Alkmaar, The Nederlands. March 2021. This is costing me an arm and a leg.
Note to self. Stop watching videos where the person has been sent a piece of equipment to review by the company. Let's just stick to watching videos from people who actually paid for the thing with their own money. Having forked out your own hard-earned cash on something gives you a different perspective than if it was given to you free of charge.
I did my first test print, the obligatory chess piece, the rook and a calibration piece from Amerlabs. The rook printed perfectly. I never did find the calibration piece. I did find a solid lump of resin stuck to the bottom of the vat instead of the build plate. Something had gone wrong and now I had to clean up the mess.
Fortunately, Elegoo provides you with all the tools you need for printing. They're a set of clippers for removing the supports, a metal scraper for scraping the models off the build plate, a plastic scraper for scraping crap off the FEP film at the bottom of the vat and some fallen keys for sorting out the holder for the build plate. Only use the plastic scraper on the resin vat. Only use the metal scraper on the build plate.
Okay, this is the Mars Pro content. But the Mars 2 content is the same except it has no screwdriver or weird shaped thing with a rectangle in it. You can clearly see the metal scraper (black handle) and the plastic scraper (all yellow). It's easy not to get them mixed up. Don't do it. It can be an expensive mistake.
The Swedish Penguin gang (don't ask) have a couple of printers. One of the guys, Thomas, now has two resin printers. Was he that impressed by them? Probably not. I do believe he managed to put a hole in the FEP film on his resin vat, allowing some resin to leak over the LCD screen. Replacement FEP film and screens were apparently hard to find and it was quicker to just buy a new machine. Now, that may sound a bit far-fetched, but this is the same guy who managed to hot-glue his fingers together, so I can believe this happened.
What has this to do with my entry into the 3d printing world? Well, the incident with Thomas just highlighted how lack of a spare part, a simple little thing, can bring your whole printing experience to a screeching halt. With that in mind, and my recent experience scrapping the remains of a print from the FEP film, I thought it prudent to purchase a couple of spare resin vats and some FEP film ... just in case. The idea is that I can swap out the resin vat and immediately continue printing without having to strain the resin from the vat and then clean the vat completely before using it again. The spare vats were advertised without the FEP film so I bought a pack of 5 for my printer.
I also decided to buy a second build plate. My reasoning at the time was quite logical, I think. Since you can place the build plate in the cleaning station, I could immediately start another print if I had a second build plate and spare resin vats. See, very logical. Except, I've yet to do it.
The spare vats arrived along with the replacement FEP film and I then discovered that the vats do come with the FEP already attached. Never mind, I'm sure I'll need the replacements sooner or later.
Handy thing is that the spare vats have a lid, which should help to keep any light away from the resin. Although to be honest I don't expect to leave resin in a spare vat.
So I think that's everything I'm likely to need. The IPA, resin, gloves, filters and paper kitchen rolls are consumables, a bit like ink for your inkjet printer, but more expensive.
Now, onto the actual printing.