Pouring resin out to extend tank lifetime?

Me too. I asked one of the presenters if they were working on a V3 with longer service life, but didn’t get a definitive answer. (It was along the lines of “we’re always looking to improve”)

thats really interesting, by the way we have in the lab one dental dlp printer Spr…, which has exaclty same film as new film from formlabs its rigid liek polyester very slick on the top but has matt coatin on the xternal side for air migration i supposed to reduce saction force, but there is no other film second film and we didnt noticed lifetime of the film being so short at all.

Well FL keep stating that a tank should be replaced after 50 Lt of resin…

Just to followup here, I’m still using tanks greatly last their lifetimes with no issues so far. The big factor though is that my lifetimes are exceeding the “days with resin” and not the volume of resin printed. The latter has been low across all the various tanks I own (around 12).

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@Dkirch was going to follow up on this question back in August. I’d really love to see some more information from Formlabs, even if it’s just anecdotal.

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The posts from January 2021 from this thread offer useful information from @rybu about a clever setup to to empty the tank.
I think that one downside of emptying the tank is that you mess up with the tank statistics, so you need to do it manually. But this has to have some positive effect extending the tank lifetime if you can live with carrying out the chore.
Murphy’s law says you will need to print with THAT resin the very next day you pour it out :grin:

I do agree with your analyses. I have one thing to add. Formlabs also notes that the resin in the tank itself is a factor that degrades the tank. I have read in the past that users have printed over ten liters of resin without any problems. The biggest risk ofcourse is the tank starting to leak before printquality goes bad because of a worn out tank.

I think the biggest problem here for FL is the liability next to (what should be a wrong incentive) selling consumables. They have probably tested tanks and printed succesfully many more cartridges than only five. But a resin leakage will cause an enormous mess so I assume therfore the printer starts to warn for possible leakage during startup when the lifetime of the tank isnt even halfway the recommended time.

I agree with you, I am a (pensioned) designer and design model kits. All in low volume with some prints for interested modellers. I came to the same conclusion only using grey resin. At this time experimenting with black (for the coming 5 liters or maybe more).

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Hi,

It’s 7 months later and we still haven’t heard anything from you guys. Surely this is a question you get asked a lot! How about some updates?

Everyone would buy more resin and use your products more if the cost of maintaining a library was much less and we felt that there was something being done to improve resin/tank lifetime on the Form 3.

Thanks

Last firmware update from march 18 has a note: “Extended resin time lifetime for various resins”
The webpage regarding this (for Form3 at least) has changed: https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Resin-tank-lifetime-Form-3-Form-3B?language=en_US
It’s good news.

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I was wondering about that. Good catch. Do you recall what the original #'s were for the engineering and specialty resins listed?

Great that this is public now! I’ve been using my tanks for waaay over the suggested lifetimes with no issues. Even my Tough 2000 tank is holding up strong (knocks on wood)

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Somehow every resin I use manages to remain on the “lowest possible lifetime” list

I have a Tough 2000 tank well past its lifetime and it’s still going strong. There are a couple of spots on the bottom of the tank that indicate I might need to change soon, but it’s still working fine.

That’s brave! Probably I’ll start doing that as well since I always getting scared with the “It will spill” warning but I guess that’s just overcautious on their end.

Btw, any idea what to look for exactly before a spilling occurs?

Yeah I’m a mad man haha.

I’m planning to change tanks soon - I’ll throw a picture up of the suspect spots after I do that.

Just swapped tanks - here’s a picture. You can see some spots on the left where the bond between the gasket & film is starting to peel away.

I usually check the bottom on all my tanks before starting a print and sometimes tanks will have little, small bubbles like this but they don’t increase in size (or at least not in the same time frame).

The bubbles on this Tough 2000 tank have been getting bigger over time and one of them is getting really close to the edge so it’s time to change. I’ve never actually had a tank fail and spill (knock on wood), so I don’t actually know exactly what the failure mode is, but I presume if these bubbles get bigger, it will start leaking. Probably not all at once, but slowly.

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That’s valuable info, thank you so much.
I imagined It would be some sort of holes in the printing area due to wear and tear but your explanation does make more sense.

No problem! Hope it helps others.

I’ve never seen age of tanks actually impact the printing area.

I’ve seen pin holes in the tank which cause small leaks - you end up with “blotchy” looking spots on your tank if you view it from top down. This is usually caused by excessive cupping and peel forces, which is usually a user error.