I just received my 6th replacement and it has the exact same problem that I had to return my last one for!
The laser stays on even when the printer enters sleep mode and ruins my PDMS layer right in the center of the tray.
Resin continually cures in that area, even while printing stuff.
To say I’m frustrated would be an understatement. Every Form1 I had screwed up in one way or another but far worse every Form 1+ I’ve had was screwed up right out of the box every time.
I’ve been sick of this waste of my time and money for a long time but keep trying and trying wasting more time and more money. Liter after liter with 50% success at the very best, resin tray after resin tray, and printer after printer…
When it works its great, problem is they just don’t work.
I had to wait a couple days to post this or it would have been really bad, but to put it plainly this just sucks.
Seems like there’s a short circuit on the control board somewhere - perhaps a bit of conductive dust - have you tried vacuuming it?
I hate to offer anything beyond sympathy, but I can’t help wondering why I haven’t seen any other reports of lasers stuck on - but you’ve seen it twice. Or have I missed someone else reporting it?
If not - the sticky question I hate to ask is why you’ve seen it twice - do you do anything that could be making conductive dust in the same space as the F1, eg dremelling or angle grinding metal?
One other possible source of conductive dust I’ve noticed is the tilt tray drive which has metallic dust on it that’s been ground off the screw or something. This was taken a while ago and I’ve since re-greased my screw and vacuumed the dust off. Perhaps yours is a refurbished machine and had some existing dust of it’s own?
I haven’t heard of anyone else having this issue either, just my luck maybe but it was just by chance that I figured it out the first time because it is just barely on and I only noticed when I was in the dark and still you can barely see it. But like I said it causes a continual curing of a nickle sized(more squared) area in the center.
I use dremels and stuff but 99.9% of the time just for F1 prints.
And I just opened this printer and did that little detail test print like 4ml part and immediately after that noticed the laser issue.
And this is in my family room so its not like a dirty garage or anything.
Tray drive looks pretty clean and looks like it has plenty of grease on it already, everything else looks fairly clean also.
I have two power chords and tried both to see if that was it but no.
Bizarre - so sounds like the issue was there literally out of the box. I mean just as you said in the OP, but as you confirmed no-one else has reported it - and now you have twice, so I had to double check …
My next question is how could FL QA let that out the door - is their QA really that bad?
How could could it be something that happened during shipping?.
I’m still curious to know if vacuuming the main control board would make any difference …
Gah, Vince! I’m really sorry to hear that. I don’t quite know what to tell you, other than (of course), contact our support team — but you know that already. As @KevinHolmes, this isn’t something we come across frequently, but it’s clearly an issue.
Every machine that’s shipped out goes through a test print procedure — that is, we run a set of calibration prints on that very machine, which must pass our own QA controls (it’s not the butterfly’s that we often use for basic printability issues). I’ll admit, that’s a result that seems at odds with your reports — so something must be breaking down in the system somewhere.
Thanks for working with us. We’ll see what we can do to get to the bottom of what’s going on…
Thanks Sam, I’m waiting to hear back from Luke but this whole get a printer, waste some resin, ruin some trays, send it back, and do it all over again and again and again has really got old! Not that I have any choice. Anyway rant over, I’ll be watchin my email…
Just heard from support they are talking with engineering trying to figure out the cause and how to fix it.
I was hoping that they would already began that process with my last printer but hopefully they can use it to figure it out.
Just a quick update:
It’s been a week, haven’t heard anything more from Formlabs.
But as typing this just looked at my printer and noticed the back of the resin tray looked split.
Looking closer I see that the entire back is broken off of the brand new tray that came with this printer and the entire 200ml of resin has leaked out into the printer.
So this printer was not only sent defective again but the resin tray as well and after just one 4.5ml print I’m left with this giant mess.
I’m exhausted by this ongoing disaster!
I didnt see anything wrong with it when I filled and printed one print over a week ago and it has just been sitting idol since.
I think it just happened while sitting idol because it sits right in front of me and I think I would have noticed the gap sooner if it was there.
That’s crazy. Maybe putting a layer of tape around the tank’s side walls could prevent this type of issue from happening? The bottom didn’t crack right?
Also did you happen to clean the tank with alcohol, because that can make the acrylic crack.
It’s a brand new tank that just came with this sixth replacement printer, I did one print when the printer arrived-discovered the laser always on issue, and it has sat idol since. And the whole back wall is split off all the way to the base. Only a few drops out of the full tank that hasn’t leaked into the printer. And no I hadn’t used alcohol or anything on it at all.
And still no word from FL as to if the laser issue is something I can repair here or if I have to send another one back again.
I haven’t started cleaning the mess yet, not looking forward to it!!!
Hey Vince! I pinged Luke about the cracked tank and you should be hearing from him really soon. Thanks for working with us while we get to the bottom of this!
Thanks Roxanne I did hear back from him on that and also that I need to return the printer again.
So, seventh time a charm?..
I’m really tempted not to even open the next one and just put it on ebay and try an FFF printer
maybe a Zortax or an Ultimaker 2…
this has just been such a long and costly road, I just don’t know…
I totally understand your frustration here, Vince, and I’m really sorry for the constant back-and-forth. It’s really unusual for so many replacements to be necessary, so we appreciate you sticking with us so far. We’ll do whatever we can to help make things right!
