Looks like the Elegoo Mars 2 Mono's LCD has finally given up the ghost

So, it appears the LCD might have caused a print to catastrophically fail to the point it punctured the FEP, or the reverse; the print failed causing the FEP to leak and that resulted in the LCD issue. This was likely one of those scenarios. It wasn't a huge FEP puncture but enough to leak resin onto the screen (first time I've had this happen in the entire year I've been printing. Common enough potential problem though). So, some minor to problematic print issues I began to see, leading up to this is why I delayed the Sidewinder release. I have always figured print issues out before. Here I'm not entirely clear which scenario above caused this or if additional factors were at play.

Most likely, the simple answer is this; the LCD had managed to make it well past it's time for replacement and now the techno grim reaper finally caught up with it. Afraid you can cheat death for only so long little LCD screen, it was nice while it lasted.

All said, seeing the LCDs are consumables on resin printers I'd say I got probably far more excellent prints out of it than typically is expected before you have to replace them (has to be well over 100 prints, few fails included, on the Elegoo's factory LCD, since I bought the printer last September). None the less, while I managed to carefully get the resin off the screen, it looks like some of the protective coating chipped off, enough that likely will cause serious print failure issues if I were to try running more prints with this screen.

Not the easiest thing to photograph (had to shine a flashlight, at an angle, in order for the camera to see it), but you can see in the center of the screen, 3 bits of the protective covering have chipped off. The other light bits and specks are both resin residue from after cleaning (with Isopropyl) the puddle of resin that was cured on the screen due to the FEP leak. I did get most of it off, with little issue, save these bits of the coating apparently chipping off (unless they had already formed prior and I simply hadn't detected them yet... also possible).

For now, until I replace the screen, or get my benched back up Qidi Tech Shadow 6.0 going again (it actually had a defective LCD, right out of the box, link covers this in detail), I'm going to release the full Sidewinder STL and box art/ortho and ask that you all report if you encounter the issue I ran into with printing the fighter after I updated to the V1.9.3 (updated my firmware as well of course) build of Chitubox (or any issues with whatever slicing and printer setup you run). I'll get into detail what the issue is in the notes for the Sidewinder release.

Additionally to finally dropping the Sidewinder release, I will be focusing on illustrated Three Nine Line content relating to the printable fighter line (actually have a good deal of it pending), so if there is any significant printing pause there will not be a lack of content for those of you on the printing tier (as you have access to the two tiers below). The box art is something that always felt right, to me, as to how I wanted to release these little sci-fi fighter prints. The art was also meant to be added back-up content, in case issues arise with the printing itself (such as a borked LCD). A lot of work goes into the art for each release so, while some of you might be here only for the STL files the art was always meant to be an integral additional bit of content that's not just an after thought but is as significant as the STLs themselves (being I produce all of it myself).

Apologies for the delay again but I've always tried my best to ensure my prints are tested to my satisfaction before I release the STLs. There have been a couple of pre-release test print STL exceptions though, and I don't mind doing that when it feels necessary. This month however, with what looks to have been a potential building LCD failure I won't delay the Sidewinder any further.

Either way there should be stuff dropping while I sort this out so stay tuned and have a great weekend!