MakerGear Forum

So, as someone who whined and complained about the lack of web discussion forum, I probably could be more active here...but hi everyone, longer time M2 owner, mostly lurker here.

The M2 was my first printer, and will always have a special place in my heart. I think we really bonded when I nearly killed myself trying to use the bathroom in my old apartment as a paint booth when I decided it needed to be wrinkle red. However my needs have evolved and while outfitting my shop with a wall of M2's that even insta could admire was a fun fantasy, I've got to move on to resin.

Oh the horror! Fine detail, comparatively no geometry restrictions, ludicrous speeds...but it SUCKS. You wanna know why? Makergear doesn't make a resin printer. Since the beginning of the year a small company that shall remain anonymous (since I am still in the thick of this) has had my Wall-O-M2 capital, but I haven't poured a drop of resin because I can't even get it calibrated close enough to even think about trying (root cause: it needs an optically-critical, non-adjustable, glued in yet inadequately supported component that deforms under its own weight adjusted..facepalm). Not that this is unusual and I think a lot of people here know this..but this note is more for the people who, by luck or wise choice, have only dealt with Makergear.

I'm a little crabby, I'm very particular, and I'm awfully critical at times; know that I do not give praise lightly! That is just how miserable this process has been; it motivated me to head here and write out a praising post, for the sake of praising..gahh, something must have been in my coffee this morning. So anyway, go hug your M2, and at your next opportunity, thank Rick and Karen and their crew for being truly outstanding in their field; both in their product, and how they support it.

well said and i also have thought about resin as well then after talking to people and just researching a bit i realized the grass aint greener. sure i guess its good for jewelry and other small items because the detail is crazy but even when you do have things working right most people i talk to that have them only get a 20-50% print success rate. then there is the resin mess and post curing. also the lack of materials especially high strength and flexible ones. build volume is also quite tiny on those things. in any case i guess they have their place but it aint at my place. hope you get your machine all sorted out.

Yeah, I needed a bigger build volume as well. Would maybe like to try resin some day though.

I am currently hugging my M2 and kicking my computer - poor things are just so confused and bewildered!

Haha yeah, believe me, if I could make FDM work out, I'd have a half dozen M2's humming along right now (the resin machine's window is even larger than the M2, and looks like it's pretty usable volume; that is what set the hook). After speaking with another owner, I am expecting around a 40-50% success rate, but he reports the output is nearly on par with his Stratasys resin machine, so I'm hanging by the thread of hope that the juice is worth the squeeze here.

The electronics enclosure on it sucks bigtime though; not just the design, which is poorly fitting and caused my first round of issues since a cable wouldn't fully insert, but they printed it, didn't post-cure, and then spray bombed it, effectively blocking any further curing, so as it's always going to be rubbery and sticky..I will make one with the M2, just to put it in its place.

in our experience (having spent considerable money buying resin parts for testing).. and yes even from those 6 figure priced machines.. the strength of materials is a joke, drop parts and they break, leave them under UV light or outside and they get brittle. heat tolerance is another joke. detail is amazing, smoothness is fantastic, but real world use of the parts is a non-starter. maybe one day the resin materials will get much closer to filament materials strength/heat wise but for now at least they are not usable for us. and the thought of running a resin machine with all that mess is in no way appealing.

Resign has it's uses, I'm just glad I don't need any of them

I was strength testing a hinge I printed in PETG for a tilt-rotor type quad I'm building today and several hard whacks from a hammer could not make it crack apart. I was even whacking on parts parallel to the layer grain and even THAT would not break it. I printed it at 265 and it came out so glossy that it looks like wet paint, but damn it's strong!

I like how my name came up, heh.

I'm getting a small resin printer at some point in the near future. I want it to produce masters for casting (either resin or lost-wax). It's not intended in any way as a structural design.

Well, what can I say, it's hard to ignore an arsenal like that! Have you settled on a model yet? I had some Plan B options lined up but it's not looking like I will be getting a refund on this guy. I'm not sure if it's cool to talk resin printers here or not though?


But, if anyone is curious, this still has not been resolved...

I don't know the name of the one I was looking it -- it was a tiny little thing I saw at Makerfaire, and they've changed the name a bunch. It was at addsub.io originally, which I think is long-gone now. It should be about $600 for the hardware kit (plus another $600 for the projector) with a build envelope of like 2x3".

Been looking at the Kudo's this evening. Still researching but I like the idea of DLP SLA. Seems a lot less finicky than lasers. Don't get me wrong, I hugged my M2 twice today.

http://www.kudo3d.com/