ANYCUBIC wash and cure station/hurry up and wait

 

A number of months ago I bought an Anycubic wash station. I think it was on sale for $130. If you read my blog you know that I purchased a Phrozen 4K to try and print some jewelry pieces. While messy it is a great printer.  It has its quirks but for the resolution and price it is hard to beat. As far as I can tell it's direct competition is the Anycubic Photon. While being a lot cheaper but it doesn't come close to the resolution I need for 3D printing parts that require stone setting or fine texture. So when I was shopping around the Phrozen was the one I landed on.  

Now that the studio is all setup I can start setting up my print area again. So far everything with the wash station seems to be working well. It seemed to be packed well. It comes with a couple accessories specific to the Anycubic photon (I will skip those). There is what I will call the "dangler" which allows you to take the platter off the Photon and put it right in the wash station....which is great but unfortunately doesn't fit the screw for the Phorzen platter. I will probably just file it to fit. There is also a dunk basket for larger parts (which will I probably use more often than the dangler until I figure out the dangler) 

From what I can tell it is just a magnetic stir station with a propeller in the bottom of the container. If you take the container out you can put in a small platter that rotates slowly to cure your part. It looks to all be anodized aluminum with parts that neatly nest into place.

So far this is what I like:

• Small foot print: I am printing jewelry so it is perfect size
• You can rinse and cure at the same time: It does one thing at a time. No chance of messing it up
• The cure station will not work if the shroud it off: you wont accidentally zap yourself with UV rays. 
• It is about the same size as the Phorzen 4K: which means the lunch trays that I bought from Amazon will fit under both just incase something leaks when I am not around.

Things I don't like:

• I can't use it yet because there is a shortage of IPA 
• It is a lot of IPA: It is 3500 ml that is almost a gallon of IPA just hanging out
• It came with a spare bearing :This makes me think that might be a problem in the future (maybe this is a pro?)

So there is no happy ending currently.  I don't have a place that I can source IPA.  If anyone has used something else to clean resin parts successfully, please let me know.  Once I start printing (which will be very soon) and find some IPA. I will circle back and post the results. Also I need to buy some gloves and paper towels to process the prints. Who would have thought that a virus would bring resin printing to its knees!