Printing Updates

So the two following photos pretty much sums up how things are going right now.

Vat soaking after a few "prints"

Small portion of the trials...

So it's kind of been a failure. Resin is curing, but I'm still fighting some issue. Luckily it isn't the more difficult of problems (that being peeling of the print off the vat bottom, that's working out just fine!).

Problem #1 is over contamination of UV. I believe this is due to the fact that I have a transparent/clear build base/platform. The light is being absorbed and then refracted/reflected/etc. to the surrounding areas. 

My current solution is to make it out of something opaque. You can see that the current platform in the 2nd picture has spots of black. That was my attempt at making the base opaque with spray paint. Which in itself lead to another discovery, the resin and spray paint don't play too well with each other!It pretty much came off rather quickly.

Problem #2 is print adhesion, I can't quite get the print to stick to the build platform. I'm sure adding spray paint didn't help that situation either.

Solution to that issue is to experiment with various different platform/base materials. Having exposed the resin to bare acrylic, I know that that is a not a route I want to go...well unless I want to use a chisel to remove my prints. It sticks REALLY, REALLY well. Seeing what TristramBudel (that dude with the awesome Instructables! go vote for him so he can win that laser!)is using, I'll try and sample various materials he suggests and see what that yields.

And on that note, after seeing his instructables, version 2 is def going to be a horizontal projector. Makes things WAY more compact. I like it a lot and its given me lots of ideas.