It's me! I got a new printer too!

[kkc]

I got a Elegoo Mars 2 Pro too! I actually got mine a month ago when the sale was initially announced, but I didn't really get time to set it up properly until a couple of days ago.

As I try to find handholds on this steep learning curve, one of the things I've noticed is that the flexibility of the resin printing possibilities means that the user has to do a lot of work. It's not turnkey, and a few of my early failed prints didn't work because I oriented the model wrong on the plate or didn't put in the supports correctly. That's largely a function of the .stl files being only the baseline standard, and all of the different printers use slightly different slicing formats.

I should probably post this question in the Car Wars section of the forum, but is there any chance that the official Carnage project data files will include the Chitubox .ctb files that are supported by the Elegoo devices, with ideal model printing configuration already set up? It'd be nice to just drag, drop, and print single vehicles at will without having to do all the mental gymnastics and geometry.

[Mark Skarr]

Supports are more an art than science. But, for a start, aim for about a 45-degree angle with the back toward the plate.

And, to be fair, I can't stand Chitubox. I've been using Lychee and UVTools and am very happy with the two of them on my Anycubic M3.

If you're not using UVTools--start using it.

[kkc]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out that UVTools software.

I figure the next stage in maturity for this hobby is getting the prints to be standardized to include supports, as well as having visual indicators as part of the print to let you know if it's coming out correctly or if you should abort. It makes sense that we would head that way since the majority of users would all want the same model used in the same way, and only a smaller minority might want to do complex things like scaling a model partially or creating interlocking parts.

[Mark Skarr]

I've discovered that sometime, the engineered supports aren't sufficient, and I have to additionally support them. It ain't great.

[kkc]

So I just saw some of the recent updates to the Carnage Kickstarter project, and the STL files for the models are in fact getting supported versions designed by a professional. This is part of the learning curve that I'm discovering, that when you buy expensive data you're also buying that level of extra support, in both senses of the word. So for the new Car Wars vehicles at least, it will essentially be turnkey for me. Which is quite nice.