Track the number of layers printed in each Tank

[JohnHue]

Thing is, layer printer isn’t a good metric, just like liters printed aren’t. I think Formlabs just doesn’t have a better, easy to understand way of dealing with this. On a standard tank you could print 3000 layers of a 2mm diameter pin in one single area of the tank and make it unusable (too opaque), but the rest of the tank is still ok. You could also print the equivalent of 3000 layers of the same pin but change the position each print and after 3000 layers the tank will still have only a few layers per 2mm area, and as such it will be as new.

Now another point, which isn’t advertised by Formlabs anymore but has been said in the first LT tank documentation as well as by Formlabs employees on the forums : first talk was that LT tank would support 20’000 layers or more, and if there are no failures it could last much longer. See this quote (emphasis are from me) ;

@Marcin

I usually replace mine if I see decrease in print quality (round 15-20L) .This number will vary depending on what you print and what resin you are using. In theory, LT tank should last indefinitely. In practice however, print failures put some wear on the tank, and over time, cumulative wear can cause print artifacts. That is why we say conservatively that the tank will last around 20-30k layers. If you don’t usually get print failures your tank will last much longer than that. If you print stuff that is on the edge of what is possible on the Form 2 (very massive parts, not enough supports) , and you get failed prints very often, your tank will not last as long.

My personnal experience confirms that. We’ve been printing liters after liters of Tough on well tested parts (so, no failures) and so far there is no noticable change in the print quality of the LT tank’s surface. We’ve also been printing a lot in Grey Pro and all our tanks are now LT and we don’t keep track of resin usage or look at the heatmap on the Dashboard, we yet have to replace a tank for print quality issues… We had to replace a couple because of a failed print and a colleague of mine damaged the FEP layer, and once because the FEP layer was delaminating from the tank’s body.