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Stereolithography

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by tesseract, Mar 8, 2013.

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  1. tesseract

    tesseract Moderator
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    How should I orient the project to get the best quality and translucence. I have heard that due to the way the plastic is laid down it is more transparent one way like back side down versus printing it upright from thr bottom up. I guess if there really is a difference it would be like looking through a bunch of faces versus looking through a bunch of sides.

    Would the edges of each pass be visible as well if so then printing it vertically would be the best. Anyone with some good experiences as to what orientation to print in
     
    #1 tesseract, Mar 8, 2013
  2. SPyKER

    SPyKER Active Member

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    I'm not speaking from experience, but here is how I understand it logically.

    These materials cool rapidly. If a segment is printed next to segment of the same temperature, they percentage of bonding is higher, and thus the gradation in the plastic is less. This is why most clear plastics are molded rather than printed.

    So, the direction of the translucence is what you will want to consider most, as well as in how your gcode determines where to print next. The longer the sequential run, the more translucent it should be.
     
    #2 SPyKER, Mar 10, 2013
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