I made microlenses for NASA on a Formlabs printer (part 1)

[@snapo1750]

while curing try to submerge them in water! the surface tension of what will help you create better surfaces on the lenses + it helps to spread the UV light better preventing your lenses from too quickly yellowing. Another completely different way what i would think about is: 1. Print the part normal on a SLA printer 2. clean it in isopropyl alcohol 3. dry it 4. create a extreme low viscosity resin (like the spray you mentioned) spray it on. 5. air remove whats too much sprayed on 6. put a little weight on the lense 7. put the lense with the weight into clean water cup 8. create a vacuum in the water cup to remove the bubbles in the water and increase surface tension. 9. put the vacuumized glass container into the curing station in theory you should get pretty prefect microlenses with the resolution of your printer, you might also want to look (in case it works) into much higher ppi mono lcd, then focus the mono LCD to sub 1 micron. heat the Resin to 47C to make it as low viscos as possible... Just a 2 cent brainfuck of me 🙂

[@jkr9594]

Some ebike-tech to NASA Microlenses is quite the jump, but with a video as clickable as this, I am sure this channel will blow up soon. Fascinating stuff, especially considering how "Optically useless" prints - SLA or FDM - usually tend to be.

[@trashpanda9433]

For this DOE you should look at the Taguchi method. Especially great if you want to add time, other curing methods, and anything else.

[@jonathanpeterson7088]

My 2cent Leave them in the printer for at least 24 hours for the resin to run off and orientate the part in a suitable way to achieve this. You want the resin to run, not drip off of the lence. Don't wash. Lay the part flat, lence facing up, and let it sit for an hour in a vacuum chamber before introducing UV light cure under a vacuum. Do not overcure. If possible, leave on the build plate the entire process; this will lower contamination events and distortion in the part during curing. The same method can be applied if you wash the part. Then, to remove from the plate, Not with a scraper, place the plate in the cooler. After 40 minutes, the parts will be loose and will just slide off this way; nothing touches the part. Also, keeping the resin warm it lowers the viscousity, the resin will leave the part more easily.