Credibility; gone. New directions; photon

[Original draft article 2019-05-21]

So i'd decided that i'd had enough of printing a couple of months back; up to and including the point where my FDM printer is now the property of a fellow hobbiest.

A quiet paint table, i thought... no cycles of urgency to finish existing projects due to new things arriving fresh off the print tray...

Yeah, well, that lasted at least a few weeks, and --- i'm definitely playing the "i wasn't 100% health-wise" card on this one --- i ended up getting an Anycubic Photon printer.

Decisively entering the world of RESIN... finally.    The last (FDM) printer was a toss up with the Photon and the Photon lost the day... that day.

All of this is relatively old news for me. I've now had the printer (super quick postage) for a matter of days. And if you read into that that i'm planning on taking my time with the project (if not the purchase) then have some bonus points.

- - -

[Somewhat later: 2019-05-27]
The weekend came and went, and i had my first print session. Pretty much all Saturday interspersed with cleaning etc.

Whatever plans i thought i could make in advance were pretty much all wrong. Especially those involving time frames and how quickly i'd be churning out armies of resiny goodness.

That's not to say that i didn't have successes or progress;  just that there's a lot of learning to do and i'm going to have to reconsider a bunch of things. The prep work i did manage to do was all worthwhile, so yhay for that.

Here we have the very first print job underway. Way too much resin in the vat... Lesson 1.

This is the tray job complete, it contains about 1/7th of the models that i loaded onto the print job. Don't put to many thing on the tray. Lesson 2.

That said, the models that did print were generally usable, so that's a plus.

I then immediately ran the same job again, this time nothing came out at all. which i found out after an hour of wait time.
Turns out that even though the bits didn't print on the first job they still left a 'shadow' on the vat film so nothing stuck and nothing congealed. Lesson 3 - give the vat film a scrape down after each job.

I then ran another smaller batch and turned up the exposure time and got some results, but again missing models.
I then re-levelled and adjusted the build plate down further. pretty much every model printed. yhay! Lesson 4, the build plate must be right down snug on the vat film.

I tried pausing the job to see if i could see if things were looking like they'd 'caught' on the build plate, but too much goop (Lesson 4.5  just have to wait it out).

So after all these (effectively trial) runs i'd managed to produce these...

At this stage i was using the sun for curing. Does the trick, and i had my hands full to get the little uv lamp operational while working on the other processes.

Clean up of the models was fairly easy. The dunking containers with the inserts worked a treat; scrape models off the build plate into the iso (dirty) tank (isopropyl alcohol) -> agitate -> transfer and agitate in iso (clean) tank -> transfer, rinse, swirl and spit in tap water container.   Then onto some towel to cure.  Left to cure for ages (1/2 hour) which should be way overkill.

For the final print run of the day the sun was over the horizon so i brought out the uv lamp and used that. Seemed to work ok/as anticipated.

The cleanup/reset between print jobs was far more tedious than processing the models: filtering vat resin back into the container -> wiping resin up (though i'm relatively clean so far) -> scraping the vat film -> wipe down ->  iso wipe down ->  vat back onto printer  ->  resin back in vat  ->  restart.   Bit tedious compared to FDM (scrape model off tray -> restart).
and i'm going to need more filters if this is my process. i'm considering a baking sieve/strainer and melting out any residue with iso.

So this is what i managed to churn out during day 1....

Which is a full formation and 2 sticks of 'characters'.

Only did saturday as i had stuff to do sunday... and already had burnout :)

But between now and then i kinda reconsidered my approach to the project amongst other things. primarily i'm going to go with different bases (after seeing someone else's recent efforts).

so rather than going on 40x12mm bases ('a', or pic above) i'm going to be using 32x20mm bases (b)...

this will give the models a bit more room rather than standing there like pins waiting to be bowled over. will give me a bit more room to make the basing a bit better if desired too. The tactical difference provided by 8mm rates in as DNGaF.
With that in mind i...

...managed to snap off 6 1/5 stands of models (so the old stands are toast), for reuse once i print some new bases. Tougher exercise then FDM where the models 'dig out' pretty easily. The resin shatters so it's a little messy but nothing some solid basing can't resolve.

I also noticed that some of the models were missing 'bits' such as knees and gun magazines etc... i think i'm going to need to review the model files to an extent as the project evolves. i'm still ok with this style of model which is heading slightly toward 'comic book' and i'm sure they'll look a little more up-market on bigger bases.

So yeah, learnt a lot and i'm not going to have even my first new army done anytime soon but it's vaguely on the way.


Wrap up
While... i see the potential of this medium and fully intend to follow this course and see where it leads, i can say that i experienced the same sense of... awe, or perhaps elation that i did when i churned out my first few FDM marines.

I'm still pleased with the result of course and i think the armies i'll produce will be good, better definitely, than the ones that came before; but yeah, not the same sense of wonder that i had when i first started back in... 2016.


Late Adds - 20190528
Maintaining the theme of inability to stick to my plans... bulk gloves arrived last night so i midweek printed a couple of 32x20 bases to move that task along.

My first 'official' stand... emperor's champion leading the way!!

Didn't get around to basing the other stuff... didn't get in until 'later' and it's getting a bit cold in the garage now days. Weather was windy so 'de-fumed'* things pretty well.

That was 2 print runs, at approximately 14 minutes apiece, and 5 bases each (no new dudes).

* The resin smell isn't that intense. You probably wouldn't want to be huffing it all day everyday, but in passing it's kinda noticeable but not distracting. Like... really mild exhaust fumes or when you unroll new carpet and it has 'new rubber smell' - rather than a petrol spill.  Better to keep the garage ventilated in any case.


Late Adds - 20190530

More midweek prints - it was quite windy (and cold) yesterday afternoon and evening so thought i'd try a couple of things given adequate ventilation...

Vehicles (and 32x32 bases) obviously. just went with the standard files i've been running. seems to go ok.
After that i ran a batch of infantry, using auto-generated bases and supports and also trying tilting the models. my gut tells me this ran 'better', but that could be subjective.
There's still a bit of an issue with things like gun magazines printing 'weird', not enough that you'd notice unless you were looking for it.  Overall i think the overall quality was a little higher.

re: the marshal (supreme commander) character (right-most stand) i've decided to take the banner of the old set's marshal and reuse that, mainly for nostalgia sake. it's a bit chunky but should still work. one of the guys's has a pistol and a free hand so should be able to convert him into a standard bearer, rather than having a free-standing flag like the old set.  

Lots to go.

Until next time...