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Forum Index : Other Stuff : Creality Halot  resin printer, printing molecular model

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zeitfest
Guru

Joined: 31/07/2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 482
Posted: 07:10am 04 Aug 2023
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I bought a Creality Halot One 3D resin printer a few weeks ago (heavily discounted) and have had a go  so I thought I would report my beginner impressions etc.

Out of the box it was easy to set up. It appears well built and weighs more than I expected. I also bought some resin which is the main consumable, a bit expensive but worth it. The build plate attaches to the lifting mechanism easily, as a precaution I re-levelled the plate easily enough but it is preadjusted by the factory so apparently it is not usually required initially at least. The resin does have an odour so some ventilation is a good idea.

There is a "HALOT BOX" program available that takes a model STL file and manipulates  so to produce another file which you then use as a print file with the printer. The Creality print file is its own format, I think it is a text file though. You can adjust parameters using the program to adjust layer thickness (definition) and so on. It does not have the capability of other programs but it runs OK on a pretty old laptop, other programs tended to need more resources and grunt.

So after playing for a bit I was able to produce some reasonable builds. There are a few gotchas to watch out for, one is that bits of the model have to have a "support" at  in place in order to print. So say a sphere tends not to print well unless you add a support which is fairly easily done in the program. After the model is printed the support snaps off. I found a sphere will mainly print OK but you have to add a few spaced heavy-duty supports so the top of the sphere has a reasonable start. In practice the model prints upside down and the "support" is more like a suspension rope.

One thing to note, using fine resolution for the resin print makes the printing take considerable time - eg 12 hours - but I haven't tried changing many parameters much yet. It runs quietly overnight OK.
After the model prints you rinse off the surplus resin and put the model in sunlight for say quarter hour to finish the polymerisation. To clean up, isopropanol in a spray bottle is your friend, I suggest at the start getting resin with a visible color so that any remnants can easily be seen as the propanol drains off. Do not mix surplus used resin with new unprocessed resin and keep them in opaque bottles.

I have used it to print a solid model of a molecule from the structure as found by xray crystallography. Very nice !! In the gloom of computer ages past I wrote a quite primitive molecular graphics program running on a stored-image Tektronix 4010  display and new DEC Vax [the Burroughs 6700 and card decks being just retired] and used it to predict a space-filling depiction of a molecule I was working on. The computer department had just bought a laser printer - possibly the first in the state, at $32000 in eighties money - so I used random dots on the molecular "surface" as a plot. I am very pleased that it compares OK!




This is the model as produced by the Hulot, [can you see the hexagonal benzene groups above and below the planar centre ?] and the ancient main-ligand-atom-only graphics plot for comparison.



 
Revlac

Guru

Joined: 31/12/2016
Location: Australia
Posts: 1022
Posted: 08:31am 04 Aug 2023
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Great, I have been looking at one of those Creality resin printers for a while but haven jumped yet because I already have an Ender 5 for most of the larger jobs, I was aware of the STL files being converted but wasn't exactly sure how different the slicer is for resin printers compared to that used on FDM types.
3D Modelling and printing has been fun for a few projects and currently working on some now.

Thanks for posting your experience.
Cheers Aaron
Off The Grid
 
EDNEDN
Senior Member

Joined: 18/02/2023
Location: United States
Posts: 118
Posted: 03:51am 20 Nov 2023
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Creality and Ender ????    

Those both use Marlin.    Go figure!
 
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