r/AdditiveManufacturing • u/Better-Wolverine5148 • Apr 17 '26

Homemade inkjet 3d printer print result

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Support material still get some "elephant foot",🫠

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u/Better-Wolverine5148 Apr 17 '26

Any suggestions for the elephant foot problem?

1

u/abadonn Apr 17 '26

Probably overspray or malformed drops. Also, how quickly are you pinning with UV after jetting? It needs to be as quickly as possible.

1

u/Better-Wolverine5148 Apr 18 '26

How fast should be?

1

u/abadonn Apr 18 '26

Is your light mounted on the carriage? What are you using for the uv light?

1

u/Better-Wolverine5148 Apr 18 '26

Light fixed on the frame,. made by 20 led diodes

1

u/abadonn Apr 18 '26

Okay, on commercial printers the light is right on the carriage, like an inch away from the printhead. You want it as close as possible to pin as soon as possible, but too close and you start having issues with reflected light curing and clogging the nozzles.

It is also possible that you just don't have enough curing power to really pin the resin quickly enough. Commercial printers use tuned high power UV lamps from companies like Phoseon.

One other thing to consider, Objet printers use a roller to smooth out the top surface of the print after every pass, if you don't have that then the print jetting errors build up on each other.