Double Printing Time

Hi All,
yesterday my printer broke its personal record. On the project estimated for 5 h and 46 min it took 10 h and 1 min to get it done. 50/m with 997 layers.
I started another job today and while estimate says 3 h 15 min ( 25/m and 547 layers ) it’s been already 2 h and 50 min and there are another 2 h remaining…! Looks like double timer again.
I’ve always had discrepancies between what was estimated and what really occurred. But on average I would say it could run between 10% and 20% longer but never 100% longer.

Something is not right. Have you ever come across similar issues…

BTW, parts quality seems to be perfectly okay…

Thanks

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I guess I will reply to my own message, for any of you who might face similar issues with extremely slow printing times. In my case it was more than twice what preform estimated.
Try a reboot…! I turned off my printer for 15 minutes and after powering it on everything is back to normal…

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@PaperLab thanks for replying with how you resolved it. This sounds like some type of memory leak / lag in the printer firmware, that slowly builds up over time and slows down the processor & adds churn time on each layer. We’ve fixed some issues like this in the past. Could you let us know what firmware version you are running?

Form 3B. Firmware: 17.4-598 and PreForm 370.
Besides rebooting I also deleted, except for one, all files from printer memory. There were around 15 of them.

My printer was powered on for about 4 months non-stop. Also I had a short power drop couple of days ago. Like one second long interruption but at that time printer seemed unaffected.

Another follow up. After less than two weeks and 13 prints my Form 3B printing speed came to a craw again. It actually happened during the last print. It started normal with typical lagging behind the initial scheduling but nothing unusual and than within about 30 minutes still remaining everything came to a sudden crash with progress almost non existent. In the end out of predicted printing time of 4 h 30 minutes it became 7 h and 22 min. Black V4 resin, 975 layers at 50/m. Part was OK but not great. I’ve noticed unusual number of layer shifts. Still usable I think. Machine was rebooted immediately right after and my next job took only 20 minutes extra to complete. It looks like from now on I need to reboot regularly at least once a week.

I also just had this problem on my 3rd Form 3, It is only 3 weeks old. I noticed the time on a standard part which gives an estimated time of 10 hrs 30 mins but always takes 13 hrs plus, The next run which is simply swapping out the build plate & hitting go took 17 hrs, i am on a deadline so i just swapped out the plate & again hit go, this time it took 37 hrs.

So in essence i lost more than 28 hrs of print time, like you i powered down the unit with the exception being i did it twice. Same as you the print time went straight back to normal, wrong but normal.

I think this is a new issue which wasn’t present just couple of months ago and might be related to their latest firmware update. Don’t quote me on this but until proven otherwise I’ll be spreading my suspicion around. Interesting to see if the latest PreForm 3.7.1 will fix any of it because I’ve got another question mark for PreForm, also not proven, better left for another topic.

Well I have a FL3 and with Preform 3.8.0 and I am having this issue. I was away for 2+ months, so after I got everything back up and started printing it was working fine. I noticed the new firmware and Preform so I updated, and now I see this issue. I observe 45 seconds dwell of the print head raised so every layer is over a minute. Another user has this same issue. After this next print is done, I’ll re-boot and see if I have the same results as you have mentioned.

Now I usually reboot my printer after every 5-6 prints. I was hoping that the new PreForm would fixed this issue but from what you’re saying it seems that’s not the case…

I am having the same issue and will give rebooting a try. Currently doing a 19h 20m print that is about to be at 24h hopefully will be done any minute now. I’ve been very unimpressed with formlabs time estimates thus far, so far all have been atleast 30min over but usually 1-2h over.

Like others have echoed, I have had similar results. Some prints just take for ever. My last print was at ‘less than a minute’ remaining for over an hour.
I will try the reboot.

To add some detail, I have observed the estimated print time to be a bit variable depending on where/when you read it. In PreForm the estimate is longer initially, and after submitting the print a different, usually shorter, value is given.

Its not a new issue. Its been improved over the years but won;t be completely fixed. Both the 3 and 3L have it. Mine run permanently and I set a calendar reminder to reboot every 2 weeks.

I’ve had this exact same issue with Durable resin.

A 6hrs and 30min print estimated by Form ended up taking 12hrs. My printer was unplugged for a couple of days. This kind of inaccuracy completely broke my scheduling and expectations for the day.

I hope Formlabs is able to tackle this.

Hi @EmilioLara,

Sorry for the late response, but we are actively working to provide more accurate timelines with each firmware update. Durable in particular is a bit more finicky due to it’s more complex formula, like some other Engineering resins.