NEXTDENT 5100 Printing issues

[ts4341]

First of all I'm not a huge fan of NextDent 2.0 Model Resin. ? When I print Medit Models on my ND 5100 using 2.0 Model Resin,
my dies are lose fitting in my printed bases?? When I use a Elegoo Mars4 Ultra 8K they fit great? About 14k in on the ND 5100 and
a 500$ printer is coming out with better fitting models?? WTF? Thanks T

 

[tuyere]

Remember that fit isn't determined by the resin, per se, but by
1) the printer being correctly calibrated and set up, and
2) the exposure settings being correctly tailored to the resin

There is a shrinkage factor specified for all resin-printer parts to compensate for the inevitable shrinkage during post-curing. If that scaling factor is incorrect, your prints won't fit well. Print some calibration cubes and measure them with a good micrometer and see how far off your scale factor is, then tweak it to get your prints bang-on. I've frequently had to do this because the manufacturer's print profile wasn't quite correct for our printer and our setup, it's a good practice to experiment with this a bit to get more control over your process.

In addition, with DLP printers- not sure if the 5100 is DLP, but it sounds about right for a dental printer at that price-point- if the printing area's software dimensions do not match the actual projected printing area, you will also get incorrectly-sized parts. You can often compensate for this being wrong with an adjusted scale factor, but you don't wanna be fixing one error with a second error if you can avoid it, you know? Whoever provides support for your printer can help with this calibration, if you don't wanna tackle it yourself.

 

[sidesh0wb0b]

shrinkage matters is what i took from this thread

 

[tuyere]

FWIW I've actually had more scaling issues with expensive DLP printers than with LCDs, because the projector unit complicates things and if it's out of alignment you can get scale issues that vary across the plate and aren't fixable with the resin scale factor. We have that on our Asiga right now, the prints are too big at one end of the plate and too small at the other, it took me forever to figure out why we were having fit issues with some but not all of the parts from a printer despite the calibration/scale tests looking good (because they were dead-center on the plate and the models were elsewhere). Users generally can't service this kind of issue themselves.
LCD printers are now good and cheap enough that the benefits of DLP printers are... declining, I'd say. I myself would definitely go with a Phrozen or similar prosumer-tier LCD printer over an Asiga or other dental DLP if I were setting up my own lab, and cost isn't the only factor there.

 

[ts4341]

I agree with your posts.. With 3D Printer advancing technologies advancing... These over priced dental company printer are going to be obsolete soon.
Thanks for the help. Another thing I hate about NextDent.. is it is closed system(you can only use their resins) and they are based in Europe.