Just noticed print stopped with error that print cartridge “appears to be empty” - but it’s brand new cartridge on it’s first print, less than 20 layers in.
Obviously that focused my attention - so I re-inserted the cartridge and let it retry to fill the tank - and - the filling actuator whirs. but no resin.
So I removed the cartridge again for a closer look - and this is what I found - no wonder it wasn’t releasing any resin…
Luckily I had an old cartridge to hand, so it was just a matter of swapping across the rubber dispensing nipple - but, @Formlabs it looks like you need some QC on cartridges…
Thanks for pointing this out. We did see a few cartridges with tighter bite valves which could usually be corrected by squeezing them a bit. Yours looks to be a bit more fused than those earlier reports. If you open a support ticket, we’ll help to sort this out and it helps us to track things internally.
Been doing a lot of printing lately, so for the first time had to order a cartridge without the kickstarter discount - just arrived this morning, and thought, lets just check the bite valve.
Second and consecutive bad bite valve - @Formlabs what is going on??
I reached out to our support team and it sounds like we’ve seen a few valves re-seal themselves and you got one of the unlucky few. The slit is still there but sometimes needs to be pinched a bit to get to open. If that doesn’t work, our support team might have better techniques for opening stubborn valves.
I have had 2 of these now. It certainly isn’t re-fused, it just hasn’t been slit. I cut them open with a scalpel, and the rubber is solid all through, no evidence of the slit at all.
Having said that, once cut open, they have worked flawlessly.
Thanks for the feedback. As far as I’m aware, all of the tickets our support team has received have been partially fused rather than fully fused bite valves. I’ve forwarded this along so we can continue looking into it.
Edit: I’d also recommend getting in touch with support before cutting bite valves. It’s possible that using a scalpel will affect the flow rate and could lead to a spill.
I dont know about “re-sealing” - I don’t see how that’s possible, if they were latex maybe… In any case both of my faulty valves were “partially” fused. On the pic in the OP you can see a tiny patch of moisture on the left of the valve, which I assumed was resin. After I had switched over a good valve, I experimented with the removed bad one, and after some pretty savage squeezing it split.
The second one though had no hint of the split - and was more fully fused, I removed it and no amount of squeezing would provoke the split, I had to squeeze it hard, and simultaneously pull it apart to get the split.
Generally speaking, I break open the bite valves by hand (pressing gently until it opens) when I get a new resin cartridge. This was after having several prints stall unexpectedly when printing the first time from new cartridges. Much better than returning to your printer a few hours later to see an nothing printed and an error message on the touch screen!
3rd consecutive cartridge with partially fused bite valve, although this one was the the least fused of all, the split line was visible, and only some squeezing without needing to remove the valve was enough to provoke the split.
