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Another 3D-printed spiral developing tank


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i've never done 3d printing but it has always interested me.  at the same time, i do have 16mm cameras & projectors as well as some processing experience from the 35mm photography days.  would there be a 3d printer you would recommend for this project?  i had actually looked into Lomo gear at a couple of points but availability of decent looking pieces was an issue.  thanks!

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I used a Creality CR-10 V2 for this build. I like the printer in general. It has a 300x300mm build plate, just big enough for the larger tank. A smaller 220x220 model (Ender 3?) should be able to print the smaller tank. There are a lot of brands, but I haven't tried any others out. 3D printing is great, but a bit fiddly, it definitely took me a while to get good prints. All part of the fun though I guess!

 

 

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Nice! Thank you for making it. What are your thoughts about materials? I worry that PLA would not hold up to the chemicals for very long, especially bleach. Maybe PETG? I suppose one would need a transparent filament for reversal processing, right?

Edited by Jason Motamedi
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I have the Ender 3 and I have a 0.3mm nozzle mounted on it now. I'm going to use that one to print the spiral, so I can get better detail and minimize scratches on the film. I'll report later, since just the spiral it's going to take 14 hours to print, but I'll give it a try for sure.

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10 hours ago, Jason Motamedi said:

Nice! Thank you for making it. What are your thoughts about materials? I worry that PLA would not hold up to the chemicals for very long, especially bleach. Maybe PETG? I suppose one would need a transparent filament for reversal processing, right?

So far I've only tried the Arista rapid E-6 developing kit with Ektachrome 100D and had no issues, but probably a good idea to test first. Another issue I was thinking might be possible is if liquids could somehow become absorbed into the plastic layers over time, possibly causing contamination. I haven't seen this yet, just wondering if it's possible.

I was also thinking about transparent filament for processes with a light-exposing step. The clear filament I've tried is fairly cloudy after printing so I'm not sure how that might work out. Fortunately the Arista kit has a chemical reversal. 

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6 hours ago, Ruben Arce said:

I have the Ender 3 and I have a 0.3mm nozzle mounted on it now. I'm going to use that one to print the spiral, so I can get better detail and minimize scratches on the film. I'll report later, since just the spiral it's going to take 14 hours to print, but I'll give it a try for sure.

Awesome, I hope it comes out well! I've only tried a 0.4mm nozzle. The main challenge I had with the spiral print was getting the thin spiral bar to adhere over the entire plate surface and then remain in-place for the long print. I had success after adjusting the initial nozzle height, doing a bed-leveling, and cleaning the build plate with alcohol right before printing.

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Adjusting or calibrating the nozzle to the bed and cleaning the bed with alcohol helps a lot. I use hair spray after cleaning and calibrating the bed and prints stick to the bed really well. I just use the basic hair spray from the dollar store, it works like a charm. Also started getting much better result when I changed the bed heating temperature to 55 instead of 60° and the fan speed to 60% instead of 100% I print stuff at speed of 25-35 and that has helped me me to pretty much eliminate warping. I'm going to be out of town a couple of weeks, but I'll print the small tank soon.

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  • 3 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

Thanks for sharing this this is awesome - any tips on printing the spiral - there's a lot of overhang underneath what do you do for supports? I use Cura.

Thanks! I found that I had to print the spiral object upside-down, with the top surface of the spiral touching the build plate. I could not get a good print rightside-up with the spiral being put down over the support bars underneath.

Even so it was a challenging print. It was difficult to get the spiral to stay adhered to the plate for the many hours required until the support bars start getting put down on top. I eventually figured out that I needed to clean my build plate with alcohol every time before I printed, and had to check my bed-leveling and ensure that I had the nozzle very close to the plate (lots of friction when pulling a sheet of paper between them.)

A couple of times I would get a pretty good spiral printed, but it had a few small segments where it had gone a bit off (usually straight instead of curved.) I could usually repair the print by gently applying heat with a heat gun and then adjusting the plastic while it was soft.

I used Cura as well, and adjusted the settings to try to make sure that it would print each layer of the spiral as a single path, rather than having the print head jump around to various parts of the spiral within a single layer, which tended to knock it loose from the plate.

 I just posted my Cura profiles on Thingiverse in case they are useful.

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4 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

Thanks for sharing this this is awesome - any tips on printing the spiral - there's a lot of overhang underneath what do you do for supports? I use Cura.

Thanks! I found that I had to print the spiral object upside-down, with the top surface of the spiral touching the build plate. I could not get a good print rightside-up with the spiral being put down over the support bars underneath.

Even so it was a challenging print. It was difficult to get the spiral to stay adhered to the plate for the many hours required until the support bars start getting put down on top. I eventually figured out that I needed to clean my build plate with alcohol every time before I printed, and had to check my bed-leveling and ensure that I had the nozzle very close to the plate (lots of friction when pulling a sheet of paper between them.)

A couple of times I would get a pretty good spiral printed, but it had a few small segments where it had gone a bit off (usually straight instead of curved.) I could usually repair the print by gently applying heat with a heat gun and then adjusting the plastic while it was soft.

I used Cura as well, and adjusted the settings to try to make sure that it would print each layer of the spiral as a single path, rather than having the print head jump around to various parts of the spiral within a single layer, which tended to knock it loose from the plate.

 I just posted my Cura profiles on Thingiverse in case they are useful.

Regarding supports, the center hub of the spiral model has a support piece built in. I didn't add any other support and had pretty good success. Sometimes the very outside of the spiral support rim can get slightly ratty in spots, with a bit of filament drooping or loose, but it didn't affect functionality and I was able to trim away any bits.

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Thanks Chris for the super detailed explanation !

I printed the retainer this afternoon and started the spiral, I think I'm printing it the way you explained. See picture.

My printer is pretty tuned in so let's see how this one goes.

Hoping this will work - I can really use this because I'm about to do some optical printing and I don't want to have to go back and forth with the lab for my initial tests. I have some QWD Ecn-2 kits I can put to good use. https://quietweredreaming.com/product

 

Screen-Shot-2021-01-27-at-7.36.39-PM.jpg

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Yes that's the way I did it. Good luck with the print! Let me know if you have issues, happy to help if I can.

Optical printing, sounds intriguing! Did you acquire a printer or are you trying your own process? In any case I could see where developing your own tests could be helpful there.

I'm curious to see how the ECN-2 works out as well!

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I have a couple printer projectors mainly used for scanning but I have a special one with camera and all ready for opticals. Going to start with basic stuff and go from there. I'll post tests here if i get to process some file with the tank ?

It's printing now I will see tomorrow am. 

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  • 9 months later...
On 1/27/2021 at 9:50 PM, Robino Jones said:

Thanks Chris for the super detailed explanation !

I printed the retainer this afternoon and started the spiral, I think I'm printing it the way you explained. See picture.

My printer is pretty tuned in so let's see how this one goes.

Hoping this will work - I can really use this because I'm about to do some optical printing and I don't want to have to go back and forth with the lab for my initial tests. I have some QWD Ecn-2 kits I can put to good use. https://quietweredreaming.com/product

 

Screen-Shot-2021-01-27-at-7.36.39-PM.jpg

How did the EcN2 go?

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On 11/23/2021 at 7:35 AM, Pablo Cruz Villalba said:

How did the EcN2 go?

That's a long time ago, a lot of things happened since. I was never able to use the 3D printed version. Ended up getting a real lomo and a G3 and processed a ton of 35mm and 16mm.

The ECN-2 works really great but it's expensive and if I remember efficiency drops fairly quickly. Good for small tests. I stick to B&W for home processing.

Side note - I was never able to get "even" development with 35mm in a Lomo style tank, a LITTLE better on G3 but still not perfect at all. I tried everything (dunk, interminable agitation schemes, full dark room) until I threw in the towel. Issue is 35mm sprockets are too big and the chemicals flow through them creating uneven development. 

16mm on the other hand is always perfect. 

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