Ok, I’d definitely say go with an SLS HD hub, the SLS process is self supporting and the entire thing can be printed in a single piece. An HD SLA hub with an industrial SLA printer might be able to do it too, but a consumer SLA printer like the Form 1 would really struggle.
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I’m not following everything that’s being said here, but you’ve clearly said: " And I need 0.05mm tolerances for this model at least.".
You can’t printing it without supports, because some of these components are hanging in mid air (if you orient it any way you like, you will always have pieces hanging in the air). Think about how the printer prints it. First layer of each piece would need to be supported - it currently isn’t.
If you add support - that’s fine. But it will leave quite a few marks.
So yes, it can be printed, just like anything else. But not without the supports.
Does this answer your question?
The main issue is it you can’t have floating parts, as you move the layer slider up any layer that had nothing below it will be stuck to the bottom of the tank. Thus you’ll need lots of support poles coming from the bottom. You’ll probably need to angle the print so the support poles have space to get through, and I find when you have a lot of support poles on a very tall print there’s a good chance at least one will fail to fully print, which would then mean a hole in the model, which would ruin your print. A good way to visualise it is to use Preform’s auto-orient and auto-support function.
Sorry I’ve just realised you might not know how 3D hubs works. It’s actually a paid-for 3D printing service. It’s a bit like Uber in that individuals and companies with 3D printers register and perform paid 3D printing jobs. All jobs are confidential so the models etc are never made public.
There’s a whole range of people and printers offering their service, from 3D printing enthusiasts offering cheap prints on their FDM printer to companies with high quality industrial machines who use 3D hubs as a storefront.
Well, besides what can or cannot be done, I would face the problem from another perspective. If you want to make something that needs to work as master for a mould, I would print the parts independently, clean them off of the support and build the feeding line with some other material (e.g. plastic sticks, 3d printed, clay…) and glue the tips to the parts. This way, by assembling it, you would get the master cheaper and with much less stress than having it done in one piece.
SLS is indeed an option for such complex shapes, but the finish is not comparable with resin in general.
I also read in this post about +/-0.25mm tolerances… if the Form1 had that tolerance it wouldn’t have made it past the kickstarter. Such tolerance would mean that the laser spot would randomly position within a 0.25mm radius of the intended place, giving a finish probably even worse than FDM (i.e. a straight wall would be full of grooves, not smooth-ish, thing that is not true on my Form1+ at least). The 0.25mm can be regarded as resolution, or more correctly, minimum feature size on the xy plane. The f-Theta lens would definitely reduce this spot size, but at a huge cost on printing time. The difference between building a wall with bricks or with mosaic tiles. Without considering the costs of this optics, in particular for the short optical paths inside a desktop machine. To be honest I don’t recall having seen such lens either on industrial SLA printers, but I may be wrong… There are some tricks you can use to avoid it, taking advantage of small diameter beams and long focal lengths.
As long as the galvos work fine and don’t deviate (placing the bricks well aligned) I consider myself well happy, to be honest.
Well, it it +/-0.25mm due to the lack of f-theta lens. I have measured it, and so have others.
Note this doesn’t mean it would change +/-0.25mm at the same XY point. It won’t.
“Tolerance” here means the difference between the corners and the centre.
Here’s more info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15F\_J7PCEi\_f8WhMbFRHXbmZs7yPihz7wigxNsn5TjJQ/edit
Optical path in Form1 is long enough for an f-theta lens. A single f-theta lens is approximately $400. I’d personally pay this extra, if Formlabs were to offer this as an option.
The purpose of f-theta lens is not to reduce the spot size, but to correct the distortion. This has no effect on the printing speed.
Without it, the spot becomes an ellipse in the off-centre regions.