Gorram Plays with Toxic Chemicals

The machine I was given was in a bit of a state. There was resin all over the outer casing and the stickiness was just gross to touch. As a neat-freak kind of a person, I needed to deal with this before anything else. 

An hour or so of hard graft and it is no longer sticky. The cover is still pretty nasty but there’s no uncured resin gumming up anything. After that was done, I reset the x and z, as well as testing the screen. All working fine… at least as far as I know.

Next up was updating the firmware – quick download from the manufacturer’s website, load onto a usb and “print” the files in the machine to push the software updates. No actual printing.

Picking a slicer next and I’m a fan of third party for most things. They tend to make more useful software. I don’t know how long I’ll have this machine and a lot of the more recent ones are tying themselves to Chitubox. It doesn’t seem great but it’s shortfalls can be fixed with other software and then exported over for final slicing and printing. To get used to Chitubox seems like a good opening move and so I downloaded and installed it.

Next I wanted a calibration print test. There are many out there and I first downloaded the Cones of Calibration however looking into it, that takes 40 minutes to print. The similar tool from Phrozen takes around twenty minutes. As cool as the cones look, it kind of seems like a waste of extra time. I’m working on this in the evenings after work so my time is limited. Sorry cones.

Although my machine comes up in the printer list in Chitubox, it is too old to come with resin profiles pre-loaded. I’ve decided to go with Sunlu resin as it is cheap but has good reviews for minis. A visit to their website gave me the ranges for the particular resin I was using. Obviously, actual settings (mostly here we’re talking about exposure times for bottom layers and the rest of the print) vary from printer to printer and room temperatures. So next up is calibration and first prints *fingers crossed*