I like this idea of printing flat on the base, I've got a large lid for a box and I wanted to print it flat but everyone I talked to said to angle it. I will try to add a square to the bottom to absorb the malformation and if I make it just right it will fit inside the box opening and I won't have to even sand it off. !! Thanks
Just tried and goes quite well. I have made the substructure 0.5mm. But I will also try it with 0.4mm. And shorten the burn in time so they come off easier. The adhesion does not have to be as strong as for a normal model because of the weight for the base. Need the days more bases, let's see what all is possible👍
In 3d builder to quickly line up 2 models. Set the x:y coordinates for both at 0:0 ( the 3rd box on the bottom of the screen) then both models are perfectly centred you only need to adjust the Z height.
Hey. I've been really liking your videos. Once I'm able to, I am getting a large resin printer. One thing I'd like to ask you is if you could actually 3D print resin casts. Basically when you have an object you use a boolean inside a rectangular piece, then split it in two. Then add the pour funnel into the model. When casting you just add the mold chemical so that the poured resin doesn't attach to the mold (whatever that was called). This way you could create a lot of molds for casting?
Awesome - I always have issues removing the bases from the plate without denting and messing them up from the metal spatula - hopefully this helps, since it has that small gap from the extra "base" on the bottom that's absorbing the elephant foot do you notice or see a gap on the bottom? It seems like it would look like the bases are floating above the ground.
I came across a great tutorial for making bases in tinkercad. I know perhaps not the solution you wanted. This is it I think. th-cam.com/video/to5QHJh5JLA/w-d-xo.html
do any of you guys notice that your prints get worse the closer to the edge of the print bed they are? i'm trying to figure out if this is just my elegoo mars, or some setting or something, but most of the time, any model that is right on the edge will get messed up in some way or another,
Blue Gloves you’ll have to be more specific on what’s giving you a problem. It’s a pretty straight forward process once you have the settings right. For example, 82% raft size usually and I have 8 bottom layers and print at .05 layer height. As long as my raft is .4 thick I won’t get elephants foot on my model. I use a raft height of 1mm so that I can keep a bevel on the raft making it easier to remove from the build plate.
3DPrintingPro True!! I haven’t had any bases that have overhangs yet but they would indeed make the raft extend to those as well. I’ve recently been printing a lot of stuff that’s been modeled to print supportless and I’m quite surprised by the quality.
Honestly the elephant foot doesn't bother me that much, looks like it could be part of the base designs even. If you really wanted to have a clean up free solution you could try and shrink the bottom of the base to compensate for the elephant foot assuming it's consistent.
Easy fix anyway - lower your burnin time to 3x normal for printing bases directly on the plate. Ie for original photon / zero about 20 seconds. Use 5x burnin time for more general printing with rafts
The dice are all d6 with different symbols on them. They are specific to the Bloodfields game. One of the faces of each die is blank, which is why he is able to print flat to the plate and then sand the "support disc." It's not so feasible for traditional polyhedral dice unless they also have a blank face. I suppose you could put the "support disc" over the 1 or something on a d20 and just know if you roll a blank face it's a nat 1. You could carve it back in with a dremel or something too?
@@r.miller8749 I appreciate your reply! I dont play any games, but I love 3D Printing and fantasy. The models I print I was going to sell, but eventually decided I just enjoy printing :) That said, One of the things I wanted to print was die, but my first attempt was miserable. Chunks of the die pulled out from even the lightest supports. I do like your idea of a "blank" for the 1 so they could rest on the plate. However,I'd have to watch this video first, and make sure I dont have any elephant foot.
Agreed. It would be great if some Chitu-programmer spent a few minutes writing that code. For now, I'm going to end up modeling the additional geometry in Sketchup Free.
I have used this technique with bases on my Ender 3. using a smaller 'sub-base' attached to the build plate under the actual mini base allows for easier removal and minimal amount of sanding will remove the extra for a good flat contact across the bottom.
Honestly I've been banging my head against base printing for a few weeks now, failures, lines, deformation. You're my hero, thank you for such a clear demonstration of the theory and practice of achieving this result. Bonus is printing flat is much quicker too as maximum Z value is the rate limiter of these printers! A new subscriber well earned :)
I've been watching the early videos on support placement and not printing objects flat, and now these are printed flat instead of supported? Is there a size limit beyond which you should avoid printing flat to the plate?
I gave up printing my bases in SLA. I simply pulled out my old i3 MEGA and make it out of PLA. dont break, i dont need to be careful with it and it is perfect for painting bases. REsin is not a good material for bases, even the ABS resin is to sturdy and breaks far to easy.
So this only really works if you don't have any 3D elements that have overhang right? if you've got overhang that you can't really support easily, you're still kind of stuck doing it tilted
It appears Chitubox has added a feature called Bottom Tolerance Compensation to deal with elephant foot. Has anyone adjusted this setting and what was the outcome?
just edit the stl file of the base, just take away the outside rim only bottom layers 0.1 mm , so the elefant fills in the part you took away, i printed more then 80 bases all perfect flat on builplate no sanding needed.
Hi, I would like to print a Bitcoin and love to see a video or advice on printing a coin with detail on both sides? Love to see which way you recommend doing double-sided coin. Thanks for awesome videos.
This is really cool! Aren't bases printed flat on the bed like that more susceptible to warping during the curing process though? Mine always seem to when I try them flat on the bed.. :(
Maybe it’s because of the base resin that gets cured for so much longer? I’d imagine that could cause it to curl downward, leaving a gap below. Is that what’s happening?
Try rotating so a vertex is the lowest point and then support on the edges. You'll have to sand off the support marks but I don't know if there's a way to print dice flat without damaging that bottom face.
Thanks for this! Bases have really been holding me back. Now if only you find a way to do the big bases like with the Manticore. I’ve been thinking some extra dummy material to trim away might be the way to go. Also, do you have any thoughts on adding a void, an open cylinder, in the bottom of the base for adding a magnet?
I printed a batch that I had previously used supports on and these bottoms are beautifully smooth. They are very difficult to get off the build plate though (took a chip out of 1 in batch of 8 at once) and are .4 mm thinner than my previous batch that had been printed with supports. Do you show how you remove a model when it's flat on the plate in any video? Supported I have no problem with. Also the tops, a cobble stone pattern, isn't cut as deep with this method for some reason. I ran a single to test it and then the batch of 8. Any ideas? Regardless, I might keep this method, if I can remove them from the plate as easy as the supported ones come off. Thanks for sharing.
God this video is so much longer then it should be. Also this doesn't solve my problem, doing this with a 170x105mm Oval base leads to suction strong enough to rip it off the plate.
I use UVTools by sn4k3. Load up the sliced file in UVTools then Erode the bottom layers by 5-6 pixels and prints come out perfect printed directly on the build plate. github.com/sn4k3/UVtools
I used you idea, to make my perfect (so far) bases :) I noticed that esp. the ~50mm bases take a lot of material esp. when printed pre-supported (at an angle). So (in Lychee) I made mine hollow (with 0.8mm wall), and cut a hole at the bottom as big so that it reaches the side walls. I then export this object to .stl and reimport it in the current project. Then I use Lychee's library to add a cylinder, and modify it to be ~0.8mm thick ~50mm upper diameter & 49mm lower diameter (ie it's a slightly conical). Then I lift the base ~0.75 (to have slight overlap to be sure there're no gaps between them). Now on that bottom I made 3 large opening at 120 degrees of each other. I used the planar-cut several times to cut on each side about 10x14mm rectangle that reaches the edge of the circle so that there's area of ~20mm in the middle of that additional base (lets call it fundament) that's not cut. Since 0.75mm slit isn't enough to properly drain the resin inside the hollowed base I add thin horizontal cylinders again from the library and put them in the middle of each slit to make the drain hole bigger to 1.8~2mm from the build plate (the huge rectangular holes are the bottom are great for IPA cleaning later, but while stuck on the build plate they don't help - only the side slit which is ~0.75mm only). Having 1.8~2mm holes on 3 sides lets it drain well enough. I mark these small library cylinder as holes. Then I use auto-supports to generate the support for inside the hollowed base. There are usually many of them as I'm printing it flat. That's part easy as being on the inside let me not worry about their looks. I make them "mini" ie they're columns and ~1mm thick (I'm sure you can make them thinner as they'll ~3mm long at most and many). The only trick with the supports it that some of them will land on the rectangular cuts I made in the fundament. So I manually pull each of these lower end to land on the nearest fundament, so some of them are very tilted but still support plenty. Of course I export the cut-out fundament to .stl so that I can slap it to how-many bases I want in the future. The bottom line is a pre-supported (tilted) ~50mm base would take ~11.76ml of resin (actually my whole hollowed and supported horse that goes with that base is 5.5ml so it seemed crazy to spend twice as much on the base :)), and my custom base came at 3.37ml ie ~31% of the pre-supported one (& ~61% of the horse it has to carry). Of course being lifted by the slightly narrower fundament hides the elephant foot from the bottom+transition layers. If you want I can send you the ~50mm base fundament .stl as it was tricky and slow to make it initially, but now that I use it it takes me few seconds to slap it under the hollowed base.
Unfortunately, this method did not work on my 40mm base. Followed everything to the dot and somehow my base is now stuck on the FEP. Used a basic grey resin with prescribed settings for Elegoo Mars, except for a 40 mm/min lifting speed to retain more details.
Great video, I was wondering how would you go about to print a mouvement tray, lt say 100mm x 40mm and 100mm x 100mm. Seem that anyway I try is falling I have an Anycubic Photon
Did you try playing around with the compensation settings that allow you to grow or shrink the bottom layers (and normal layers if you wanted) by a small amount? My understanding was this is intended to address dimensional changes from printing such as elephants foot.
Hi! Thank you for your video! I always have problems with printing bases flat on the platform, as they come out very...flat. It looks like the scale on the z-axis have been reduced. I guess it comes from the settings i use but it works very well with normally supported models. Do you have an idea to help me?
If the elephant foot expansion is deterministic, you could shrink your disk by that exact amount and make it so the elephant's foot expands out exactly to the original edge and eliminate sanding altogether. 🤷🏼
Brilliant! This is something I have been driven mad by. Going to give this a go today. Have a suggestion that it would be ten times easier in Blender to mod the base to add a bottom disc and you would not need to know blender really to do this just follow a few simple steps. Will send a vid if you like
How does pledging work exactly? Do you get access to all of the prints they have made in the past as well? Sorry very new to this still and trying to find high quality without breaking the bank!
Too bad Chitubox doesn't have a border retraction option. You could specify the number of layers it gets applied to and subtract out how much bigger your diameter is when you print your base layers. Some of the other slicers have it as an option as an xy compensation.
Is there any way to combine this process with annoying bases that have inset logos carved into the bottom of them? I can't stand it but a couple of groups I get files from insist on putting their logo on the bottom of the base. I've tried doing this and then importing into MeshMixer to repair and fill the holes, but no matter what I try I still get a hollow spot and internal islands because of that logo.
Nice intro) How exactly should I place and support dice, assuming it's cubic form? When I place them directly on the plate, I get the "elephant foot" and botched bottom details. When I place them in a parallel plane, or at an angle and support them as usual - they are distorted ((
Hello! I am really interested in learning more about chitubox and how to print small pieces for jewllery as I am a goldsmith is there anyway u can help me?
You would think this would be a default option built into slicing software, where it automatically adapt the first layers masks slightly to account for the extra cure time in order to make it so the result is the same as the model....
why not in your 3D modeling software add a chamfer to the bottom of your base to compensate for the elephant foot that way the elephant foot is hidden and their would be no sanding or just get a deburring tool and cut the elephant foot of with that
What a great solution, i would have never thought to add that material to the base like that. Thank you for sharing it with us man. That's a like and a sub from me my guy.
Anyone reading this: do any of you have an all time favourite miniature that just makes you go 'wow, that looks so incredible!'? I have to print some samples for a potential $10,000+ job, so I'd really really appreciate some feedback here. They can be plus sized minis, and I can always scale them up to show off further detail.
Haven't been printing resin for long but the loyalty reward Ashen Chimera from Artisan Guild came out beautifully. Honestly, for simplicity and reliability of print while maintaining quality, I haven't seen anything that prints as well as Artisan's.
The way that I do it when printing on an angle is to go in and make sure that all of my support for that very bottom corner are underneath the base but still right on the edge and that way if there is a little bit of damage or pitting from removing the support material it will be on the bottom where no one will see it, but more likely than not I never get any damage on the bottom or edges. I use your light support settings . Sometimes a heavy one or two in the middle if they’re big bases. These seem like they’ll print way faster though
I saw this video a day late. Question, can that same shape be used on base shape or would it be best to try to match the shape of the base youre doing?
What I did with a yoda that already comes together with its base is I printed it flat but just added a bunch of well distributed supports bellow and it works wonders. and the sanding is very easy.
Couldn't you just do a thick raft with a negative slope to achieve the same thing? I have not tried it just thinking out loud. I am learning the hardest thing to print is electronic enclosures. I'd love to see a video on that.
Awesome! Thank you so much! Do you know if this can be applied to bigger bases? I don't do a lot of minis, but I actually go for bigger statues and so on, and bases have always been a nightmare for me. I kind of rotate them so that they fit in my build plate (they usually are the largest part of the piece), but even though I have lift speed very low and supports and so on, they keep ending up with some lines and inconsistencies. Do you know any tips for bigger bases to be perfectly rounded and flat?
Well you couldn't print it flat like that, the hollow part would make one big over hang. So then you'd have to tilt it and support it and end up with same problems with support damage on edges.
I like this idea of printing flat on the base, I've got a large lid for a box and I wanted to print it flat but everyone I talked to said to angle it. I will try to add a square to the bottom to absorb the malformation and if I make it just right it will fit inside the box opening and I won't have to even sand it off. !! Thanks
Just tried and goes quite well. I have made the substructure 0.5mm. But I will also try it with 0.4mm. And shorten the burn in time so they come off easier. The adhesion does not have to be as strong as for a normal model because of the weight for the base. Need the days more bases, let's see what all is possible👍
Thank you so much good sir, for sharing your research on these bases. Very helpful , helped me a lot when printing my bases !
thanks so much, I've been struggling so badly with base printing too!
In 3d builder to quickly line up 2 models. Set the x:y coordinates for both at 0:0 ( the 3rd box on the bottom of the screen) then both models are perfectly centred you only need to adjust the Z height.
- just to add, this will only work if there's nothing on the base overhanging the edge
Hey. I've been really liking your videos. Once I'm able to, I am getting a large resin printer. One thing I'd like to ask you is if you could actually 3D print resin casts. Basically when you have an object you use a boolean inside a rectangular piece, then split it in two. Then add the pour funnel into the model. When casting you just add the mold chemical so that the poured resin doesn't attach to the mold (whatever that was called). This way you could create a lot of molds for casting?
For anyone else, content starts around 8 min mark.
Also, this only works for minis not on a base, so base has to be separate.
I have an issue with a specific base, for some reason is not printing, with or without support. is this common?
Awesome - I always have issues removing the bases from the plate without denting and messing them up from the metal spatula - hopefully this helps, since it has that small gap from the extra "base" on the bottom that's absorbing the elephant foot do you notice or see a gap on the bottom? It seems like it would look like the bases are floating above the ground.
Holy Shite this makes it so easy.
Now I need a video on how to print my custom base with an accuracy of +/- 0.001”
if you can find a resin that prints 1:1 you can. :D If you find one let me know.
So every object that is positioned off center of build plate will print with lower quality. I wonder why that happens
The FEP peels from the edges to the center, so anything not round and dead centered will have variable forces applied to it
What if you made that donut shaped? Might be easier to sand down evenly.
I suppose .16mm isn't too challenging.
is this still the best way?
Great video. Btw anyone know where I can get some good Ork Scrapyard base STLs from for Warhammer 40k ? paid for or free ?
I came across a great tutorial for making bases in tinkercad. I know perhaps not the solution you wanted.
This is it I think.
th-cam.com/video/to5QHJh5JLA/w-d-xo.html
brill video you could use that method with anythink flat on build plate ..well be giving that ago
do any of you guys notice that your prints get worse the closer to the edge of the print bed they are? i'm trying to figure out if this is just my elegoo mars, or some setting or something, but most of the time, any model that is right on the edge will get messed up in some way or another,
light usually isn't as accurate at the edges unless you have a paralell light array )
Not unusual with a single point UV source.
Because mars doesnt have matrix uv
I do this quickly with support raft at 80-90% and making the thickness of the raft the same as my bottom layer thickness. Nice video.
I tried this in chitubox... I was having a problem. How do you do it?
Yes one of my Patrons mentioned this as soon as he saw my video, I'm going to make an update video with that method as well, thanks!
Blue Gloves you’ll have to be more specific on what’s giving you a problem. It’s a pretty straight forward process once you have the settings right. For example, 82% raft size usually and I have 8 bottom layers and print at .05 layer height. As long as my raft is .4 thick I won’t get elephants foot on my model. I use a raft height of 1mm so that I can keep a bevel on the raft making it easier to remove from the build plate.
@@ThatPNWGuy2024 only issue there is when a base has an element that hangs over the edge :)
3DPrintingPro True!! I haven’t had any bases that have overhangs yet but they would indeed make the raft extend to those as well. I’ve recently been printing a lot of stuff that’s been modeled to print supportless and I’m quite surprised by the quality.
Honestly the elephant foot doesn't bother me that much, looks like it could be part of the base designs even. If you really wanted to have a clean up free solution you could try and shrink the bottom of the base to compensate for the elephant foot assuming it's consistent.
Easy fix anyway - lower your burnin time to 3x normal for printing bases directly on the plate. Ie for original photon / zero about 20 seconds. Use 5x burnin time for more general printing with rafts
I would love to see how you did the dice you mentioned in the video. But also, how would you support all 6 basic dice? (d4, d6, d8,d10, d12, d20)
The dice are all d6 with different symbols on them. They are specific to the Bloodfields game. One of the faces of each die is blank, which is why he is able to print flat to the plate and then sand the "support disc." It's not so feasible for traditional polyhedral dice unless they also have a blank face. I suppose you could put the "support disc" over the 1 or something on a d20 and just know if you roll a blank face it's a nat 1. You could carve it back in with a dremel or something too?
@@r.miller8749 I appreciate your reply! I dont play any games, but I love 3D Printing and fantasy. The models I print I was going to sell, but eventually decided I just enjoy printing :) That said, One of the things I wanted to print was die, but my first attempt was miserable. Chunks of the die pulled out from even the lightest supports. I do like your idea of a "blank" for the 1 so they could rest on the plate. However,I'd have to watch this video first, and make sure I dont have any elephant foot.
This really should be an option in Chitubox. All you would have to do is duplicate the first layer by the number of initial layers and scale it down
Agreed. It would be great if some Chitu-programmer spent a few minutes writing that code. For now, I'm going to end up modeling the additional geometry in Sketchup Free.
Love your vids. Wouldn’t have bought a printer without them!
This is awesome, bases have been driving me crazy trying to get them perfect. Testing this out today - thank you for the easy to follow video!
Sorry to sound thick (as we say in the UK) but if I've got this right, the Z-Height equals Layer Height multiplied by the Bottom Layer Count?
I have used this technique with bases on my Ender 3. using a smaller 'sub-base' attached to the build plate under the actual mini base allows for easier removal and minimal amount of sanding will remove the extra for a good flat contact across the bottom.
I love these bases Greg. Where are they from?
Honestly I've been banging my head against base printing for a few weeks now, failures, lines, deformation. You're my hero, thank you for such a clear demonstration of the theory and practice of achieving this result. Bonus is printing flat is much quicker too as maximum Z value is the rate limiter of these printers! A new subscriber well earned :)
I've been watching the early videos on support placement and not printing objects flat, and now these are printed flat instead of supported? Is there a size limit beyond which you should avoid printing flat to the plate?
these are printed flat because I've found its the only way to get perfect bases so far. I've done as big as 120mm round in this fashion :)
@@3dprintingpro212 Thanks for the reply, I'm expecting my first resin printer next week so I'm avidly watching all your videos! :D
I gave up printing my bases in SLA. I simply pulled out my old i3 MEGA and make it out of PLA. dont break, i dont need to be careful with it and it is perfect for painting bases.
REsin is not a good material for bases, even the ABS resin is to sturdy and breaks far to easy.
I was wondering about this recently, what do you think would be the best way to print a big, say 100cm base? Could we apply the same concept?
So this only really works if you don't have any 3D elements that have overhang right? if you've got overhang that you can't really support easily, you're still kind of stuck doing it tilted
This method sounds good, what takes longer making the changes in 3d builder or sanding of the Elefant foot
It appears Chitubox has added a feature called Bottom Tolerance Compensation to deal with elephant foot. Has anyone adjusted this setting and what was the outcome?
just edit the stl file of the base, just take away the outside rim only bottom layers 0.1 mm , so the elefant fills in the part you took away, i printed more then 80 bases all perfect flat on builplate no sanding needed.
Sounds like cheating. Those bases are printed too well!
Hi, I would like to print a Bitcoin and love to see a video or advice on printing a coin with detail on both sides? Love to see which way you recommend doing double-sided coin. Thanks for awesome videos.
This is really cool! Aren't bases printed flat on the bed like that more susceptible to warping during the curing process though? Mine always seem to when I try them flat on the bed.. :(
Maybe it’s because of the base resin that gets cured for so much longer? I’d imagine that could cause it to curl downward, leaving a gap below. Is that what’s happening?
Great tip, thanks.
I've been trying to print some custom D20s, any ideas to minimise damage to the bottom face?
Try rotating so a vertex is the lowest point and then support on the edges. You'll have to sand off the support marks but I don't know if there's a way to print dice flat without damaging that bottom face.
The man, the myth , the legend. Well done sir.
just finding this video, it's nice but every time he says base all I can think about is the megan trainer song " all about the base "
Thanks for sharing this. I've been avoiding printing bases because I could just tell they wouldn't come out symmetrical without futzing.
I'm so thankful for you sharing this. It was driving me crazy hahaha. Definitely share your OCD here :P
printing direct base to plate, what method do you use to get part of plate?
Did you make a version 2 of this yet? I couldn't find it on your page
Enjoy your videos, but how much longer are you going to record audio with a potato?
sounds fine dude...
Nerdtronic made a video on this to and he wrote a downloadable app that does this automaticaly
I've had SO MUCH trouble printing bases. The bottoms always come out uneven and wavy no matter how much I support. Thanks for this video!
Thanks for this! Bases have really been holding me back. Now if only you find a way to do the big bases like with the Manticore. I’ve been thinking some extra dummy material to trim away might be the way to go. Also, do you have any thoughts on adding a void, an open cylinder, in the bottom of the base for adding a magnet?
Fucking 16 minutes to explain how to print bases?!
Dang bro!!! new intro!!!
Could this be achieved by putting a basic rest under the base in lychee?
I printed a batch that I had previously used supports on and these bottoms are beautifully smooth. They are very difficult to get off the build plate though (took a chip out of 1 in batch of 8 at once) and are .4 mm thinner than my previous batch that had been printed with supports. Do you show how you remove a model when it's flat on the plate in any video? Supported I have no problem with.
Also the tops, a cobble stone pattern, isn't cut as deep with this method for some reason. I ran a single to test it and then the batch of 8. Any ideas? Regardless, I might keep this method, if I can remove them from the plate as easy as the supported ones come off. Thanks for sharing.
I just use a razor scraper (metal) as flat as you can get it and the bases just pop off ;)
God this video is so much longer then it should be.
Also this doesn't solve my problem, doing this with a 170x105mm Oval base leads to suction strong enough to rip it off the plate.
I have the same issue. I'll try to angle it close to 90 next time
Oh my goodness man finally a solid solution for elephants foot
Is it possible for Lychee to do this?
I use UVTools by sn4k3. Load up the sliced file in UVTools then Erode the bottom layers by 5-6 pixels and prints come out perfect printed directly on the build plate. github.com/sn4k3/UVtools
Lychee now has a feature for its pro version that counteracts/compensates for the elephant's foot effect.
I used you idea, to make my perfect (so far) bases :)
I noticed that esp. the ~50mm bases take a lot of material esp. when printed pre-supported (at an angle).
So (in Lychee) I made mine hollow (with 0.8mm wall), and cut a hole at the bottom as big so that it reaches the side walls.
I then export this object to .stl and reimport it in the current project.
Then I use Lychee's library to add a cylinder, and modify it to be ~0.8mm thick ~50mm upper diameter & 49mm lower diameter (ie it's a slightly conical).
Then I lift the base ~0.75 (to have slight overlap to be sure there're no gaps between them).
Now on that bottom I made 3 large opening at 120 degrees of each other. I used the planar-cut several times to cut on each side about 10x14mm rectangle that reaches the edge of the circle so that there's area of ~20mm in the middle of that additional base (lets call it fundament) that's not cut.
Since 0.75mm slit isn't enough to properly drain the resin inside the hollowed base I add thin horizontal cylinders again from the library and put them in the middle of each slit to make the drain hole bigger to 1.8~2mm from the build plate (the huge rectangular holes are the bottom are great for IPA cleaning later, but while stuck on the build plate they don't help - only the side slit which is ~0.75mm only). Having 1.8~2mm holes on 3 sides lets it drain well enough. I mark these small library cylinder as holes.
Then I use auto-supports to generate the support for inside the hollowed base. There are usually many of them as I'm printing it flat. That's part easy as being on the inside let me not worry about their looks. I make them "mini" ie they're columns and ~1mm thick (I'm sure you can make them thinner as they'll ~3mm long at most and many).
The only trick with the supports it that some of them will land on the rectangular cuts I made in the fundament. So I manually pull each of these lower end to land on the nearest fundament, so some of them are very tilted but still support plenty.
Of course I export the cut-out fundament to .stl so that I can slap it to how-many bases I want in the future.
The bottom line is a pre-supported (tilted) ~50mm base would take ~11.76ml of resin (actually my whole hollowed and supported horse that goes with that base is 5.5ml so it seemed crazy to spend twice as much on the base :)), and my custom base came at 3.37ml ie ~31% of the pre-supported one (& ~61% of the horse it has to carry).
Of course being lifted by the slightly narrower fundament hides the elephant foot from the bottom+transition layers.
If you want I can send you the ~50mm base fundament .stl as it was tricky and slow to make it initially, but now that I use it it takes me few seconds to slap it under the hollowed base.
Unfortunately, this method did not work on my 40mm base. Followed everything to the dot and somehow my base is now stuck on the FEP. Used a basic grey resin with prescribed settings for Elegoo Mars, except for a 40 mm/min lifting speed to retain more details.
New intro is great!
Great video, I was wondering how would you go about to print a mouvement tray, lt say 100mm x 40mm and 100mm x 100mm. Seem that anyway I try is falling
I have an Anycubic Photon
Do these have any suction forces?
Can you make a guide how to print large bases that doesn't fit in the printer? 15 cm+. I tried 2 times. One failed, other end up ugly
Did you try playing around with the compensation settings that allow you to grow or shrink the bottom layers (and normal layers if you wanted) by a small amount? My understanding was this is intended to address dimensional changes from printing such as elephants foot.
Hi! Thank you for your video! I always have problems with printing bases flat on the platform, as they come out very...flat. It looks like the scale on the z-axis have been reduced. I guess it comes from the settings i use but it works very well with normally supported models. Do you have an idea to help me?
If the elephant foot expansion is deterministic, you could shrink your disk by that exact amount and make it so the elephant's foot expands out exactly to the original edge and eliminate sanding altogether. 🤷🏼
Brilliant! This is something I have been driven mad by. Going to give this a go today.
Have a suggestion that it would be ten times easier in Blender to mod the base to add a bottom disc and you would not need to know blender really to do this just follow a few simple steps. Will send a vid if you like
I’d like to see that since I am learning blender.
I have blender I would be interested in learning how to do this.
How does pledging work exactly? Do you get access to all of the prints they have made in the past as well? Sorry very new to this still and trying to find high quality without breaking the bank!
Too bad Chitubox doesn't have a border retraction option. You could specify the number of layers it gets applied to and subtract out how much bigger your diameter is when you print your base layers. Some of the other slicers have it as an option as an xy compensation.
Is there any way to combine this process with annoying bases that have inset logos carved into the bottom of them? I can't stand it but a couple of groups I get files from insist on putting their logo on the bottom of the base. I've tried doing this and then importing into MeshMixer to repair and fill the holes, but no matter what I try I still get a hollow spot and internal islands because of that logo.
Nice intro)
How exactly should I place and support dice, assuming it's cubic form? When I place them directly on the plate, I get the "elephant foot" and botched bottom details. When I place them in a parallel plane, or at an angle and support them as usual - they are distorted ((
This was very helpful. I wanted to replicate the rook that is on the elegoo test file. no elephants foot!
Hello! I am really interested in learning more about chitubox and how to print small pieces for jewllery as I am a goldsmith is there anyway u can help me?
What are those bases from - the look awesome!
I'm literally trying this tonight myself, thank you as always for the tips, tricks and tutorials.
You would think this would be a default option built into slicing software, where it automatically adapt the first layers masks slightly to account for the extra cure time in order to make it so the result is the same as the model....
why not in your 3D modeling software add a chamfer to the bottom of your base to compensate for the elephant foot that way the elephant foot is hidden and their would be no sanding
or just get a deburring tool and cut the elephant foot of with that
Gentleman and scholar!
What a great tip....wow!
What a great solution, i would have never thought to add that material to the base like that. Thank you for sharing it with us man. That's a like and a sub from me my guy.
How about if I want to print something like a spoke rims for diecast ?
liked video due to printer noises in the background
Is it bad I don't even hear them anymore? :)
as a mac user, I don't have access to 3D builder... can you do a video on how to do it in meshmixer?
I'm curious, will the AG pre-supports come with this new method implemented? Would be fun to try out.
Anyone reading this: do any of you have an all time favourite miniature that just makes you go 'wow, that looks so incredible!'?
I have to print some samples for a potential $10,000+ job, so I'd really really appreciate some feedback here.
They can be plus sized minis, and I can always scale them up to show off further detail.
Haven't been printing resin for long but the loyalty reward Ashen Chimera from Artisan Guild came out beautifully. Honestly, for simplicity and reliability of print while maintaining quality, I haven't seen anything that prints as well as Artisan's.
It's funny to see something that I have used with my FDM printer to negate the elephant's foot on friction fit parts used in resin printing too :D
The way that I do it when printing on an angle is to go in and make sure that all of my support for that very bottom corner are underneath the base but still right on the edge and that way if there is a little bit of damage or pitting from removing the support material it will be on the bottom where no one will see it, but more likely than not I never get any damage on the bottom or edges. I use your light support settings . Sometimes a heavy one or two in the middle if they’re big bases. These seem like they’ll print way faster though
How do we add extra material 5o print a base that is hollow underneath? I want to print them in clear green.
I wish I had the printer time for bases, so many miniatures and had no time for bases, just imagining 50 bases in print time....
I saw this video a day late. Question, can that same shape be used on base shape or would it be best to try to match the shape of the base youre doing?
There should be an option in the slicer to have a normal exposure time at the edges of the model to avoid the elephant's foot.
you can do a cone and see how big your foot will end up, then you can change the diamter if the inner lower diameter on the base to get no foot at all
What I did with a yoda that already comes together with its base is I printed it flat but just added a bunch of well distributed supports bellow
and it works wonders. and the sanding is very easy.
Love the video. Curious however: do you use a flex plate on your printer bed, or do you print on the stock bed and just use a metal scraper to remove?
Couldn't you just do a thick raft with a negative slope to achieve the same thing? I have not tried it just thinking out loud. I am learning the hardest thing to print is electronic enclosures. I'd love to see a video on that.
yep check my update to this vid :) but some bases it doesn't work on
Can you upload those templates for 25mm, 40mm, etc? :)
Thank you for saving my sanity! This ALWAYS bugged me. I would have to print out all my bases on my FDM printer due to this issue on my resin printer.
Awesome! Thank you so much! Do you know if this can be applied to bigger bases? I don't do a lot of minis, but I actually go for bigger statues and so on, and bases have always been a nightmare for me. I kind of rotate them so that they fit in my build plate (they usually are the largest part of the piece), but even though I have lift speed very low and supports and so on, they keep ending up with some lines and inconsistencies. Do you know any tips for bigger bases to be perfectly rounded and flat?
Elephant foot doesn't matter for me. The problem is to take off the piece from build plate with about 9 bottom layers and 90s.
Reduce to 60 seconds
A normal factory GW base is hollow. Have you ever considered cutting a cilinder of for example 20mm and3-4mm deep to say on sanding and resin?
Well you couldn't print it flat like that, the hollow part would make one big over hang. So then you'd have to tilt it and support it and end up with same problems with support damage on edges.
I'm starting the hobby very soon and your videos are helping me alot!!!!!