Hey everyone,
Thanks so much for taking the time to contribute to this thread. We hear your frustrations and agree it’s time to offer some clarification on some of the issues raised throughout the conversation here.
Regarding the “Cartridge Low” warning appearing too late, our software team has been made aware of the issue and they are evaluating what it would take to adjust some of the system logic in the Form 2 to move this warning. Our primary goal (and roadblock) is making absolutely certain that the printer can’t damage itself with these types of adjustments.
Some folks here have also raised concerns that the “Cartridge Dispense Error” has prevented some prints from finishing. This is definitely frustrating, and it’s an issue that we’ve begun addressing in recent firmware releases. Specifically, the firmware release on August 7th (Firmware 1.18.10) had some adjustments to how end-of-print level-sensing happens. These changes decide when your print is safe to finish without refilling, and then disable the fill algorithm until your next print. This should prevent a resolution from being thrown in this scenario. Users also have the ability to ignore the Cartridge Dispense Error, which will disable also disable LevelSense for the rest of the print(see photos below for the location of this option). We feel that this is a good compromise between minimizing risk for print failure, and keeping users running. We will continue to monitor this feature and adjust it if necessary - please keep the feedback coming!
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Next up is the ability to effectively “finish off” cartridges to make sure they’re 100% empty. To be perfectly open about things, this is a really difficult feature for us to implement safely. The specific reason for this difficulty is that we don’t have a way to make sure the cartridge is actually empty. At this point, we prefer to keep a human in the loop. At HQ, we empty the last remnants of resin from a cartridge directly into a resin tank, and that way you’ll know that you’ve gotten all the material you can out of it.
Lastly, it sounds like it might be worth some clarification from us about what the various cartridge and resin related errors mean specifically, so I’ll go through these below.
Cartridge Low: We estimate how much resin is left in the cartridge based on a combination of your model and how much resin the Form 2 thinks it has dispensed. This warning appears when the Form 2 thinks your print is larger than how much resin is left in your cartridge; it should always be skippable because the main point is to keep users from getting stuck halfway through a print with no backup cartridge. As mentioned above, we’re looking into what it would take to show this warning earlier.
Cartridge Worn: This is what you’ll see if the printer completely locks out a cartridge and prevents it from being used at all. It is determined using the same estimate of resin dispensed as the Cartridge Low warning. The threshold for volume lockout is based on our testing that shows the rubber bite valves used on our cartridges are reliable for a little over 1 liter of resin. After this point, we can no longer comfortably assume that the valve won’t cause a much more significant issue (like dumping the entire cartridge of resin into the printer, for example). We are aware of some users running into issues with our cartridge estimation algorithm, we believe these issues were resolved in the firmware released September 5th (Firmware 1.18.12). If you suspect your prints were affected negatively by these changes, reach out to our support team.
Cartridge Dispense Error: This particular error does not relate to our estimate of remaining resin in the cartridge. All this error points to is that the printer tried to dispense resin, and determined that the resin level in the tank did not change. Typically the cause is the rubber bite valve on the cartridge being sealed up, the cartridge cap being closed, or the cartridge actually being empty. If you experience this issue for any other reason, please get in touch with our support team and we’d be happy to lend a hand.