Print surface quality dropping fast

Hi Guys

We’re currently running 4 Form2’s on a day to day basis for around 6 months. We’ve noticed that over the last 2 weeks the surface quality has dropped from really good to almost unusable. Whats weird is that it seems to be across all 4 machines. We’ve changed the print tanks as they were getting a little fogged but that not had any effect. Any ideas?

Are those printed with or without supports? The pattern to displayed looks a lot like what I see on the base of a supported piece.

Alternatively, are your platforms developing some wiggle? That could account for some layer-to-layer displacement and wobble.

We print without supports for these models and have done since we began with an almost 99% success rate. The print surface quality was excellent, it just seem to have dropped to what is now unusable in the space of about two weeks. The layers (you cant really see it that well in the picture ) just dont seem to be aligned right. Like there has been slight movement in the X while it was printing or something.

I’d recommend opening up a customer service ticket. Our team can better figure out what might be going wrong with your printer.

On first glance, I’d say that the issue might be caused by a loose build platform or worn out tank, but the customer service team will probably be able to give a better diagnosis and solution.

If it’s really happening on all 4 machines at once, that would suggest some kind of environmental factor. I would look for dust on the main window or on the bottom of your tanks.

We are just looking into the possibility that the latest firmware or version of Preform hasn’t screwed anything up. That would explain the drop in quality considering with all 4 machines playing up.

See also:

Firmware 1.11(.14) is broken - it's overcuring causing swollen dimensions and thick suppport contacts (tested clear 100micron)

To test to see if it really is the firmware and not something else like environmental factors, take 1 printer and downgrade the firmware. Change nothing else and reprint the same models. You should have a reliable answer within a few hours.

Good idea. Is there a place to download previous versions of the firmware?

Anyone?

You should definitely submit a support ticket, which you can do through this page! They’ll diagnose and help you through necessary steps to get your machine back to what it should be.

Sorry, I don’t have a Form 2, so I really can’t help. But if you follow the link back to @KevinHolmes thread you inserted here, it looks like the how to is in the thread.

Good luck!

@Smilelign

First - can you confirm your printers were/are on Firmware 1.11 ?
Second can you pinpoint when exactly your surface quality issues started?

In your OP you say “over the last two weeks” - which covers a period something like the 30th Nov, to 14th Dec ?

I made my post about Firmware 1.11 the morning after I discovered it was broken following an auto-upgrade by my machine to 1.11 - so I think that means 1.11 was released on the 7th Dec, and pulled on the 8th, or possibly the 9th.

So if your issue started happening between the 7th and 9th, and your machines are/were at 1.11 firmware - then that seems pretty damming evidence that firmware 1.11 caused your issue.

If either of those conditions can be ruled out, then it seems impossible for firmware to be your issue, since firmware 1.10 was released 1st Nov, at least four weeks before your issues started.

regards,
Kevin.

Tickets sent, thanks guys.

After checking we DO have one machine that is running the firmware that was pulled. The other 3 printers though are still running 1.10.

We ran some tests over the weekend to see what we could come up with. I dropped back to V2.91 for PreForm as I know we had an update to that side off the software as well.

I dropped the X to -2 and the printed model came out almost perfect. It still has some slight texture on one side and little dots on the surface but a massive improvement. This is with a brand new tank and platform installed.

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