You want to avoid having a light-off delay too low because it is known to reduce the overall lifetime of your LCD due to overheating. A really well done support set up for your model has a pretty big impact on print orientation. I know PrusaSlicer tends to use supports all the way across the bottom of resin 3D prints, so the 45° angle isn’t necessary for success. Both have overhauled their printers with new features, improving already solid builds with higher-quality parts with precision in mind.

It also boasts superior heat distribution and a larger build volume. It also runs very quietly owing to the more powerful mainboard – at only 35-45dB. The picture below was a test for an auto-orientation and auto-support in Lychee Slicer, along with a few custom supports along the bottom, though the print orientation angle is much more than 45°.The new version of the slicer has been completed and optimised with some improved and updated features. Not only is the new user interface much easier to use - the slicing process has also been made a whole lot easier. It’s more of a “soft curing” to build up the layers successfully, but to properly harden the plastic resin model, we use a strong UV light for many minutes. This same principle applies in terms of making the bottom layers stronger. What is Bottom Layer Count in Resin 3D Printing? Exposure time is the amount of time that each layer is exposed to the printer’s UV light or light source during the printing process. The quality of a print is affected by the exposure time because the light source is responsible to cure the liquid resin. The Photon Mono 4K has a print resolution of 3840 x 2400, 35 µm XY pixels and 7% light transmission, which guarantees highly detailed prints. The printing speed reaches up to 50 mm / h and the curing time of a single layer is only 1.5 seconds. The original Elegoo Mars and Anycubic Photon printers aren’t competitive anymore, and newer releases have improved them greatly. Here are the printers we’ll cover from Anycubic and Elegoo.

There are quite a few lifting and speed settings with resin 3D printing, but a good value is something that is fairly slow. People tend to go with a lifting speed of 1-3mm/s or 60-180mm/min. Neither the Anycubic Photon nor the Elegoo Mars will blow you away with their build volumes. These are compact, entry-level resin printers aimed at small parts, miniatures, and models.

It comes with an extra large screen protector for the LED glass, which covers the glass and the slight gap around it. This makes keeping the printer clean super easy. The Photon Mono 2 uses a 6.6-inch monochrome 4K+ LCD screen with a resolution of 4096 x 2560 pixels. With better resolution, even highly detailed prints can become the norm! You also want to give some space for the supports to build up a good enough foundation before getting to the print itself. For the Anycubic Photon, I saw ranges between 4 – 10x the normal exposure time for the bottom exposure times, so you can take a rough average of 7x the normal exposure time.

Like all 3D printers, the Anycubic Photon Mono 2 requires calibration before its first print. Leveling the build plate is fairly straightforward and only takes a piece of paper and an Allen wrench. The bottom layer count is simply the number of first layers that you will expose UV light on for the set bottom exposure time. These layers ensure strong adhesion to the build plate and help in building a successful 3D model. Have a read of my article Best Orientation of Parts for 3D Printing for more details. Best Light-Off Delay Settings You do have to keep in mind that the best precision comes about in the Z-axis too, so having the most intricate details along the Z-axis makes a lot of sense. A balance is needed to get the print orientation perfect. What is Light-Off Delay in Resin 3D Printing?Z-Lift Height is the distance set between your model and the build plate. It stops your models from being built directly on the build plate, allowing it to be fully supported by supports and a raft. How to Get the Perfect Resin Settings An ideal light-off delay setting is quite hard to come up with because it depends on your 3D printer. General settings tend to fall between 0.5-2 seconds, so I’d take a mid-value of that, being around 1-1.5 seconds. Different printing parameters and post-processing processes will present different results. If you encounter For beginners, using that print orientation usually brings about higher success, especially when done in a way to reduce the need of many supports. If you have long unsupported parts on a model, rotating the model correctly is useful. The resin vat itself had a few surprises that caught me off guard, but were welcome changes from the typical featureless rectangular vat that I was expecting. For one, the vat has a graduated volume legend embossed directly onto the walls which lets you determine the rough amount of resin in the container with just a glance. It also has a pour spout (and a lip) on one corner, which means that the process of pouring resin out is a much cleaner operation than with a hard edge which liquid will spill over and get onto the bottom of the FEP film.

However, Anycubic offers an adjustable power feature on the Anycubic Photon Mono 4K, allowing you to switch between 30% and 100% power, so you can use it with other special non-405nm resins. This opens a range of other possibilities for your resin printing. Print quality is indistinguishable between the two, chiefly due to vastly identical specifications. Layer lines are more noticeable with aliasing, so anti-aliasing visually tries to reduce layer lines. People have mixed results with this setting depending on what slicer they used, what the model is, and how large of an anti-aliasing setting they used. The Raft Area Ratio corresponds to how much of a raft will be used in comparison to the print itself. Raising the raft area ratio does well to increase adhesion and provide a great foundation for supports and a heavy model. It does increase resin usage. So yes, I used an aluminum tray to prevent any spills that I may have from the printing platform to reach unwanted surfaces, and I did use two separate plastic containers with lids for the isopropyl alcohol. I went a bit overboard, so I covered the entire table by a transparent plastic layer and then I put the printer into the aforementioned tray, but my routine was the following.The print model is orientated in software before starting the printing process. A badly oriented 3D print can cause a major difference in the print quality and overall printing success. The connectivity options for our two contenders are identical, with both limited to a lone USB port. Perfect Bottom Exposure Time: 7 – 16 times longer than the normal exposure time depending on resin printer strength. Changes in the structure or design of the model can harm the model’s strength and integrity, and it can also result in a print model with visible surface lines as well.