New guy using Anycubic Photon, couple of questions

[Niall25kV]

Hi all, new here so just thought I should introduce myself and say hi. As an introduction to 3d printing I recently bought an Anycubic Photon Mono 4K and have so far been very pleased with the print quality, however there are a couple of things that are less than brilliant which I would appreciate some help on.
The first one is a technical question. I have found ever since I downloaded the Anycubic slicing software my Mac has been having a few strange issue it never used to have and I have had to reset the NVRAM a couple of times in the last week because the mouse function keeps doing strange things like losing left click or sometimes right click functionality. The computer also seems to run painfully slow when running the program but it doesn't struggle while running my CAD software...seems strange. Has anyone else had any similar issues?

Second question is I have noticed even after less than a dozen prints and always using the plastic spatula to GENTLY remove anything stuck to the FEP film, it is already starting to look rather tarnished. Is this normal, and how often should I expect to need to replace the FEP film?

Any advice on either issue would be much appraciated, cheers! Niall

 

[Toasty]

To your 2nd question - FEP life can vary but failed prints will drastically shorten the lifespan and scraping failed prints with plastic spatula even carefully will also cause tons of wear.

Most printers now come with a tank clean function that exposes the whole screen so you get a very thin film that you can just peel off the fep with no scratching at all.

 

[Niall25kV]

Hi, Yes I have since checked and found out my printer does have this function, I will try and use this rather than using the scraper from now on. Though I'm starting to get to grips with how to support/orient things properly I should have fewer prints fail going forward anyway.

Still need help RE slicing software though, as Photon Workshop has rendered my machine unusable so I've had to uninstall it. Are there any other slicing software options that are compatible with Anycubic printers?
I am trying to contact customer support about this issue to see what they can do but thus far have not had a helpful response so I am now in the frustrating situation of having a printer unable to do any new prints unless I can find a new slicing app or someone is willing to do slicing for me...