Remove the Elephant's Foot from Resin 3D Prints - Plus NEW FREE Bulge Buster App
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- IMPORTANT UPDATE - Bulge Buster is no longer supported. The app was a proof of concept and not long after it was release the functionality was added to Chitubox. Look for a setting called tolerance compensation.
The Elephant's foot can ruin your 3d resin prints when you print right on the build plate. In this video I discuss 3 methods for removing the elephant's foot bulge and show you how to use an app I made called Bulge Buster to process 3d print files and remove it. However as I said the app is no longer supported.
The shirt I'm wearing in this video is not my own slogan but is from the Screen Rant Pitch Meeting videos featuring Ryan George. We find them pretty funny - check them out. No connection to this channel. I'm just a fan.
My hat - well if you know it put it in the comments. It's custom made and not for sale unfortunately.
To support this channel please use these amazon affiliate links below. Here are some of my normal supplies:
The food trays that I put in front of my printer to catch parts on. These are ridgid and therefore a little better at holding liquid and spills than the ones in my resin handling video: amzn.to/3lo3bQK
The rubber mats as seen in the resin handling video- amzn.to/3pmhfws
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My Mask - amzn.to/3cgvWL5
Tea Strainer for Recycling IPA - amzn.to/3c7ZJFr
And this is my favorite resin: amzn.to/3kln4qe
Wow, That is some serious effort you did! Not only with the app develpment and testing etc, but also in the making of the video. I love that you show renders of how the resin printer works for example, and also the very detailed explanations, all acompanied with footage. Seriously a testament to patience and discipline! Well done and thank you.
Thank you very much! Check out my video on Why Resin Prints Fail which has more animations and explanations.
Thanks for all of your hard work. I'm sure that many resin printer users will find this tool invaluable.
I hope so!
Shirts from other youtubers is TIGHT!
Well ok then! ;)
Came back from the future to say when it’s time for the wash that shirts gonna need to get aaalllllll the way off of his back!
Hi, this is realy awesome video and it helped me quite a lot to understand how SLA works in etail. The program looks also really good, but I cannot use it, since I have only photon mono x. I tried to print some gears and shafts, but I was unable to do so, due to issue described oin this video. (with supports I was also inable to print because the gears are ussually not strait)
I would like to kindly ask you if it would be possible to add support for *.pwmx files for anycubic?
Thank you a lot.
NEW FINDING OF THE MAIN CAUSE! Elephants foot is mostly caused by resin STILL FLOWING as it gets "squished out" underneath the built plate. This flowing resin cures as it flows, causing the elephants foot. How to FIX the elephants foot? Wait till the resin has stopped flowing before turning on the UV light. This pretty much completely removes the elephants foot. For details on how to do this, look up the blog by Jan Mrázek.
Crazy! Thank you for putting in so much time creating this solution!
You bet!
I am very intrigued by the 8mm film scanner. I worked for 13 years at a small video production company in the late 90's early 2000's. One of the things we did, pretty much continuously, was convert old home movies to video. I was constantly frustrated by the limitations of the equipment. I am very curious about what you have come up with!
Can you add support for the Anycubic Photon Zero? It uses .pw0 files.
This is great! I also see this as something that will or should be standard in slicers. Absolutely brilliant. On of those things that seems obvious once it has been invented. I am looking forward to using it. You earned my subscription long ago, but it now comes with my admiration along side!
error : unsupported file type. why? please..
Nice one! A++ for incredible effort.
I have the anycubic photon mono. Would bulge buster work for me? Is the Tycho hat from the band, Tycho?
The hat is from the show The Expanse. Bulge buster was a proof of concept. It’s not currently being updated or developed. Some slicers now have the feature built in.
I thought I understood enough about FDM and SLA printing until I saw your videos. The visualizations that you use are probably the easiest to understand that I've come across. Thank you!
Great to hear! Thanks!
Any possibility this will gain support for other printers like the Anycubic MonoX and its .pwmx file format?
Yes. Not sure when though. Hopefully Q1 2021.
I am absolutely blown away by this! The work you've put into this is stunning, and your presentation is excellent. I used to code clients server applications, so I appreciate what you've done here. So glad I've subscribed to your channel!
Wow thanks!
That is incredible amount of research you made for this video, and all your videos explain perfectly hiw things work on a deeper level. Best 3D printing channel out there, thank you so much for you work!
Wow, thank you!
Cool. Thanks.
Why don't you share the code on Git and let people contribute, make it easier on yourself regarding formats, printers, etc. etc. ?
Would adding a bevel to the perimeter of the face that is against the build plate not be a good option?
I've done edge bevels on gears I modeled with great success. The Bulge Buster app would be great for someone who can't make changes to the 3D model for some reason.
uhhh wish you supported anycubic i have the mon x and would love this
Hopefully early next year. File formats are a pain. Too bad there are so many different formats.
I hope you see this comment, because it seems to me like the software you made and the solution in Chitubox are fairly different and the chitubox version is much more incompitent.
If I understand it all correctly, your software exposes a single layer with two different exposure times, which means that the outside rim of bottom layers will be exposed exactly the same amount as the normal layers!
The chitbox version simply scales the model down in those layers which would require much more percision and tweaking resulting in worse prints.
Anyway, I guess my point is that this prgram still seems to be very relevant to and useful in the current SLA printing pipeline.
Yeah I wish they would implement the pixel dimming method
Oh but also they encoded their file format. So I can’t load or save in the file format now
Thank you ❤️This is pretty amazing work, you just became one of my heroes.
Love that you did both windows and Mac versions.
Thanks.. and Linux 64 bit
YES!
Double exposure is - by design - the best, and I am surprised by results. Can we ask for Anycubic's .PWMO format? (Photon Mono model)
Other file formats won't be added until next year probably. I spent too much time on the project and now I have to make up for lost time on other jobs and projects. New file formats are sometimes very difficult to figure out. If it wasn't for the help I got from the community I wouldn't have been able to even add the ones I did. If you have any info about the file format email it to me michael@nerdtronic3d.com
@@Nerdtronic Sure thing, I'll look into it then, maybe to make it possible to create a script based translator of sorts.
Any hints as for where to look for info apart of those places and people you mentioned in video ?
@@cthulpiss It's here: github.com/sn4k3/UVtools Feel free to just use their app as well. Mine I think is easier to learn and use, but I think theirs does a lot more stuff. But anyway, that format is supposedly supported on their end. So if I can gleem from their code how that file format works I can probably add it to BB. But again, it'll be early next year.
Love it! Any chance for pws files for photon machines?
You can do this in Chitubox, go to print settings - advanced option - bottom tolerance compensation
Hi, thanks for your work on this - nice idea, similar to the elephant foot removal in slic3r but for resin! Unfortunately on my creality LD002-H when I transfer the busted file to the printer even though it is a .ctb like all my other print files it says unrecognised. Any ideas where I’m going wrong? Cheers for any help!
So the file you drag into BB, if you load that file on the creality it recognizes it? Does it say that the file format is ctb or ctb v3?
@@Nerdtronic thanks for the reply! So I slice a file, drag the .ctb in to Bulge buster and click make busted file. That creates a file xxxxxx.ctb and file type in properties says ctb (.ctb). If I put that file on my thumbstick and put it in the printer, there is no thumbnail image shown and when I try to print it says "unknown file format". I notice that unlike in your video it doesn't save as a zip or a phz, regardless of what I tick, just as a ctb but I assumed that was because i was dragging a ctb in to begin with.
Hi I am having the same issue with my printer. Epax E10 The only difference is that I am using Lychee.
Using Chitubox it worked fine.
As always your videos are VERY well done! Clear and helpful, but most of all you explain your logic and the testing of your theories. This helps us to understand rather than just "take someone else's word for it". By the way, I agree with your daughter - something dimmed 10% is 90% of its original brightness. I have shared links to so many of your videos, probably the most has been Calibrating Your Resin 3d Printer. This will be high on the list! BRAVO and THANK YOU!!
Thank you very much!
Fantastic video! Easy sub and 🔔.
Thanks for the sub!
Thats amazing! :D
is the Anycubic Photon supported too?
.photon can be read, but the Photon is not in your list of working printers.
It can read .photon files. But some of the newer Photon printers use a .pws or a .photons (with an s) file. And those are not supported yet. Sorry. File formats are sortof difficult. When I can I'll add support for that.
@@Nerdtronic I seem to be a lucky guy and I got .photon files :)
I'll try your Buster tomorrow!
But I think I found a little mistake:
In the bottom layer reduction test I can't change the layer hight. I want to change it from 0,01 to 0,05 but it sticks with 0,01 :/
I use the windows version
- No doubt you made a great effort doing this video, and then you top it up with the app; a million respect for you, sir.
I resolve this issue of the Elephant's Foot by giving a 45-degree chamfer to the edge of the part, a chamfer slightly bigger than the resulting total height of the bottom exposure base.
You did an excellent job!
Great idea - thanks. However just downloaded and tried the pixel dimming test - my early Saturn (202012) says "unknown file type", Chitubox 1.8.1 recognises file, saved again without changes - same result. Running Bulge Buster on an existing .ctb (from Lychee 4) has same result. Updated Saturn firmware etc - same result. Anyone else got this problem? Is there another way to contact you? Cannot see anything on your website.
Just ran into the same problem...
This is several years old and I doubt anyone will see this but I am battling elephants foot on an anycubic photon mono x 6k and bulge buster doesn't seem to work with the .pwmb file type and fiddling with the burn in layers number and exposure time didn't seem to have any impact on the elephants foot problems I am having.
Thank it seem complicated to me still searching same method how to print without support especially some model can be printed only for flat area
Example of my 3d model
ruclips.net/video/wL3YvOe0ZgE/видео.html
(I remake 3d model to 1/87 scale)
using support method the result mess up because using support bottom and top area will leave traces
While using flat surface some top missing detail i get elephant foot while bottom area have fine result
The latest version of Chitubox has a beta feature that does this. You can set some parameters and it’ll compensate for elephants foot.
I think it does something but I'm not sure it does it the same way. And you can't print the test chips with Chitubox to help determine what settings will exactly equal and compensate for the amount of elephants foot you're getting at the bottom layer exposure time.
What can I say, Michael? Except that you make me wanna be a better 3-D print Hobbyist. I tip my entire hat collection to you sir!Great job
I wanted to wear a different hat on each video but I don't think I'd have enough room to store the hats. At least if I make all the videos I want to make. (life goals)
Great job! Can you give me a photon mono x alternative?
Probably the most requested printer to add. Hopefully early this year.
@@Nerdtronic I actually found a pathway to do this
I would love to have this for my photon and my Phrozen Sonic Mini 4k
I will add more printer support eventually. I figured the slicers would have this functionality by now. :)
Oh my! What a quaity of life improvement. RUclips, where did this video hide so long?! Will try out right now...
Keep up the good work!
thank for this detailed video. i have anycubic photon mono. tried to use bulge buster but it doesnt take pwmo files.
any plans to have the software update to take this format thanks again
I wish I had the time to update it. I found myself using the app this week.
Chitubox 1.8 beta has "bottom tolerance compensation" which looks to be able to help out
Yup - setting the "bottom tolerance compensation" to -0.21mm (for items A and B) has eliiminated the foot on my prints using elegoo grey/white/black resins on a SM4K (I'm currently printing v6 resistorboxes, which have the advantage of being nice and easy to measure/quantify distortions on.)
Based on experience trying to print a planetary gear bearings and the way printed teeth bled into each other up along the entire height of the print, I think that tolerance compensation of -0.05 to -0.1mm might need to be dialled in to loosen the fit of such parts, but I'm pretty sure if I did that on the resistor drawers I'd start seeing holes appear
Hoop you update the app for the Photon mono x
I plan to eventually. It'll be a few months. Unfortunatly there's no way to recoup any $ for the time I put in to the app. Free and only about 20 daily active users.
How much $ do you want to do this?😂
I can't believe resin slicers don't do that by default
Bulge Buster happening "encouraged" the slicer companies to come up with a similar feature. Still none of them do it using the pixel dimming method that worked the best for me.
would like to see support for anycubic photon mono :)
The app doesn't work with .pwmo files, right?
does this work with monochrome screens?
Yes. It should work fine. It really depends on the file format and if BB can read and write it correctly. Just have to test it.
@@Nerdtronic thanks for the reply. I ask this because on for example the Anycubic Photon Mono sold with AA (Elegoo Mars Pro 2 Mono same thing if I'm correct), but Anti Aliasing does not function. Which is grey scale dimming. As well anycubic has decided to use new file extensions. best wishes.
How do I get BB to open photon files? It saves a sliced file as .pwmo not .photon.
It doesn't work for all priters yet. Sorry. It's very time consuming to write support for more printers. I'd love to do it but it has to wait. The app was meant to be a proof of concept.
Fantastic work, sir! You have some of the best content and one of the most effective presentation styles on RUclips. It's clear that you put a lot of work into each video and I look forward to where you'll take this channel.
Thanks. I hope to take it towards doing more project oriented videos. Build some cool stuff.
is that .photon file format the same, or similar enough, to work on a .pwmo?
Unfortunately no it work work
Wow this project is so valuable and you helped the whole community with this app, excellent job
Thanks
I’ll have to give it a try. I’ve had pretty good luck just using a .2mm chamfer on the bottom of my parts but a more scientific method would be nice.
I wonder how long before this is stolen and incorporated in the slicer.
I assumed it would have already happened. 😀
Wishful thinking.
Cool idea. I just tried to use the app and just to check - opened the busted file in chitubox and it made my file look like minecraft... all blocky instead of what it was - super smooth. why?
True - Slice in Chitubox and open in Chitubox and it will look like that. Without a trip busting bulges first. So that's just what it looks like when you import a sliced file into Chitubox. If you want to compare apples to apples, take your original file (before busting) and compare how it looks reimported with the busted file reimported.
@@Nerdtronic Doh! i should have checked that. My bad. I went ahead and tried to print the busted file, and by golly, you helped me bust my bulge! Excellent work on the program!
The hat's from Tycho station in the expanse right?
Yup!
This is incredible, I can really appreciate the time and effort you poured into solving the problem. I suspect slicers will start to follow in your footsteps.
One personal annoyance, this thing looks like one of those virus keygen programs. Give it a more modern UI (i.e. remove background graphics...) and I can guarantee it will be more widely accepted and downloaded!
Note taken. I've been thinking about what I would do next in it but I have other projects that have to take priority for a little while. Probably next is adding more printer support. Then I have some ideas on how to fix the bottom layer erosin problem.
Lol yeah I was thinking it just needs autoplay background music, then it's straight up rando keygen.
Doesn't work. Asks for a .cbt file, instead of a .ctb.
Just downloaded software - which printer formats are supported? It does not support AnyCubic Photon M3 files...
Very interesting stuff. Thanks for walking us through your process. I'm looking forward to giving this a try.
Hope you enjoy it!
So you just made a resin exposure calibration tool. I used to work for Eckerds 1hr photo and we actually had a tool that would tell us how off the exposure of the chemicals in the film was and it required the light amounts and times from the machine for quality testing. Each color had its own chemical calibration. This tool reminded me of that. I had to do that every morning in high school as a Lab Tech II and we sent those results to Kodak so they could make sure their batches were good. Wouldn't adjusting the sharpness of the LCD do the same thing? You are basically trying to combat pixel bloom but the LCD should have settings that would help with this I would think.
Amazing video, super thorough. I might add however, that when printing small parts that do not need overexposure, there is another technique i just tested. Step 1 lower the number of bottom layers slightly and bring exposure down as well. Step 2 when designing the part add a champfer on all edges that will touch the buildplate. Step 3 tweak the values of all 3 changes until the elephants foot fills in the champfer. Then if still an issues try the pixel dimming above.
Just like we do on a FDM printer , except for the pixel dimming :-D
Hey, does this stuff actually work, or are you just busting my bulge? Seriously, thanks for all the work you did on this. Awesome video!
Both?
Just another few years and we'll all be using Xolography printers. No more supports, no more 8 hour waits, no more elephant foot..... :D
Sounds awesome!
the sla printer manufacturers should pay him and get this into their software suits....
From your mouth. I was approaced by a 3d printer company to write software but nothing came of it. And I wanted to include these techniques in the printer itself.
@@Nerdtronic wow that is nuts... Such a great function. Did you try to offer it to 3rd party software houses? Cura, simplify 3d?
The timing of this video couldn't be better, thanks for all your efforts! Photon Mono X is arriving today, and I'll predominantly be printing functional mechanical parts.
It’s possible that printer needs a .pws or .photons file (with an s) in which case it won’t work yet.
@@Nerdtronic I'm absolutely new to resin printing, but technically minded. If you need help in any way testing this or porting this to the newer version anycubic machines let me know and I'll try and help out.
Thank you for all your effort and experiments. I will give this a try.
Best of luck!
I've had succes removing bulges completly for gears by using over hang support for the entire surface, then it's just a matter of snipping them off and rubb the surface on fine grit sanding paper.
Any luck with support for photon mono x?
The functionality is sort of built in to chitubox now. They call it tolerance compensation. You just have to convert the 2 pixels to mm, which for 50 um is .1 mm
I Have Anycubic Mono X using PVMX files. How i can use this for it? Sorry new with resin printing. Have Chitubox and Lychee
very cool - printing a file now
Note I had problems using an input file from Lychee. File opened fine in bulgebuster, and exported ok with pixel dimming (although it's a bit weird while exporting with a modal dialogue popping up repeatedly and disappearing) - and I can unpack the images and they look great. I can also open the resulting ctb file in chitubox - (although I can't see the dimmed pixels there) - but when I try to print the file on the Saturn it says unknown file format.
Here's a link to my input file: drive.google.com/file/d/11qN1GO6iZ96Jynsm0PODMWgpiYYDmLZe/view?usp=sharing that was created in Lychee, and the output file that my Saturn won't read: drive.google.com/file/d/1EBhK996wziNWsJOdKrBRLFY-VdDYn-ll/view?usp=sharing
Thanks for posting the files. I checked them out. Are you sure the initial file, the one that was created in Lychee, works on the Saturn? It's not a .ctb v3 file. It's a .ctb v2 file. Drag it in to BB and see next to File Type: it says CTB File. I never could get those to work on the Saturn. If you slice in Chitubox and drag that on you'll see it says CTB File v3. For BB to work to bust files for the Saturn, the input file has to be in a v3 format.
I'm sorry that you found this issue. Getting Saturn file support to work was one of the last things I did before releasing the app. We kept getting that unknown file format error. I didn't have any support from the manufacturers to figure out the file formats. Only a little from a few other developers. But in the end the only way I could get the Saturn to work was by adding the .ctb v3 support.
Hope that helps. Let me know
@@Nerdtronic Interesting thanks for that - I did not know lychee was exporting old CTB file format. It does work on the Saturn though - but it's nice to know that's why the lychee file doesn't work with bulgebuster - hopefully next lychee update fixes file export. In the meantime I'll just use Chitubox whenever I'm printing raftless.
Thanks for reply and thank you so much for the great tool!!!!
@@n0f8r Thanks!
@@Nerdtronic Lychee version 3.2 updated CTB file export, and it works with Bulgebuster now.
@@n0f8r Wow that's great. Thanks for letting me know.
I drag over a sliced file from Chitubox which is a .ctb file and the app tells me its not a valid ctb file. what gives?
Kudos to your explanations and efforts!
Thanks
Hi, many thanks for the hard work and the outstanding infos you are passing on to us beginners!! I have installed Bulge Buster on my iMac but when launching I get runtime error message all the times.This is the message:
Location: Common/plugin.cpp:1048
Condition: false
Message: Could not open plugin EHPictureButton.dylib (dlopen(/Applications/BulgeBuster.app/Contents/Frameworks/EHPictureButton.dylib, 5): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Applications/BulgeBuster.app/Contents/Frameworks/EHPictureButton.dylib: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
/Applications/BulgeBuster.app/Contents/Frameworks/EHPictureButton.dylib: no matching architecture in universal wrapper)
Any idea on how to solve? Thanks.
I'm a bit late to this party but I just wanted to state that it sounds like you were on to something helpful. Still, it comes across as a concept that more like an unproven theory.
I draw and print all my own models and I try to print directly on my build plate more often than not. When ever possible I just add a chamfer on the bottom face-edges of my models. The chamfer is sized to compensate for the amount of the "Elephant's-Foot" that I was getting before I started simply adding that chamfer to the bottom-most edges of my models.
Viewed with a magnifying glass it's still far from perfect but for me it's a simple solution that I would have otherwise had to do alot of post print sanding or filing. I hope that with time you can perfect your solution so that we can all print easier.
Does not appear to work with ChiTuBox and Saturn printer. Throws an error, "Not a valid .ctb ~ File."
I have looked for the Chitubox V1.8.0, can't find it anywhere... also, it seems like the Saturn S can not run the files that the Bulge Buster produced from the Chitubox V1.8.1, not even the test pieces. Maybe somebody knows where to get V1.8.0? I really loved this video, because all I'm aiming for is dimensionally accurate prints, and this would've helped me by getting rid of useless supports. I would welcome any suggestions. Thanks for the vid, your content is great and worth the wait!
I'm ttrying to run the bottom layer exposure test but my Mars 2 can't read the ctb file. It keeps throwing an "unknown file format" error
You had put lots of work into this problme and creating a solution for the whole community, altough I have a problem. Running on Win10 when I try to start the program, following error message appears:
An exception of class Xojo.IO.IOException was not handled. The application must shut down.
Could you (or anyone experienced) help me please? Thanks!
Just chamfer the facing part surface on the cad program and problem fixed.
Hey thanks for watching. That's an ok plan but not a great one. For one you don't have the original cad file for every model you want to print. If you only have the STL for example. The other reason is that it's not very accurate. How much do you champher? Bulge Buster tests your printer and resin combo so you know the exact amount of reduction will equal the elephants foor. Next is that the champher ramps - and so that would just make a different shaped elephant's foot. I think BB is a much easier and more accurate solution.
@@Nerdtronic I didn't want to take away from your efforts, I can see why your method and program will yield better results. Great work thanks for sharing it with us.
Yeah thanks for sharing your thoughts also.
Hi! Awesome Project! I wanted to test this on my saturn but I always get the Error of a not supported file trying to open sth on BB. Using chitubox (.ctb) 1.9.0. and BB 0.9.4 on Windows. Any idea?
Thank you for all your hard work!
Does this elephants foot happen on the supports as well, where it distorts prints? Caise i have pronts with a pooling or bulge where resin didnt drain away when the layer was curing and this is making me want to stopv3d printing because i cant fix ot or find help
yes please please please help, I am also waiting for Anycubic Mono X support! this is exactly what my prints need, no matter what I try I still get that annoying little elephant foot on the 1.5 mm parts that touch the print bed
While it's commendable to acknowledge your efforts in testing and developing this feature, I must mention that Lychee Slicer handles elephants foot perfectly and with ease, especially with the grayscale feature. Additionally, I'd like to inform you that printing on the build plate is only advisable for flat and thin parts, such as the wheels you've tested. The bed offsets are not perfectly flat right out of the factory. If you desire perfectly squared faces, you'll need supports. Resin is not FDM. You need angles from the lcd screen for good balance of forces.
Just a thought, wouldn't it be better to modify the geometry in an stl file, rather than modifying a sliced file which could be in many different formats? I'm going to try changing the original geometry, then slice and print as usual... I have a Photon Mono 4K so I can't use your app. Anyway, thanks for the explanation, and all your hard work.
I printed some mechanic parts (~2mm thickness) with my LCD resin printer, but my parts warped after a while and can't be used. How do you prevent your parts from warping?
Thanks mate! Awsome work :)
Glad you liked it!
There's also a simpler method at the only cost of spending a bit more resin - don't print on the build plate (which I'm always to do with miniatures bases for example), use some supports and the elephant foot will be left only on the supports/raft, which goes in the trash.
This video is very interesting from the aspect to understand (and control) precisely the printing, but I don't think it's very practical for most people (unless it's somehow automated in next gen printers)
Btw, if I understand correctly the transition layers purpose is not so much to reduce the elephant foot (they can't reduce it on the very bottom layers that take the full exposure anyway),
but to ensure more gradual curing condition of these layers, to prevent delamination (by having two layers being cured at 10 times different speeds)
by hook and cook i have managed to print directly onto the build plate with a layer height of 0.05 mm using 1.9 seconds exposure time and also 1.9 seconds bottom exposure time with a bottom layer count of 6 (and less) on my phrozen sonic mini 4k. just to confirm 1.9 was not a typo. i am printing using 1.9 seconds for both regular layers and bottom layers. But..... there is STILL a noticeable elephant's foot on my prints. this makes me wonder if the cause of elephant's foot is not only related to bottom exposure time but also to some other factors. Update: after doing more tests it is possible the elephant's foot i am still seeing in spite of my bottom exposure time being only 1.9 seconds is due to a flaw in the machine design or software, or a miscalibration of the z axis. it seems like multiple bottom layers are being cured on the same plane (if that is possible) 'squishing' the layers together. for example, a 10 mm cube comes out 0.20 too short on the Z axis at about 9.78 mm while the XY axis are an acceptable 9.97 mm. very odd considering my bottom exposure time is ideal. don't ask me how i'm pulling off a bottom exposure time of 1.9 seconds. that took a lot of time and effort to figure out! trade secret for now. just for kicks i also did zero bottom layers but that resulted in a failed print. so the machine must be treating bottom layers differently even though i tell the machine to treat bottom layers the same as other layers
I know I'm late to the party - but I must say you're wrong here. Elephant foot is caused mostly by the fact, that resin is not still when it's beeing exposed; basically when your printer lowers its build plate to the bottom of the vat, it must squeeze resin from that very thin space between them, and it doesn't happen instantly. You start exposing when resin is still flowing, and since it's a bottom layer your exposure time is long, that partially cured resin moves outwards and eventually some of it close to desired shape gets cured enough to for what we call elephant foot. And it may also cause dimentional inconsistencies in X and Y axis.
To solve that problem, all you need to do is wait before you start your exposure - you need to increase "light off delay" (or whatever it's called in your printer), for bottom layers 60 seconds should be more than enough, and then you can than lower it to say 15s for the rest of the model. I use those values and everything works like a charm.
Oh, and I set bottom layers to no more than 3x the time of normal layer, that's enough to get a good grip to build plate.
It's not that I'm that smart to figure this out, I read it on this guy's blog:
blog.honzamrazek.cz/2022/02/a-step-by-step-guide-for-the-perfect-bed-adhesion-and-removing-elephant-foot-on-a-resin-3d-printer/
Thanks for the comprehensive video. I was wondering if you could guide me on a problem you seem to have solved. I wand to print small printing plates for my OpenPress. The workflow would be similar. Start with a base, then switch to an image that is to be printed. To support it a number of intermediate layers that are dilated to give more support. I know how to generate the single Layers, I just can't figure out how to make them into a valid print file. Any help would be appreciated.
Apps like these will make 3d printing mainstream. Pretty soon companies will be addin this to their slicers as a tick box option "remove elephant's foot" in the slicers' options. I hope you have a patent on your idea. Because this way, you can keep it free, and companies can't hide your ideas behind paywalls and claim it as theirs.
Believe me, I used to work for a company for about 3 months whose sole job it was to do stuff like this...
thank you for your tons of effort into this and especially supports for the mac users!
If you are printing a gear, that may be 5 mil to 10 mil thick, the weight of the object will not need the higher over exposure. Thus avoiding the problem mentioned. Gravity will not pull it off the build plate. Thus making this a bit over engineered.
Your daughter is correct, 0% dimmed should mean there is no dimming.
Can you let us know what resin you are using to need a 12s normal exposure and 60s bottom exposure? This is absolutely frightening number's haha
Couldn't one use a polarizing lense to reduce the amount of scattered light? I would think that this would allow for longer exposures at smaller layer heights, while avoiding the elephants foot. Love that term. Elephants foot!
Hello, and love the detail and sophisticated video. I built the courage after watching this video to reach out and see if you'd be interested in helping me as I am building a hand-held portable fabric shaver used to remove hair/debris from clothing and upholstered items. I have been at this now for 13 months and at the point now where I am trying to build a team to slowly move through development. Currently, I need some help finding and researching what materials (metals, non-metals, plastics, etc.) work best in this application. While at the same time finding various mechanical ways to drive the best suited motor to amplify the motion of these materials that will be optimally assembled and sit on some sort of hard plastic. I would be glad to show more CAD files and videos of the printed prototypes we have thus far if willing to help. Thanks, Jon-
Couldn't you just put a slight fillet on the bottom edge of your model? That's what I do for fdm atleast. Haven't tried it on my resin printer yet, but i don't see why it wouldn't work. 3 layers are so small that the slight dimensional inaccuracies won't effect much if any function
Rather than "Dimming" = 0%, I would rename it to "Power" and have 100% mean full power AKA no dimming
Hey Mr. Tronic! I am also printing directly to the build plate and am having issues with air bubbles on the plate layer of the print. Any suggestions?
I just went from FDM to resin for translucent parts. And got exactly elephant foot because of printing flat as supports are not needed. It was clear to me it is because of overexposure but how to fight it together with bed adhesion? Sir, you are hero.
I have to find a solution with UVTools as those are I use to fix all things in sliced file.
This is really cool! I think many of these methods are better than the compensation in Chitubox! The double exposure thing could be added with a firmware update if companies like anycubic would do it
@Nerdtronic is there any plans on adding more printers? Have a Creality LD-002R and this would be a great to have as I have been printing gears upside down and dealing with the overhang problem to get rid of the bulge.
Hi, thanks for developing such a great program.
I am trying to import a .ctb file from the lastest chitubox, but it keeps saying error but a file from the previous version is fine. is this a known problem?
I hope you make a video about the filmscanner, it sounds super interesting.
Also, I don’t know your position on sharing but I’d be inclined to buy models or plans for such a scanner if it works well.