Resin printers can offer excellent surface finish and higher detail than other 3D printing technologies, but they come with their own set of drawbacks. One is that they’re quite sensitive to temperature, generally requiring the resin chamber to be heated to 25-30 degrees Celsius for good performance. To help maintain a stable temperature without a lot of mucking around, [Grant] put together a simple chamber heater for his printer at home.
Rather than go for a custom build from scratch with a microcontroller, [Grant] was well aware that off-the-shelf solutions could easily do the job. Thus, a W1209 temperature control board was selected, available for under $5 online. Hooked up to a thermocouple, it can switch heating elements via its onboard relay to maintain the set temperature desired. In this case, [Grant] chose a set of positive-temperature coefficient heating elements to do the job, installing them around the resin chamber for efficiency.
The heater can preheat the chamber in under fifteen minutes, much quicker than other solutions using space heaters or heat mats. The time savings will be much appreciated by [Grant], we’re sure, along with the attendant increase in print quality. If you’re still not sure if resin printing is for you, have a read of our primer. And, if you’ve got your own workflow improvements for resin printing, drop us a line!
eh, id like someone to make a drop in device to keep resin from having its pigments dropping out of suspension whilst stored in the tray, just had some sirya tech resin poop its pigment all over the fep, great find for a long unattended print
Like a magnetic stirrer? That would also solve the even heating and preheat time issue too.
If we’re really gonna deal with icky resin at home, seems like it this stuff should at least be built into printers.
For thar matter FDM should probably include 1KG drybox spool holders by now too, with PEM dehumidifier tech now that such things exist.
This may only be specific to MSLA, but a magnetic stirrer isn’t possible, because it would take up the same space as the screen, but if a resin compatible pump was made, then that could probably do the trick.
The kind of resin you use makes a huge difference here. The first resin I ever used was ABS resin from Elegoo. It was great for most things and didn’t separate. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I switched to Anycubic. I have a Phrozen mega 8k and it took over 48 hours to make a print. It was all separated by the end and I couldn’t use it. I am trying M68 for it’s non-yellowing properties to see if that works now; but try the elegoo resin. It might work better for you.
Why not put a bright light panel under an HD LCD panel with the backing pealed off. Put it under a tank of the gel and you can print an entire layer at once.
That is exactly how these MSLA printers work.