Comment on My personal benchy: this one really tests a printer's capabilities
swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 2 days agoYou’re welcome - glad to see you have it really sussed out. Finding something that works for you and knowing it won’t just up and disappear off the market (as many fashion frames do) is excellent.
Can see the optician side as well - they have an established process and deviating from that is unwanted faff. However, they are perfectly capable of ordering a lens to a customer given spec. A short ‘if this doesn’t work then lol you suck’ disclaimer is all it would take to make the sale.
Resin is well within reach of the casual hobbyist now - we’re talking a couple hundred dollars to get an entry level machine, and a little extra coin for the materials/consumables. I have a (now old) Mars 3 that is ticking along beautifully.
Safety/PPE/ventilation is the main downside compared to FDM. It’s a stinky job but you can’t fault the results for presentable and functional parts. These things can print stuff like screw threads and other teensy features perfectly.
Offer always stands if you ever want something to demo and can’t get anyone more local to help :)
ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
I am very tempted by a resin printer. However - and this is going to sound weird - I actually like the limitations of FDM.
And this is why: I’m a hacker at heart (in the old sense, not the nasty illegal stuff) and I like to push the envelope of what our Prusa Mk4 printer can to. I’ve printed stuff with that thing that I had no right to print by working the workarounds in the model, playing with layer sizes and controlling the path of the nozzle so it ends up printing features that are right at the limit of what it can do. Hell, even the hinges in those specs of mine are kind of pushing it.
And it’s fun! It provides hours of good fun trying and or that and finally getting the little printer to print something right.
A resin printer would make very good prints without anything to do, if that makes sense 🙂
Also I want to work with different materials. I’m actually looking into getting a Prusa XL with several heads to combine TPU for flexible, hollow parts and PLA for the supports inside the parts. That’s something a resin printer can’t do: resin printers print… well, resin.
And finally, I’m always kind of designing parts with a view to making it available to anybody who has any old printer at home for them to print and enjoy. That approach entails designing for the lowest comon denominator (to a reasonable degree), something a resin printer is not.
So you see, while I would like a resin printer, I feel it’s just not the right printer for me.