[dazee]

Just wondering if anyone has experience with the clear resins on their durability to remain clear?
I just got some Elegoo transparent resin in to try printing with the windows left in.  After coating with a clear topcoat the result does not look too bad to my old eyes.  Hopefully the coating will help against yellowing over time.

Going to let this one get some sunlight while I tweek the model a bit and fix my errors.

   

[Kevan]

What bits are coated with the clear resin?

[OXO cube]

think he means he printed the whole body + windows in clear , as a single print 
then painted the body parts 
much like a lexan body 

if thats the case , did you paint the outside ?
looking at the pictures that seems the case 
( the opposite to a lexan body )

tbh . it looks quite good in the pics 

Kev

[dazee]

The whole car was printed with clear resin.  I then masked the windows while painted the rest of the body.

   

[Kevan]

Well that's got me thinking...

[Anthony B]

Me tooo - nice one!!!

[munter]

the headline threw me a little ..... the assumption that I incorrectly made was that you were casting in clear resin, which is always a challenge unless you are Brad Blohm.

[dazee]

Still learning this process as very new to resin printing, but seemed to have had good luck in the choice of printer being very easy to use.

The unpainted body has more of a yellow tint as it has over cured - this was before I did the wonderful Cones of Calibration which reduced the exposure time per layer from 2.5s to 2s.  This gave me much more accurate prints, saved a bunch of time, and for the clear resin took away some of the yellowness.

I printed a couple of smaller versions while I was trying to fix some errors in the model itself, and also tried to dial up the fineness of the print.  My thought being a finer print may get clearer results.
I went from a layer height of 0.05 to 0.02 as a compromise between wating to see increased smoothness ad the time it would take to print.
   
While this has increased the smoothness of the print, it has also introduced some yellowing.  I am assuming this could be a result of the increased uv exposure when printing as previously printed layers still receiving exposure from the current layer printing?  But if that was the case, should't I see a colour gradient from the first layer printed through to the last??  My brain itches.

I think the post print process should also improve the look.  At the moment just testing and you can see I did absolutely no prep work when painting.  Just cleaned parts and set about it.  Some fine sanding of the parts I think will improve it too.

Finally I am also testing various clear coats I have to compare the results.
   
The painted car was sone with Mr Hobby Premium Top Coat.  The misty side of the unpainted car just one coat of Mr Hobby to protect and the glossy side Tamiya x22

[Kevan]

I've never been a believer in this 'over curing', to me it's either cured or it isn't.  Typical tough resins cure until there are no more binders to react to the UV light.

[dazee]

I can't speak for any of the chemistry behind it, just from what I have experienced so far.  If I leave the printed parts under the UV lamp for curing, the transparent resin will have a stronger tint - will see what the failed part currently in curing will look like when I take it out later.  Should reproduce a long time exposed to daylight I guess.

Also the exposure time on the layers although tint would currently be subjective, I can speak for the effect of accuracy.  Out of the box the results were good, but that calibration test shows clearly when over/under exposing and the impact to print detail and accuracy.  Well worth the time to do that.

My other lesson so far... need to cover the AI camera when printing clear resin.  Having it stop due to "No Model Detected" because you are printing clear, very frustrating.  Only ever happens with clear resin.