Many prints failing :( help!

Hi Lisa - feel your pain and frustration… had 2 weeks of trouble-free BEAUTIFUL printing at the beginning, then things went down hill, just like with you, flakes, flakes, flakes… and I so used to love cornflakes for breakfast :smile:! Here’s a post on my experiences which may help.

After initial hiccups and a steep painful learning curve I am more convinced than ever that buying a Form1+ was a great idea (and no, I’m neither a salesperson from FormLabs nor in any way connected with the company). Am currently involved with a research project that just wouldn’t go any where near as fast if it wasn’t for the Form1+.

Anyway, since getting the printer (a bit more than 3 months of intensive printing), I have cleaned the galvos twice (the first time was unnerving, the second time not so bad, and the third time - it will come, and soon, I expect - will be fine) and replaced the tilt motor (that was the weekend just gone, it was wearing out already) and am now printing again nearly 24/7 with great results.

In both instances I saw exactly what you are seeing, flakes. It is definitely worse with taller parts, since the effect of the laser scattering due to mirror contamination sums up over the layers; in addition, it is, I think, worse with black than with white, since a black layer requires more laser power than white, which in turn results in faster flaking; likewise for 25µ (more layers for the same model height = worse) compared to 100µ.

HOWEVER; I have had some really MASSIVE flaking with clear, white and grey as the contamination gets worse… I’ll try and remember to add a picture tomorrow of one of the worst examples which makes your examples pale… really… that’s supposed to be a positive message :smiley:… remember, I’m printing 24/7 now with great results after some minor maintenance and definitely not having to send the printer back.

I would encourage you to do some more reading on the forum - there’s a lot of good advice here - but more than anything else open a support ticket… the support guys ‘n’ gals are, in my experience, fast (although it does notice that I don’t ever get more than one reply per day), helpful and really out to help. There are plenty of other support teams that could take a leaf out of their book!!

Sol

P.S. What field are you in? Those parts look somehow kind of product development engineery… like the grey mounting clips, clear led lightpipes (?) and small black housing with the on/off icon…