Quick List: Everything You Need for Pro-Level Prints with Entry-Level Printers
The newest wave of Resin-based 3D Printers has been pretty amazing. The quality of prints you can get on even entry level printers is on par with even industry grade printers. The process can get pretty messy and there’s a bit of a learning curve but a little preparedness and organization can go an incredibly long way when using this technology. Here’s a quick list of all the supplies and suppliers I’ve found trustworthy for printing with printers like the Mars, Photon, Epax, etc.
Even more important than having all the right supplies is having the right approach. Take steps slowly, visualize and understand what each next step will be before doing it and take your time in figuring it out. There’s a lot of moving parts and delicate details to screw up when it comes to resin printing but there’s an incredibly high ceiling on the precision it affords
Quick list of all the supplies and suppliers with trustworthy products for printing with resin printers. Mars, Photon, etc.
Resin —Great starting points in fluidity, stability, curing times, etc are: Elegoo ABS-Grey; Elegoo Quick-Cure Skin (Clip BEFORE curing, very hard, difficult to chip but SNAPS off under clippers); AnyCubic Quick-Cure Grey. For extreme quality and durability, there’s options for high molecular bonding resins. These are extremely pure and can produce the most rigid, regular molecular lattices as they cure so they can withstand enough temperature and pressure to be used in things like race car engines. They can also produce very stable and durable rubber-like (like crocs) consistency without crumbling or tearing
Paper Towels (of course) — The more practice you get at this the less and less paper towels you will use, I promise you.
*Please note, however, it is my experience that no matter how good you get at this, even if you could clean your entire house with a single sheet, your spouse is still likely to get mad at you about how many you are using
Micro cloth — for cleaning off your FEP Film without scratching the bejesus out of it and diffracting UV everywhere.
Garbage Bags —Any brand should do, the good ones use Polyethylene builds (and thats probably best with all the UV and acetone flying around)
Absorbent Pads — These will save you a TON of clean-up time. Use them to line your table. After a few days when they get too messy or soaked you just throw them out and start over! NOTE: DO NOT work on wooden surface. It will absorb dangerous residues. DO NOT work on any table with a oils, waxes, resins, rubber, plastics, lacquers, varnishes, rubber cement finish, it will dissolve or react. Also: Custom made resin pad
Solvents & Safety— These are huge. Where/When to use each of these will make your life a million times easier and the whole process go a million times faster. My first prints I’d struggle along for hours. Now that I know when/where to use each solvent properly, whenever a print is finished, I put on pair of nitrile gloves and a minute and a half later, my prints are curing and the next prints are running. The absolute bottom line when it comes to cleaning prints with solvents is this: AVOID any and all moisture. Water molecules that find their way into your resin will get in the way as the resin starts to bond and harden and it will reduce the quality and hardness.
91–99% Isopropyl —(Rubbing alcohol) Use on build-plate, use on FEP, use on resin vat, use to quick wash. This is your safest method of washing tools and parts. Don’t use on prints except as a “dirty wash”. There is a lot of water mixed into it the moment you open the cap — your prints should never be left to sit and absorb water.
*NOTE ON ISOPROPYL — No matter how pure, these solvents always absorb water from moisture in the air. This is true for all alcohols. And purity percentage is practically meaningless. Isopropyl will come to a watered down equilibrium of ~70% (iirc) no matter what. The more pure it is the more quickly it can evaporate out and let moisture from the air in. See Acetone below.
Acetone — This is your biggest time saver and greatest asset. Wash build plates, wash FEP, wash resin tank, wash prints. Acetone will do wonders for the hardness, quality, curing times and detail of your prints. It makes washing your 3D Printer incredibly easy and won’t need to be wiped down because it will evaporate away extremely quickly. It does not form the same hydrogen bonds with water that alcohols do so there’s no worries about moisture.
-Avoid brands made for nails — they have additives that will prevent all these great properties and will leave streaks
- Pure acetone melted my rubber spatula (boo) and will irritate your nostrils if you hold the bottle under your nose and breathe it directly but it will wash a newborn baby yoda to perfection and not leave a single blemish or mark behind. It does not touch the reacted resin.
-Try not to handle Acetone with Nitrile gloves. Best to use heavy duty reusable kitchen gloves when handling acetone OR use any rubber gloves used in nail salons. This pair is textured and reusable
**MY MVP** Foaming Glass Cleaner — This brand of foam-action glass cleaner is designed not to leave streaks so it’s ideal for cleaning your LCD screen and even the FEP film on the bottom of your resin vat. It also does a bang-up job on your build-plate. Using this stuff put an end to all “build plate adhesion issues” we all know and love. Will save you an absolute TON of money on paper towels, acetone, alcohol, broken FEP, micro fiber and tissues to wipe away tears every time your print adheres to the bottom instead of the build plate because it wasn’t cleaned to perfection. Like Acetone, it dissolves superfast which is great because you don’t want to rub the FEP film with anything, even paper towels are way too coarse and will leave tiny scratches that won’t necessarily be visible but WILL affect how the UV light shines through so your resolution won’t be perfect
Black Nitrile Gloves + Sexy/Safe Glasses/Goggles —Use every time! No matter how short/long a time, you are touching resin-contaminated material. ree radicals don’t react with chemicals in a “normal ” way they react with anything. They will react with your skin, your sandwich, your DNA, your shirt, your doorknob, your loved ones, your clothes, etc. Anything that they come in contact with.
Separate Bottles for Each Chemical — Write labels on them because its all just a bunch of clear liquids otherwise. A glass of acetone, a glass of isopropyl and a glass of ice cold water to quench your thirst* as you hobby away in the garage all look identical when you put them down at the table you’re working at. The spray-nozzle is another way to save a ton on solvents. Instead of swinging around a giant jug of acetone to splash tiny little miniatures use the spray bottles. They love it. If you’re a true badass, use the laboratory-grade pre-labeled calibrated-strength spray bottles we had in the lab
*Do not ever, under any circumstances, ever, for any reason, bring a beverage or food/drink container of any kind to put down anywhere near your printing space. That’s what specialty bottles and labeling are for.
200 pack paint strainers — Get the tiny bits of reacted resin out of the vat if you’ve been printing for a while or just keep adding more between prints or left it overnight (especially if you left a print drying in there). No one likes chunky resin.
UV Lamp for Photo-Curing — There’s been A LOT of upcharging in these things since the popularity spike in poly resin printers. A good rule of thumb: the more focused the source the better. A strip of many tiny LEDs spread out will produce lower intensity light than, say, the sun. (Don’t trust the wavelengths vendors put in descriptions)
Glue — its surprisingly hard to find glue that works on 3D Printer resins. Some glue is too corrosive, some glue doesn’t adhere or react at all with resin and will slide right off but Epoxy Glue will be chemically compatible.
Replacements:
USB: I don’t know why Printers are so finicky about USBs but I’ve only gotten this PNY 128gb USB working; format to FAT32, Partition Primary, less than 3GB partition Size (rest is empty un-formatted), *128 kb, 256 kb, 512 kb allocation size — no larger than these*
UPDATE: I bought these because they look cool
FEP FILM: I’ve ordered so freaking many replacement kinds, Calorbot FEP Film worked by far the most consistently. (They also make replacement Resin tanks without the film for those asking)
** Order replacement FEP sooner rather than later. The FEP film on the bottom of your vat is supposed to be as thin and straight as possible so it doesn’t bend or obscure the UV light in any way shape or form and as pure as possible so it doesn’t react with resin…. and each time you replace it you have to stretch it over the vat like the skin of a drum and put screws through it while keeping it taut. There will be screw ups at first!
Final bit of advice:
I know using a toothbrush to scrub your prints sounds insane but try it just one time, and see the difference it makes. Toothbrush bristles are made to not scratch enamel and they won’t scratch your resin either. At least not the resin that reacted and is actually part of the print itself. The scrubbing action will allow you to use less acetone and really get all the stray unreacted resin from gunking up details or trapping any moisture.
Instead of sloshing your prints in a dirty vat of alcohol and leaving them out for days while the moisture sits and settles, obscuring the UV light, only to find them fuzzy and brittle, your print will evaporate dry before you even finish putting the toothbrush down and your curing times will literally take minutes instead of days. Now you are the master.
Links to Recommended Printers (for Miniatures):
- Elegoo Mars (Great value, start here)
- AnyCubic Photon
- AnyCubic Mono X
Happy Printing!
In case you’re curious about some of the chem behind it all, here’s one of many papers on moisture in photo polymers where the authors reference this property https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2429978
