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Making the Photocentric Resin Work

It seems I'm not the only one having overcuring issues with the resin, as it was found, other Formlabs forum users with exactly the same problem when using the combination Form 1+ and Photocentric resins. Gladly, there is available a Preform open version where is possible to load custom materials through a settings file. There is not a lot of information on the web to tune this file but nothing that a little bit of playing around doesn’t solve.

The first step was designing a simple part that wouldn't take long to print but allowing to quickly tune the laser power settings. The objective for the part geometry was to test printing thin wall extrusions and recesses. When printing the resin with any of the existing settings (clear, grey, black) the parts came always with a thicker walls, and small crevices just completely disappeared. The part made in Solidworks has thin walls from 0,4mm up to 1,0mm and cuts 1,0mm deep and with variable width from 0,4 to 1,0mm.

With this part I made a series of prints and got the following results:

Using Formlabs clear and grey settings I obtained walls very thick, approximately 0,2mm thicker, and I could only see the 0,4mm wide crevice very slightly with clear settings.

With this settings I printed other really small parts to compare with other parts made in clear for reference. Well, I have to be honest that this comparison is not fair, as the clear parts were printed with a layer height of 25um and the grey with 100um. (Click to enlarge)