Asiga 4K Model Printing Issues

[Howsyourcat]

I am trying to print dental models on my Asiga 4k pro and I am getting issues where the models will detach from the build plate during the print. I am using Asiga DentaMODEL resin and trying to print flat solid models with no support. Is there anything I can do to fix this issue?

 

[DigiSculpt Design Center]

- Give the resin a good stirring prior to starting the print
- Lightly sand the printing plate, a little texture gives the resin a little more grip
- Rub down the vat with a little multipurpose PTFE Lubricant, very light coat
- Play with your initial exposure time, a little longer for the first couple layers may be all you need

 

[tuyere]

Before doing anything permanent to your printer or build platform, start by increasing the exposure of your base layers, or add more base layers. Even if this doesn't fix it, you should be familiar with how to modify material profiles to fine-tune your prints. You can open up the material profiles in Notepad++ and edit the variables in (more or less) plaintext. Save As a new profile with a different name, and be sure to edit the Material Name variable so it doesn't conflict with the original profile, then add it to the material library by dropping it into the folder you have your material in. I spin off a new folder for all my custom/modified profiles and add that whole folder, so I don't get them mixed up.

 

[DDE]

Check your build plate is flat using the paper method when you calibrate it. Check position encoders are steady.

 

[Andrew Priddy]

also just had this problem on a friends machine.. same resin, didn't know about position encoders, please expand

 

[erzdaemon]

How old is the Printer?

I used to play around with exposure times too in the past, but this is mostly just a workaround not fixing the problem.

Most likely it's either the optical path ( clean the glas, try checking internal mirros too with a bright flashlight),or the build plate is not parallel.

If you have failing prints, this can immediately affect the build plattform's parallelism ( we had that case with our max at least ).
E.G. If he tries to lower the plattform, when there is still a failed die in the tray it can cause deflection of the build Platform.
Always count the dies you take off the plattform after Printing, so you know when you have to do a manual exposure to clean the tray off one or more failed dies.

On the Max we also had to tighten the Platform a little more than instruction sayd.

There may be a chance your Platform holder has worn out also.

TLDR : Check Optical Path and make sure to test parallelism of the plattform

Zero Position Calibration Pro 4K

Validate Zero Position on Max may work on Pro 4K too

 

[Howsyourcat]

How old is the Printer?

I used to play around with exposure times too in the past, but this is mostly just a workaround not fixing the problem.

Most likely it's either the optical path ( clean the glas, try checking inside too with a flashlight),or the build plate is not parallel.

If you have failing prints, this can immediately affect the build plattform's parallelism ( we had that case with our max at least ).
E.G. If he tries to lower the plattform, when there is still failed die in the tray it can cause deflection. of the build Platform.

On the Max we also had to tighten the Platform a little more than instruction sayd.

There may be a chance your Platform holder has worn out also.

TLDR : Check Optical Path and make sure to test parallelism of the plattform

The printer is 2 months old. I have no problems printing denture bases and teeth. The only time I have issues is when I try to print models flat on the print platform.

 

[erzdaemon]

Flat Model printing should make no issues, we print both on a Max and an older Pro and i love my Asiga Babies.

I Would suggest contacting Asiga support then, especially because you are using their original resin too.

Asiga Tech Support is the best i've seen, giving very detailed info.
They used to give free life long support on their machines which should be the case still i guess.

Create account and register your Printer at Asiga, then you can create a support ticket.
I'd suggest linking this topic in the ticket.

Your reseller may help too ofc, Asiga has most likely the better know-how though obviously.

 

[tuyere]

The printer is 2 months old. I have no problems printing denture bases and teeth. The only time I have issues is when I try to print models flat on the print platform.

Have you tried printing a flat model with a material you know works, like the denture base? That would be a good way to confirm or deny if it's material-specific, or a more fundamental calibration/setup problem that tolerates floating supported parts but not plate-flat prints.
Flat models really should be straightforward to print, so my gut guess is that it's either material-specific- something in the material profile or you've just got a bad bottle of resin- or a projector/luminosity problem that's causing under-curing and failure of the base layers to adhere with some but not all materials. One of our 4Ks has a dying projector, and we can only print keymodel opposings/ortho models on it acceptably, dentamodel margins end up all rounded-off and unacceptable.

 

[tuyere]

And, yeah, open a ticket with Asiga, they'll be better-equipped to troubleshoot your issues than we are, and they're pretty responsive about this stuff.

 

[TheLabGuy]

We had an Asiga Pro 4k, what a pain in the ass...complete lemon. Encoders were always the issue, had so many issues that Whip Mix finally picked it up and had Asiga bring us a new one. Never had a problem since with new one.

 

[tuyere]

FWIW the 4Ks are very finicky and less reliable alongside the Max, we have 3 4Ks and two of them had weird projector misalignment issues from incorrect installations that led to parallelogram-shaped build areas and parts that were undersized at one end of the plate and oversized at the other. The projectors also die incredibly quickly- apparently the cooling for the projectors is totally inadequate, they've got great heatsinking and heat pipes, but a single little fan that isn't up to snuff. Skimping on a 10-dollar part burns out this several-thousand-dollar assembly twice as fast as it ought to, that kind of thing.
shame, the Max is totally reliable and prints parts bang-on all day for years, but the build area is basically a capacity rounding error for a lab of our size. we use ours for denture teeth, gingiva, and rush jobs, can't handle much more than that.

 

[tehnik]

Same here, 4K is a headache, but MAXes are bulletproof. I probably be looking at Stratasys for next large plate printer.

 

[erzdaemon]

The printer is 2 months old. I have no problems printing denture bases and teeth. The only time I have issues is when I try to print models flat on the print platform.

Hard to guess but i'd still blame Plattform alignment for now ( this would especially F up 1st slice which decreases the adhesion to the build plate).
Have you checked if it is really parallel to the bottom? ( use the encoders options in the video i posted, reset > move down on glas without tray > try to fit a piece of paper under each corner, it shoul NOT slip under either corner)

If there are only small parts like teeth these are not doing as much force as a full Model base when moving platform up again.

Also, when does the Model fail?
Is it completely detaching instantly ( all layers exposed to tray ) or is like half the model printed already before detaching?

 

[tuyere]

Same here, 4K is a headache, but MAXes are bulletproof. I probably be looking at Stratasys for next large plate printer.

We're desperately trying to mothball our Stratasys fleet, polyjet printing just isn't worth the operating + maintenance costs now that LCD/DLP printers are a mature and affordable option. We bought them years back when there were few options for printing, we'd never opt for them nowadays. They're out of service half the time, and we can't really do in-house maintenance with them like we otherwise prefer; consumables like the print heads need regular replacements and are thousands of dollars a pop; it's a very expensive closed ecosystem in terms of materials; etc etc. Maybe they've got their **** together with their new printers, i dunno, but we're washing our hands of Stratasys as fast as we can.

 

[tuyere]

@tehnik FWIW, if I weren't a huge lab that's flush with cash and were looking for large-plate-capacity printing, I'd probably just get several smaller benchtop LCD printers that'd approximate the same capacity, probably prosumers like the phrozen 8ks with the bigger build platforms. The fundamental simplicity and economy of LCD printers are great, the mechanism of operation involves virtually no moving parts beyond the Z axis, which means there's little to break down or need expert maintenance. Worst case is you need to replace the LCD element for a couple hundred dollars. But LCD printers are bounded in terms of build area by the size of the screens they use for masking the UV, which is basically tied to the size of very high-resolution consumer LCD screens currently in production- once you want bigger than that, you suddenly need a lot of moving parts with very tight operating tolerances, and stuff gets stupid.
Nesting for multiple smaller printers is annoying, and you can never make full use of the equivalent area because you'll never nest everything right up to the platform edge, but you also get redundancy and flexibility there- you'll never lose all your capacity because of a breakdown, and you won't be bottlenecked by only being able to print one material at a time. We're a big lab and we run multiple Carbon printers, including the M3 max with the bigass build plate, and a lot of the time we're using that carbon at, like, 15% capacity because we're running denture bases on it and only have 3 today instead of the 20 that'll fit on the plate. It's great for running models because we're always running full builds there, but we still keep a number of smaller Asigas around for our lower-quantity production and as backup redundancy capacity. We're down to one resin cassette for the M3, and if that one goes we lose literally 75% of our model printing capacity, it's a bad position to be in when replacement cassettes can take weeks to show up.

I'm rambling here, but my experience is that you have to compromise a lot to get a really big build area printer, and that they don't really offer a strong benefit to anybody but very big labs always running large quantities of a particular part type; and that LCD printers have some very attractive properties that just happen to exclude very large build areas in single printers.

 

[PRO ARTS DL]

Have you tried a different resin?

We had a lot of issues printing models with the Asiga model resins. (On the Asiga MAX, not the 4k)

We switched to Argen's resin and problems went away. It rarely failed after that.

 

[tehnik]

@tehnik FWIW, if I weren't a huge lab that's flush with cash and were looking for large-plate-capacity printing, I'd probably just get several smaller benchtop LCD printers that'd approximate the same capacity, probably prosumers like the phrozen 8ks with the bigger build platforms. The fundamental simplicity and economy of LCD printers are great, the mechanism of operation involves virtually no moving parts beyond the Z axis, which means there's little to break down or need expert maintenance. Worst case is you need to replace the LCD element for a couple hundred dollars. But LCD printers are bounded in terms of build area by the size of the screens they use for masking the UV, which is basically tied to the size of very high-resolution consumer LCD screens currently in production- once you want bigger than that, you suddenly need a lot of moving parts with very tight operating tolerances, and stuff gets stupid.
Nesting for multiple smaller printers is annoying, and you can never make full use of the equivalent area because you'll never nest everything right up to the platform edge, but you also get redundancy and flexibility there- you'll never lose all your capacity because of a breakdown, and you won't be bottlenecked by only being able to print one material at a time. We're a big lab and we run multiple Carbon printers, including the M3 max with the bigass build plate, and a lot of the time we're using that carbon at, like, 15% capacity because we're running denture bases on it and only have 3 today instead of the 20 that'll fit on the plate. It's great for running models because we're always running full builds there, but we still keep a number of smaller Asigas around for our lower-quantity production and as backup redundancy capacity. We're down to one resin cassette for the M3, and if that one goes we lose literally 75% of our model printing capacity, it's a bad position to be in when replacement cassettes can take weeks to show up.

I'm rambling here, but my experience is that you have to compromise a lot to get a really big build area printer, and that they don't really offer a strong benefit to anybody but very big labs always running large quantities of a particular part type; and that LCD printers have some very attractive properties that just happen to exclude very large build areas in single printers.

We don't have a large lab and we are currently using 3x Asiga MAX, 1x Asiga 4K and 1x Phrozen Mighty 4K. Phrozen is mostly for custom trays and 4K for antagonist models. 4K has problem with Asiga model resin (maybe with other Asiga resins too),it creates bubbels on the models. With for example keystone it is not happening. We have misprints where only the bases are printed with some supports and if I just reprint it, everything's OK. This happens both with Asiga and Keystone resins. These things are not happening with MAX printers. This week I had to print models to another lab, who is using phrozen printers and they were amazed with our Asiga models, especially with the fit of everything so I rather don't use the cheaper printers. I know it is possible to get the parameters dialed in, but I like the consistency of the Asigas outcome. Too bad there are problems with the 4K models.

 

[JohnWilson]

I will share my experience with Asiga
First off the company has been fantastic, yes I have a kick ass distributor as well but here is my story.
My first printer AsigaPro4k it was the early model which during pandemic they sourced projectors that TODAY are different. Like many things in that time frame things have changed and the Pro4K is no different. It has been updated and improved.
Right out of the box after calibration things worked great no issues and we loved it, fast forward almost 2 years or so and we started to get intermittent failed batches and they would be random and not to do with the pattern or the nesting. From blow outs to full on unattached from the build plate it was random and made me hate printing AGAIN. No initial burn in increase would solve this. The glass was always perfect and clean and we had no visual issues to the machine.
It was frustrating and we would be forced to expose and clean the tray way too much and it was a waste of resin and time. We get on the horn received some instructions on what to check and what to try and no improvements. Asiga sends special test equipment out to validate and check projector output and sure enough it was the early model and they offered to replace it at no charge other than the service tech.
In the mean time over that frustrating time frame I purchased two Max's and they have been flawless.
So what I have learned is what happens on these original printers is the projector in the bottom of the machine will get dust on the lens limiting the power and output and overtime the projector weakens as well. This can and in my case DOES lead to the intermittent issues and why some parts of the plate will work better than others The bottom of the original machine is open for ventilation which also means it sucks up all the dust that is the lab as well and this is something they learned and fixed.. They changed some things added a magnetic mat to seal this off this area but I can tell you I have heard other labs just adding tape to seal this off.

So I left yesterday for the Christmas break but I am told the machine is back up and running as new and in the mean time I did another end year purchase of an additional Pro4K. For some old gray hair round belly that hated additive some how I am sucked into wanting to like it again and I have the tools to prove it

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

[tuyere]

We don't have a large lab and we are currently using 3x Asiga MAX, 1x Asiga 4K and 1x Phrozen Mighty 4K. Phrozen is mostly for custom trays and 4K for antagonist models. 4K has problem with Asiga model resin (maybe with other Asiga resins too),it creates bubbels on the models. With for example keystone it is not happening. We have misprints where only the bases are printed with some supports and if I just reprint it, everything's OK. This happens both with Asiga and Keystone resins. These things are not happening with MAX printers. This week I had to print models to another lab, who is using phrozen printers and they were amazed with our Asiga models, especially with the fit of everything so I rather don't use the cheaper printers. I know it is possible to get the parameters dialed in, but I like the consistency of the Asigas outcome. Too bad there are problems with the 4K models.

We've learned to service our own Asigas, at least as far as scaling and print defects go, we only have to call a service tech in for projector replacements or other outright hardware breakdowns. It's kind of essential because it's way too expensive to get a guy in just to tweak our prints not fitting or whatever. You can do a whole lot on your own, at least until you start needing a UV intensitymeter to diagnose more esoteric stuff like a dimming projector. The trick is learning this stuff in the first place- I offer to help the service techs, ask a lot of questions, and take notes. For example, to fix scaling issues causing fitment problems, the tech needs to print a 'corner test', measure that, and feed the measurements back into the printer via the Settings panel in the browser interface- I offer to set up the jobs for them so they don't need to run around, and to wash the corner prints for them so they don't have to get their hands dirty, and that gets you doing the whole process side-by-side.