Anyone who has a resin printer will probably dread the thought of the FEP giving out with the vat being full of resin. My original Mars Vat FEP was looking a bit worse for wear so I ordered a pair of new ones. Now this is, I suppose, one way to do it. The pair cost £35 so not the most cost effective method, especially when you cock up and put one of them on a bit of cured resin and scratch it.

So to be a bit more eco friendly I decided to order a pack of FEP sheets… what is FEP? I hear you cry…it is the clear ‘plastic’ bottom to the resin vat. It is a fully fluorinated polymer,

The polymer used has low adhesion and is somewhat flexible meaning that the model sticks to the build plate not the vat.

I gave it a go and to be honest I thought about just getting another pair of vats. To replace the sheet you need first remove eight screws followed by 24 grub screws that hold the FEP between two metal plates. These screws are about 5mm long.

So I set to work and got everything tickety boo on the removal stage. Read the FEP instructions and removed the protective film placed the sheet between the metal plates. As the grub screws were blunt I needed to puncture the sheet to allow them to match up with the hole underneath. I battled on with about sixteen of them when it suddenly dawned on me that the FEP had a protective sheet on both sides ( the instructions never mentioned it). So I took it all apart again and set to work putting them back on.

A lot of swearing later I had the 24 bloody things back in situ. I was worried that it was still a bit loose, luckily putting it back on the vat tightened it up nicely.

It is £30 cheaper and next time instead of using an Allen key I will use a screwdriver with the appropriate bit in.

A total faff, but financially worth it, plus I had a warm fuzzy feeling that I had achieved it.