A SMART Resin 3D Printer? - Athena First Look

sitting next to me is what aims to be the smartest resin 3D printer that you'll ever have the chance to use it's the Athena that's live over on Kickstarter well for the next 24 hours or so and I'll talk about that here in just a minute but it's a open source resin 3D printer that is completely upgradable from the inside and out so that means you no longer have to buy the latest and greatest version of your favorite resin 3D printer instead you'll be able to just upgrade the different components that go into this machine as well as have upgrades and updates to the actual firmware that goes into these machines most of the other resin 3D printers that are on the market today never get updates to them ever rarely ever and while that sounds extremely exciting to me I've spent more time troubleshooting with this 3D printer than I actually have 3D printing things over the very brief period of time that I've had access to particularly and this is not intended to be a review of the Athena 3D printer this is just a prototype unit that was sent to me early to provide feedback and help show off some of the things that this could potentially do and I have been providing a ton of feedback back to the Athena team I'm also not being paid for this and this is not intended to persuade you to back the campaign or dissuade you I'm not quite sure what word I'm looking for there on the particular machine I just want to share some of the feedback that I've had and received that I've been sharing with them on the particular unit before the campaign ends also so the printer itself was in FedEx limbo for a little while there until it arrived here in my hands last Friday where I got the chance to start working with it so this is Tuesday that I'm recording this so I've had just a handful of days to actually print with this over the weekend and just including yesterday and it's slightly this morning here before recording this video and again if you're not familiar with the kickstarter campaign that's up in Vail right now you'll find links to down below but this is for an 8K resolution msla resin 3D printer that again is open source and designed to be completely upgradable has a build volume of 219 by 128 by 245 millimeters that's a pretty decent mid-size build volume that you typically see somewhere similar to an elegu Saturn or some of the any cubic mono X Type 3D printers that are out there I should also mention that vog just posted a video that goes in depth and detailed about what the potential of this 3D printer could be once it's fully released and all the different functionality and smart Tech that's going to be packed into this 3D printer and I would highly recommend digging into that because I'm not going to go in too much on that since he's covered a lot of that I really just want to cover a lot of my experience and feedback that I have with the machine as well showing off some of the 3D prints that I've had with the unit but what really sets this apart from most of the other resin 3D printers that are out there is that it's again it has some intelligent features baked into this here so the big one that I think a lot of people are interested is the force sensitive build plate so there is sensors directly baked into the arm of the build plate that's going to detect a lot of the pressure that's placed as well as when it's lifting up and the prints are peeling away from the build plate or your fep sheet when using this particular 3D printer that in itself should allow you to drastically start speeding up some of your 3D prints by dynamically increasing or decreasing the wait times when it comes to the peeling action and the lifting speeds of your particular 3D printers now now you've also got some other functionality baked in here like a a heated sensor here that's going to attach near the build plate and go into that real quick on this particular thing here they've already commented that they're redesigning this whole bit there that how it feeds into it mine was held down by some like double-sided tape which obviously I think they've said it's it's going to be baked into the build plate or something along those lines so you wouldn't have to worry about it just dangling and not sticking or adhering in there as well as I noticed that when it lifts up after it's been sitting in the vat resin can potentially drip back down that little sensor and into the build volume of the 3D printer they're also using their own boards inside of the machine that also allow you to directly slice files on the 3D printer which is what I've been primarily using to print with all my particular files and again I'll talk about that here in just a few minutes and why I'm doing that but the other spit is they're not using those chitu boards so a lot of the other printers that are out there are stuck with using G2 systems and their boards for the machines and there's been issues with locking down and file formatting and all this other and upgrade ability and all this other craziness so they're just doing away with that and using their own tech for this which again is all open source and fantastic to see now this also has built-in rgbs that you're apparently going to be able to program and set up with different statuses of different colors that you'd want I don't really see the use case too much in this I guess it's a nice visual indicator however the problem is that I've seen it's really hard to tell what the different color is when the UV panel is down because it's tinting it yellow so it's if it's blue you're seeing Green in that case but one of the coolest features of this 3D printer is again I can't believe this hasn't been implemented anywhere else is just the build plate and how this is held down because it's just these little tabs that you don't have to actually fully remove the screws which can be a huge pain point on some 3D printers you just lift it up and lock it into place it's just a really easy intuitive way of managing the build plate or excuse me the vat in this 3D printer we've also got two real beefy rails as well as a really thick z-rod there that's going to help move this build plate up and down as well as just help you print fast and quickly there I know one of the big things is speed with this as well and I am seeing some pretty quick prints off of this machine and really low exposure times which is really cool to see they're not using the new ACF film which I know is a big question I think that was popping up online however you should be able to install that on here I don't know if they'll add that as an option later on but you can always order those online and just install it inside the vat here for the printer and potentially even increase the print times even further with that new release film now again one of the big standout features for this 3D printer is that sensor that's built into the arm there so there's a little chip device micro sensor there board on top of the 3D printer build plate arm that is going to be plugged into a power source with a USBC cable and then there are actual sensors that are wired in on the on the underside of the actual build plate arm so as it's printing and if I apply pressure down on the build plate you can actually see it reacting to that or pressing up on the build plate from underneath you can see that as well which is again just opening up the potential for lots of cool functionality to be baked in using this Tech and the all metal body of the printer is really heavy duty and I do mean heavy I think this thing weighs like 50 pounds so a good bit heavier than your other mid-sized resin 3D printers that are out there and I believe they mentioned this is manufactured just the the the body of this is manufactured by the same company like emake that does the emake 3D as well as the epacks printers because they're very similar in industrial and weight and all that other craziness that's involved here however they're the ones that are actually producing all of the internals that are going into these machines also if you haven't already noticed the acrylic panel isn't quite sitting and fitting right on this machine it either got banged up during shipping again this is just a prototype unit so they're kind of hobbling things together to send over to me for me to actually check out but this is where I wanted to actually start giving some of the feedback that I've had while working with the machine and I've got a good bit of it but I'll try and summarize as much of it as I can so first starting off is the touch screen of the printer could definitely use some work it's it's honestly it's very very responsive on certain pages and like the network setup page you can see exactly how responsive it actually is when interfacing and typing in your password to your network however on a lot of the other screens it just needs to be completely reworked in my opinion like I'll click on buttons and they just do not respond after multiple clicks or there's a severe delay after clicking on something in some cases I believe what the case is here is that they're using potentially a PNG image for the actual button and instead of having like a square space or that button resides and you can click anywhere in that space if I don't click exactly on the outline of the text in that particular button or the the the logo of the button that I'm pressing on if I press somewhere in the negative space inside of that button area it doesn't register it so you have to be very precise where you're pressing on the screen for it to actually register and as as I mentioned I've already conveyed like all of this feedback to Nico and the Athenian team I have been spending non-stop on Discord messaging with Nico back and forth over the past handful of days of just working with this particular unit so one thing that I really do like about this machine is the tank clean functionality not so much the interface for the tank clean I think that could be further improved as again there's a bit of a delay when you click on it and then there's no way for me to actually set how long I want the tank clean to be or to actually stop the tank clean process when it's actually running however once it's finished running this is one of the easiest machines that I've seen to actually remove that cleaned piece of film from inside of the vat normally you'll have to like put in supports and then lift it out with this there's plenty of space inside of that vat for you to slide in the spatula and just lift off that cure piece of resin one thing that just threw me for a loop is the whole move build plate functionality on here before you can do anything you have to home the build plate which instead on like 99 of the other resin 3 printers out there when you home it lowers the build plate to the screen so maybe you might want to level the build plate or something like that no the home position is all the way up top so you have to home before you can do anything and in this menu there's like a little slider bar there that you can slide on screen but it doesn't do anything so I don't know remove that slider or make it it like actually work so I can adjust the positioning but once it actually moves to the top what happened to me was I ended up clicking the buttons because it's not responsive there's no way to stop the movement as well once it started so I went to the top then went to the floor what's all the way to the bottom and then went to all the way to the top again because I was clicking these buttons versus actually waiting for it to finish its movement jobs and since there is that Force sensor built into this at any point in time there is a menu option that you can go into to see that live feedback option of the sensor and play alright so let's talk about printing files on this machine they have mentioned that they're going to be working with lychee and I really hope that comes to fruition here with this machine because currently one of the most painful processes of this whole Pro like the whole thing is just getting files sliced and printed for the machine if you're familiar with the Frozen transform and the plate system and the resin system for how that was all managed on that 3D printer that's like identical with how this machine works here which you don't see on any other machine and I think it's because it's just painful to work with it's it's like a it's a cool concept of having just an STL file on the printer that you can run off in print and then assign to a rose resin profile so that you don't have to let's say slice a file at one exposure and then that didn't work so you want to re-slice the file at a different exposure you can literally just have the file loaded on the machine and assign it to a different resin profile when you want to print it it's just a bit wonky with how it all works um the actual printing from the machine itself or getting files to the machine has been interesting to say the least to use the Nano DLP sights or slicer that they had yeah they have files for I'm on a Mac so they have files for the I'm gonna M1 Mac Max and this is the first time that I've ever think I've ever heard the fans kick on like my laptop here or one of the few times where it was going up over like 800 percent for the CPU while trying to slice a file with the Nano DLP slicer again I uh lychee would be the way to go I think that's how a majority of people would want to be able to do that if you're going to keep with the plates system here again plates is very confusing maybe it's called print files print jobs whatever you want to call it here have consistent naming convention across the different screens as well I feel like I'm ranting and it's not a rant it's again I just expressing the feedback that I've had while working with this machine and I want the best possible user experience for everyone else that ends up backing this and potentially picking up one of these machines for yourself because I think it's just going to be fantastic machine but it's got a lot of like UI work that needs to be done the workflow with slicing files needs to be ironed out and improved I wasn't able to actually wirelessly send files from nanodlp to the printer I don't think I was able to actually wirelessly send through the browser as well this is again Wi-Fi connective so you can go to the IP address of your printer it'll take you to a website where for this machine so you can see it live printing you can see all your plates you can set up your resin profiles directly from there and again that whole interface is interesting to say the least it could definitely use a little rework and I think they're already planning on reworking that sum to a degree but again just the overall workflow of getting a file loaded on here was a bit interesting so what I ended up doing was creating a profile for just the build volume of this printer in cheat to box forget all the settings because that's managed on the printer so I would create a build plate in chetu box I then layout and arrange my files maybe pre-support them then export that as an STL file then put that on the USB stick load that on the printer then go to select the file wait a few seconds because it takes a bit for it to select or to show up then I can select the resin profile that I want to use then you got to wait again for a little bit because it's on board is going to try and slice this printer or this the it's on board is going to try and slice the files but you can't hit print or send or whatever it says on screen there until all of the actual layers have loaded which was one of the big issues that I think I had when trying to initially print with this is I just wasn't waiting the 30 seconds to a minute for the files to load for me to bit to start the print job again it's just a I think the workflow process needs to be improved or clarified or just domain make it easier for anybody to come in here and work with this especially coming from other resin 3D printers where they're very responsive to what you're clicking on and trying to print compared to what I've seen so far with this all right so let's actually talk about some of the printing experience that I've had with the machine and some of the issues that I ran into with again the brief few days that I have with this initially when I got the machine got everything set up went to start trying to print something could not get the build plate to properly move at all basically and essentially this USBC cable looked like it was plugged in all the way but wasn't so I had to replug that in and then I was able to move things around unfortunately I kept running into uh failure after failure with the just uh the cones of calibration there what ended up happening is I think we ended up just tweaking some of the settings or maybe I ended up re-slicing that so that we were able to actually get those printed I did end up getting a pre-defined profile I told them I was going to be working with psoriotech fast resin for everything that I was going to be printing so they put in a profile directly into the printer for me to get started with along with the cones of calibration it just wasn't initially working properly so after finally getting the cones of calibration prints printing I decided Let's Go full send on this and print something let's maximize the uh at least some of the dimensions of the build volume of the build plate there so I went off and printed a few files here one from wexter which is the spider Punk then I have a dead king or the King of the Dead something like that from photos meant Lord of the Rings files I also have a 72 millimeter loot Miniatures statue as well as this little articulating frog that has a little booty to it but these files ended up taking about 3 hours and 30 minutes or so to print and I believe it was 2067 layers that it ended up processing for the machine now at first glance I think these prints look pretty good however I am seeing a bunch of like little layer I don't want to call them layer shifts but it's just like the unstableness there and I believe it's due to potentially these prints being further over exposed and the pressure coming from the build plate and the fep sheet just causing those little ripples that we're seeing in some of the print areas of these particular files I also don't believe that I had anti-aliasing enabled and I honestly don't remember seeing that as an option to enable or disable that so maybe Nico can clarify uh I believe they've said that anti-aliasing is an option I just don't recall seeing anything that I've sliced or the resin profiles that I've set up but on the Frog here you can definitely see some of the layer instances there of just how it was building up the prints over layer over layer I then went off and printed a set of the 32 millimeter scale Miniatures from loot Studios these are all pre-supported and it was a one hour and 19 minute print and had 804 layers and again I believe it was sliced at a 1.6 exposure and at a .05 layer height we then realized that there was an actual issue with the printer and the sensors it looks like it ended up getting damaged during shipping because a few of the wires ended up getting ripped in half or just frayed severely there or maybe it was pinched with that particular printed part I don't entirely know I think maybe those those wires could potentially be a slightly thicker set of wires to help prevent that but what I ended up trying to do was at this point I I was just going back and forth with Nico I was going to send the printer back and we're just gonna like leave it at this but I ended up breaking out my soldering iron and re-trying to solder some of the wires Oh and before I could even do that we tried removing the sensors and I ended up stripping one of the bolts that hold the sensors in place because it was just like it was completely locked in place I was able to remove all the other bolts except for two unfortunately so I wasn't able to more easily solder that so it's quite possibly the ugliest solder job that I've ever done or seen But it actually worked the force sensor so I went back and reprinted those same sets of Miniatures I just used the creamy psoriitec fast resin uh and before I did that I was running into issue after issue after issue again um of just getting things to adhere to the build plate so re-leveled the build plate modify the exposures modified the bottom exposures uh started to switch to different calibration print options finally was able to get some things Printing and then went off and reprinted those Miniatures again and with the like the sensors in play I Was printed the exact same Miniatures and those printed in one hour and 18 minutes and again the 804 layers so so I was honestly expecting the Miniatures that had the force sensing Dynamic Force sensing there in play to print faster obviously I thought it would maybe Auto calculate or recalculate versus just printing without those previously but really didn't do anything other than saving a minute of print time so I'm hoping maybe that can be further tweaked and improved or maybe again further things just need to be evaluated Machine by the way this machine is going back to the Athena team so that they can take a look at it and try and figure out how to further revise this again just a prototype machine here so after seeing the success of those Miniatures printing I decided I want to run off and print something larger overnight so I found this Daredevil bust by Wicked that I printed as well as this little creature guy from wexter I also then needed to run off and print the base of this particular statue here and one interesting thing about this so I ended up printing this base just by itself and I positioned it to the far side of the build plate knowing that there was an issue with the center and it was just lifting from the center there whatever that issue was that I kept running into so what was interesting is when I ended up slicing this on the printer it ended up repositioning this directly in the center of the build plate so it kind of like ignored the bounding area of the print file which was interesting so I kind of thought it would stick to that but I guess it just is going to reposition wherever the file is and location to how it can fit on the build plate of the printer so honestly I think this printer has a ton and I mean an absolute ton of potential behind it I I just it me needs a good bit more work before it's ready for prime time and that's exactly what they sent it to me for is again a lot of the feedback here on the uh the machine itself the the touch screen the slicing the workflow as well as what I'm seeing with the prints Here and Now with everything that I've had successfully print on the Athena they do look good there may not be the best looking resin 3 prints that I've ever had but they are successful and I think they are decent quality looking prints there are again some issues in particular areas with the prints and I have to think again it's due to the lifting and lowering of the build plate maybe some of the pressure that we're having there or maybe just being over exposed and I can't even believe that I'm able to achieve such low exposure settings with this printer as it is and potentially can even push it even further with more tuning of those profiles but if you're interested in more information about the Athena and the kickstarter campaign you'll definitely find links to those down below I did want to say a big thank you to Nico who is just been a huge help in answering about a zillion of my questions and listening to all the feedback that I've been providing them with you know hundreds and hundreds of Discord messages over the past handful of days I'm gonna end up boxing this up here and mailing it back to them so that they can take a further look at it I also want to say a big thank you to all my patreon supporters for your continued support of me making videos like this one right here that's entirely too long but if you're interested in my resin 3D printer settings you can find links to those down below again a big thank you to all of you that have stuck around to this point in this long rambling video of me talking about my experience with this Athena Kickstarter campaign 3D printer again this is just a prototype not a full-on review of this 3D printer but thank you again for hanging in here and watching this hey thanks so much for watching all I'll see you next time all right so here is a a bit of a raw video I had the printer I've got the Athena set up here I finally finally have it actually printing something that I've sliced myself and printing it there's just there's a lot that needs to be updated and improved on this but it's printing so I'm excited to see what the results are gonna look like here uh Nico over on the Athena team has been working with me like all day and yesterday trying to sort out why we're having some issues getting this thing sliced in printing and just some of the wonkiness of the machine there's definitely a lot of work that needs to go into the UI and the touch screen interface of this machine how you slice the files definitely needs to be improved I know they're going to be working on working with lychee to hopefully try and improve that the current way of doing it is just uh not intuitive or user friendly or anything that I would ever want anyone to actually have to use it's just very overly complex and not super user friendly but I've got it printing um this is hopefully going to be a three and a half hour print I was hoping to have this printed like way earlier in the day so it's now midnight here I don't think I'm gonna wait up all night for this to fully print so I'll just have to try and get something printed in the morning it's Saturday evening going into Sunday I've got to get a video try and record it for you guys for this uh and I wanted to get something actually running besides just a cones of calibration which I've only been able to get two of them printed um yeah so here's where we're at

Channel: Uncle Jessy

Views: 37,764

Keywords: Uncle Jessy, 3D Printing, 3D Printed, 3D Printer, Cosplay, Kickstarter, Resin, Resin 3D printer, Athena, Peopoly, Anycubic, Elegoo, Phrozen, Fast Resin 3D Printer, Smart, Smart Tech, Smart 3D printing, Wifi, Wireless, UncleJessy4Real, DareDevil, Miniatures, Loot Studios, resin 3d printer, Campaign, FEP, ACF, Film, Fast Resin 3D Printing, Lychee, Slicer, Plates, Prototype, initial Look, vegoilguy, VOG, Calibration, Resin Calibration, Auto Leveling, Sensor, Buildplate Sensor, Feedback, Pressure

Id: FU56rXVRu2M

Length: 24min 57sec (1497 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023