The chemical reaction at the heart of your SprintRay 3D Printer is very sensitive. Resin age and type, temperature, humidity, elevation, and your post-cure environment are all variables that can effect the accuracy of your prints.
Why Calibration is Important
Most models will print accurately out of the box, and the machine should not require any calibration from the factory.
If you wish to make calibration changes, they are saved in the printer so that they are used regardless of what computer you source your print files from.
How To Calibrate
To access the calibration menu, make sure RayWare is connected to your printer and go to the top line menu PRINT>FINE TUNING.
There are two categories of Fine Tuning available for your printer
Material Fine Tuning
Material Fine Tuning makes changes to exposure profiles. On the next screen you'll select the printer, resin, and layer height setting you’d like to calibrate. All changes made through these functions are specific to the settings chosen on this screen. Calibrating surgical guide at 100 micron layer thickness, for example, will not affect that same resin at 50 microns.
Next, we determine which type of test we’re performing. There are two types of Materials Fine tuning for SprintRay 3D Printers: Tolerance and Dimensional Accuracy. We should only do Dimensional Accuracy Calibration after confirming the Tolerance result.
Tolerance Calibration should be performed if parts are not fitting together as they should or if you frequently have failed prints when printing support structures.
Automatic Dimensional Accuracy Calibration fine tunes the exact scaling of your print to compensate for shrinkage that can vary with your post processing environment.
Once you’ve selected which test you’re going to perform, you’ll land on a confirmation screen that will remind you of the resin selected. You now have the option to print or skip. Pressing print will immediately send the job to the printer (so be sure it’s ready!), pressing skip will take you to a screen to input the result of the calibration test (in case you disconnect or close the window during printing.)
Z Axis Fine Tuning
This setting adjusts the starting position of the platform when printing the first layer. This is sometimes necessary if the printer's springs are adjusted during shipping or by wear over time. We make changes to the Z-Offset in this menu when we have issues with parts not adhering to the platform or over compression related problems. This setting is global for all resins used on your printer, and we recommend only making adjustments if instructed to by our Customer Support Team.