Skip Navigation

Resin printing in the cold

Over the summer I picked up a secondhand Saturn 2 to play around with. Pretty quickly got it dialed in and was getting good prints out of it, mostly miniatures for tabletop games

With the holidays and such I had to take a couple months off from printing, and in that time it got cold. My printer is set up in my basement and right now the temperature down there is usually hanging around maybe 55 degrees fahrenheit (around 12-13C)

And I just cannot get prints to adhere to the plate. The handful that have stuck have come out pretty nice, so my overall settings can't be too far off, but we're talking about maybe 2 or 3 useable prints from a whole batch that I used to come out without an issue.

I'm using grey sunlu ABS-like resin, which is what I was using before and got pretty decent results

I'm using a wham bam magnetic build plate, which hasn't caused me any issues before (well at least not since I figured out that my printer came with 2 plates and that one was already on the machine,) I've cleaned the plate thoroughly and scuffed it up a bit with a brass wire brush. I've also re-leveled the printer using the same process I have since I first got it.

My FEP is also fairly fresh, I replaced it a few months back and only did about 2 or 3 prints before I took my little break from printing

It's possible my settings are a little different, I had to make some changes to my computer and didn't write down my old settings, but I'm pretty sure I had pretty much settled on the recommended settings I'm using now.

So pretty much the only thing I can figure is that it's a temperature issue.

I know some people preheat their resin in some hot water before printing, but personally I tend to leave resin in the vat and top it off as needed, I usually have something lined up to print next so it doesn't sit there very long, and I don't want to deal with the potential mess of pouring it back into the bottle if I don't have to.

I'm also aware of things like the thermalvatband or other ways to heat your printer/resin. That's certainly an option but I'd rather not spend money on another gadget if I can avoid it.

And like I said, the couple of prints that have turned out have actually been pretty good, my only issue is them just not wanting to adhere to the bed.

I'm gonna try cranking the burn-in times way up and lowering the lift speed way down and see where that gets me. If that doesn't work out though, does anyone have any other ideas on things I should try out?

Comments

10

Comments

10