3D Printed Mechanical Parts - Resin VS. FDM (EXPERIMENT)

In this video, I am going to print and build mechanical parts with SLA and FDM printers. I am printing three really different things: bearings, worm gears, chains. There are pros and cons with bought of these technologies but will resin printers that are known to be great for printing small and detailed models can also be useful in a project that needs a lot of mechanical and practical models? This is what I am going to investigate in this video.

Cylindrical roller bearing (Christoph Laimer) :

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[LetsPrintYT]

At 2:59-3:20, there is footage missing... sorry!

[tomw]

With the worm gear test, based on the way that the teeth wore it looks like there was too much engagement overall, hence the heavy wear on the worm gear - the wheel is being constantly forced into the shaft of the worm gear, leading to a "digging" motion which is destroying the helix thread. Worm gears should really only ever see high wear under high load, if you've got high wear with no load, then there is a clearance problem.

[SeabornNomad]

For your resin printers, I highly recommend removable magnetic build plates. Slightly flexing the removed metal plate makes removing parts super easy with your scraper, they'll almost want to fall off. Plus you don't need to remove the whole head, making calibration need to be done less often

[DD-DD-DD]

Try a resin like Elegoo ABS-like resin instead of standard resin. I have printed parts for a string trimmer with it and they have withstood a lot of abuse spinning against concrete (with the expected wear).

[verryveggie]

This was fantastic. Thank you for all the careful work you put into this!

[hippysplace]

Thank you so much, I'm in the process of buying my first 3D printer and the info and demonstrations were exactly what I was looking for. Great video!

[JMB]

Very cool job buddy thank you for sharing and putting the work into these comparisons. Happy new year 🎊🎈🎆

[seanrobinson]

Commentary on testing fairness:
For the sprocket & chain comparison, you need to have a longer axle, and a second bearing at the other end to stabilize the axle. Without this modification, the resin parts encounter more shocks and impacts from the test than the FDM parts do, as a result of the lack of stability the axle had at that distance from the driving motor.

The other tests seemed fair, this was just a discrepancy I noticed in the testing.

[swannschilling]

Thanks so much for this one!! Exactly what I needed!!?😊 Did you ever think of combining the materials? Using PLA and resin parts in the same model?

[finnigan]

Great video! Can't wait to watch more on your channel. Subscribed!

[Californiamartinez]

Awesome video. Would love to see similar testing comparisons of different resins to see which perform better for mechanics parts.

[g.s.]

very, very interesting video, just a thought, I think you should have increased a bit the temperature of PLA nozzle and use more perimeters, especially in the first tests. I found that the voron project settings suggestions gave me the best and strongest prints ever. I also flag in cura the "alternate extra wall" which makes very strong prints with lower infill.

[onimoz]

I am surprised the water washable resin was that good, I was expecting those results from a mixed resin combo. excelent video!

[fordrollhaus]

Very interesting, although I have one criticism. During the worm gear test, you brought in PETG as an example of a better performing plastic, but failed to mention or include that there are other types of resin that could potentially preform better. This just makes it sounds a bit biased towards FDM.

[BrianVattiat]

Thanks for the great content. I wish you would have used lubrication, otherwise your results aren't very relevant to my typical applications. A video with the same parts presented here, but with several lubricants tested, would be valuable. Silicon oil, water immersion, graphite powder, PTFE dry film would be most interesting to me.

[blakebaumeister]

i have to say the first test really surprised me, ive never had my resin prints do that

i have no experience with FDM but i assumed that they melted a lot easier than resin

[Xploit]

I think lubrication on resin prints probably helps more than lubrication on fdm prints just because of the different material properties. Resin tends to stick to itself and because its smoother there is more surface area touching at once so it gets even more friction without lubrication than fdm. The dry test is an unfair test because it hurts the resin prints more than the fdm prints.

[justintime]

I haven't had a ton of luck with mechanical parts in my resin printer. That being said the detail you can get out of a resin printer is unmatched. I mostly print miniatures so for my purposes the choice was very clear.

[Dewey_the_U]

Depending on the application, the resin bearings might be a better suit thanks to their tighter tolerances.

[David-zufn]

Thanks for this video. I was asking myself exactly the same question to make mechanical parts. :-)