Broken resin vat

Hi

In the middle of an 8 hour print a collision occurred and a piece of the resin tank side wall broke off. It ended up in the middle of the tray blocking the curing. It looks there is no permanent damage to the PDMS layer. Did somebody experience similar issue? What could have caused the collision? The built platform is sitting sturdy in its place. The vat is clicking in place smoothly. I am puzzled.

We had the exact same corner of our resin tank crack as well. Our tank appeared fine when we last put the black plastic cover on it, and then when we removed the cover, we discovered that the corner of the tank had cracked. I think the tight-fitting cover may be placing too much stress on that corner of the resin tank, and since the tank wall is thinner there, it gives way.

Hmm, interesting. I’m not aware that we’ve seen this in the HQ, but I’ve passed this thread on to our manufacturing and QA teams. Really appreciate the heads-up!

Yeah, this happened to two of our tanks as well. It didnt cause any additional problems with the printer since it was already not working…but we had the same issue on 2 of our 5 tanks

This same problem has been mentioned in other threads as well, i’m pretty sure it’s a general flaw in manufacturing causing that corner to be prone to chipping.

Hmm, I must’ve somehow overlooked it. I will make sure it’s flagged. Thanks for all of the feedback.

Happened to my orange tank in the same corner as well. It must be a design flaw.

Yes, it’s always the same corner. Though @Zoltan_Fulop is the first to mention it interfered with his print. Normally it happens without a print failure and you just take it out and move on…

Why that corner has issues is a mistery!

Same again here on both of my tanks. Both chipping on the pour corner.

Had the same thing on a tank that we were having a lot of issues with. Material was sticking the the pad on that tank quite a bit and causing prints to fail.

It’s possible that corner is pre-stressed and might require a change in the mold (assuming it was injection molded) or a crossmember to relieve the mechanical stress.

If anyone’s got two polarizers handy, it’s fairly easy to check ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelasticity ).

I have two but don’t have time for a couple weeks. :frowning:

My new tray i put in today had a crack in that same location. Also I looked through some old orange trays I saved, and that corner has broken clean off them.

I’ve had two of my tanks break the same way…

Thanks, guys — our manufacturing team is aware of the issues, and they’re already changes in the pipeline. If the issue is preventing you from using your tanks successfully, please reach out to support@formlabs.com and they’ll take a look! I’m closing this thread for the time being.