Hello guys,
I'm new to this thread (and new to head-fi as well). I had been making IEMs in 2016-2018 but had stopped since. But recently one of my friend got into this hobby and I have been helping him a lot. Recently we started to have the idea of 3D printing custom shells since hand trimming ear impressions and pouring them is really time consuming. Our failure rate was also kind of high since I actually didn't make a lot of custom ones before so I don't have experience to share with him.
We found a local IEM retailer that offer ear impression scanning service, and I have tried to trim and smooth out impressions 3D models that I found online with meshmixer and Fusion 360 with pretty good result (see attached images) (Thanks to the guide at #13048!). We don't have a SLA or MSLA 3D printer so we have also found a company that is willing to print the shells for a reasonable price, I have worked with them to print universal shells with good results.
But before actually spending our money on impressions taking, scanning and printing, I want to ask you guys if there is any tips or suggestions on smoothing out the shells. I know the with traditional hand pouring method, you apply wax or special resin to the trimmed impression and thus make it slightly bigger in size compared to the OG one. Do I also have to increase the size of the scanned and trimmed impression by 0.1-0.3mm? Or should I even reduce the size a little since we'll apply egger resin (L/P Lack or something I forgot) on it afterward? Or should I simply leave it at the original size?
Also, thank you guys for posting all your works here, I have learned a lot.