Grey prints. These were expected.

If that isn't enough to mess with your mind, look at this picture:
The jaggies do not run parallel to the director bottom on the sides of the part!! On the left side of the image they are angled approximately equal to the tilt of the part (15 degrees X and Y).

But the grooves (faintly visible) in the surface on the right near the front of the director are almost perpendicular to the grooves on the left side!! I can see that this might be due to the 0.05 mm pixels.

But the cylindrical hand rails show none of the jaggies! They look fine and are what I expected.

This is hurting my brain!

****

Examination of the STL file in three different programs reveals only smooth surfaces - the ridges are not in the CAD or STL file. Chitubox shows the surfaces as smooth (see above). A careful examination of the sliced image in Chitubox does not show any jaggies along the slice edges - just smooth edges.

So where are these grooves parallel to the base of the director on the front and back coming from????????

They don't appear in the Basic Gray prints! So, other than the resin itself, what is the difference?

Phil

Go back and reimport a sliced file back into Chitubox and you will see what it really looks like, this what the printer is trying to replicate.

Use whatever works, this is an "AART", not a science despite the use of small numbers and technology.

Actually 3 D printing is of some utility beyond modeling. I set up my dusty Dillon 550 progressive reloading press but was having trouble getting a proper powder charge weight. As it turned out I needed to install the small charge bar, which however needs a SPACER. Who knows where that went, but easy enough to print one!

Tom,

I did look at the sliced file inside Chitubox after it was created, and it didn't show the jaggies. But Chitubox will not read the .PWMO sliced print files that it generates for for the Photon Mono printer.

BUT ...

I figured that the problem had to be in that file anyway, so I ran the original director shell STL file back through the Microsoft 3D Builder program. Sure enough, it reported a lot of problems. This is strange, because I ran the original STL file from the CAD program through 3D Builder and corrected the errors. Then I opened it in Chitubox, changed the orientation, and saved it again as an STL file. Apparently this is where it was screwed up.

I started over and created a new project file from the repaired STL with just two copies of the director shell. One was oriented vertical and the other was tilted 15 degrees on the X and Y axes.

First, a caveat. These aren't the greatest photos. And in my rush to get this done and get to bed before dawn I dropped both of them, and one in an especially dusty place. Rather than wash and wait for it to dry, here it is, dust and all.

This is the part that was printed vertically:
The part does have the "resin shrink" deformity across the top of the back side, like the Anycubic Basic Grey resin vertical prints. The only noticeable jaggies are very slight on the angled face below the Director Officers cockpit - where the Pointer and Trainer's windows are - and on the bloomers. There are jaggies on the curved surfaces of the bloomers in every print with both resins. There are some faint vertical lines on the side, and these are from the 0.05 mm pixels. Small details like the nuts and bolts are very sharp. The side ladder is warped as are the foot rails. And you can see on the right rear lower corner where the rail broke off when I dropped it.

This is the part that was printed angled 15 degrees on the X and Y axes: It dies not have the "resin shrink" deformity, just as the angled Basic Grey resin parts did not have it. Here the jaggies are very apparent on the lower front face, and they are angled as the slices were. The front right side also has jaggies angled to the bottom of the director, apparently also at the printing angle of the slices. The left rear side and the side of the radar cabinet on the rear of the director have jaggies that are parallel to the base and this was unexpected. Again the ladders and the foot rails are warped.

I wonder if the warped pieces can be straightened by applying heat, bending them, and then cooling? I'll have to try that.

I used the same slow lift (60 mm/min) and retract (150 mm/min) speeds, and increased the exposure time to 4 seconds. Anti-aliasing Level = 2, Grey Level = 4 and Image Blur Pixel = 4. Vertical step/slice distance was 0.03 mm.

In this case the vertically printed piece had overall smoother surfaces, and the small details did print nicely. I think it would be usable. The hand/foot rails varied from 31% to 51% oversize (too thick) on the parts printed with 4 second exposure. On an earlier 2.5 second Fast Black print they ranged from 11% to 41% oversized. So longer exposure does make details thicker. However, because I placed supports in the middle of each span I did not see the flattened/fatter sections that I saw on earlier Basic Grey prints without these supports.

The angled piece had worse jaggies, and they are somewhat unpredictable, not always being parallel to the slice plane. This I do not understand. The foot/hand rails ranged from 44% to 66% oversized.

I think I will experiment with faster lift and retract times. This risks having the print stick to the plastic film, but if it works it could save many hours. I should note that on other forums people have reported many problems with print failures where the part did not separate from the film.

Edit: After examining a number of the Anycubic Basic Grey resin pieces and comparing to the Phrozen Fast Black pieces I do think the small details like nuts and bolts are a bit sharper with the Fast Black, but they also print with the Basic Grey. The ladders and rails are straighter with the Basic Grey.

Both resins are fairly flexible after curing, and small details can be broken off of both fairly easily. However, when I separated the thin hand/foot rails from the supports (before curing) I didn't break any of the rails away from their attachments to the shell on the Fast Black parts. This happened often with the Basic Grey parts. Either the uncured Fast Black is tougher than the Basic Grey or I am learning how to do the job without damaging things.

Phil

Tom,

I have a friend who has a filament 3D printer. The first thing he made was a coffee cup adapter for one of their vehicles. The cup holders in the car were too small for their cups so he printed an adapter. He is also building a Van's RV6 and has printed some small cockpit details.

I have also seen people reporting 3D printing special tool holders and templates for use with milling machines.

****

This reminds me of a science fiction story by Larry Niven (I think) called "The Mote In God's Eye" (back in the '60s I think) that described an alien race that didn't carry spare parts or specialized tools on their spaceships. They just created new pieces of whatever they wanted as the need arose. Like whipping out another washer when you can't find a spare.

Or maybe it is just easier to print a new part rather than search through junk boxes to see if you have what you need.

Phil

Another item I replaced with a printed part was the keeper on the rubber watch band for one of my HRM watches I wear playing hockey and skiing. These rubber items seem to have a limited lifespan. The keeper retains the band extending beyond the buckle such that it doesn't stick straight out, an impediment when typing!

When I lived in the Arctic mountains, a favorite plinking/practice with the pistol was using plastic bullets which were fired only by the primer. I think I could make printed plastic bullets. Of course for a semi auto it won't cycle the action, but would work well in a revolver.

Of course after I installed the spacer on the press, the real alloy item showed up. But If I hadn't printed it, I'd still be looking for it.

Cheers: Tom

In the spirit of making more small complex bits that don't fit any ship model that I have or am anticipating, I made this 1:144 MK 63 3" gun director. This was fortuitously used with the twin 3" 50 mounts as on USS Stoddard and some post war auxiliaries. As I happen to have aa associate working on such projects it's not a waste of time.

Umm, fragile? Oui, si, yup...

Tom

As to the 10 ruble coin I usually use, it shrank so much as to no longer be visible.

Looks like a 2006 North Dakota quarter.

Phil