[Mark Skarr]

I saw that someone had created a little tool for helping to clean their FEP and resin reservoir, and I realized something about it.

Okay, to explain: in resin printing, you are working with a liquid medium that hardens when exposed to UV light. You print by only exposing a select volume of the medium through a transparent Teflon (FEP) film.

Sometimes you screw something up, and it sticks to the FEP. The easiest way to clean that is to run an exposure, where it hardens a small layer, connecting all of it together, allowing you to pull it all up at once. However, sometimes, getting that up can also be an issue.

So, someone created a little plate with a stick coming off of it, that you put in the corner of your reservoir, so, when it hardens to the rest of the "cleaning" layer, you can just peel it off.

But, I throw those away all the time . . . they're supports.

So, I save some of my supports and, when I need to clean my tray, I put one in the corner. Run an exposure, drain my reservoir and have a handy tab to peel the cleaning layer off.

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For FDM printing--clean the build plate after each print. I can't emphasize that enough.

Then, when ready to print, use a glue stick to add some adhesive to where you're going to print.