After a full month of back and forth with support, I have finally been told that my printer’s logs show the laser is failing on my Form 2.
Now I need to pay $800 to RMA what I thought was a professional grade printer capable of much heavier usage then I have put mine through.
Extremely unhappy right now.
Sad to hear. How many hours of run time are there on the machine?
1456 hours.
Out of curiosity, what was your primary resin used?
Durable
Making machines as reliable and robust as possible is a top priority and among our main focuses going forwards. Customers should have every expectation of machines lasting for extended periods of time through heavy usage, and we’ll continue working to ensure that this is the experience for most all of our users.
Occasionally, machines can fail to live up to the lifespan that you should expect and I’m disappointed to hear that this was the case with yours. Here’s to hoping our support team is able to get you back up and running again quickly.
… for $800.
If, as you say, sometimes “machines can fail to live up to the lifespan that you should expect”, why not fix it for free?
Impressed as the life of the Laser and short and worrying. The formlabs should better clarify to your customers the durability of the lizer because you should know in advance when to change the lizer to not have the printer stopped and the print jobs as well.
Thanks for pointing that out; that was admittedly a poor choice of wording on my part.
The one year warranty is designed to protect users from any issues with the machine for the first year. After that, our team works to troubleshoot any issues and users can opt to pay for an RMA if the situation necessitates it.
Machines are designed to last for far longer than that first year and increasing longevity and reliability is a top priority as we continue to develop new products.
I got 2700 hours and 362 prints for mine. I sell prints mainly, and now I’m waiting for the RMA and $800 charge.
I’ve had the machine for 14 months so of course it’s on my dime.
I get the “cartridge inserted” randomly on all tanks resulting in extended print times while sensing resin as well as horizontal lines on the print from the delay. I also get the “missing cartridge” pause whenever I turn my back. They asked me to replace the cartridge deck for $71 in parts, to which I applied with no success.
Looking at the math, I need to add $2.20 to every print I sell to offset the maintenance. At these rates, the machine costs $0.28 per print hour in maintenance on top of already expensive resin and trays. That’s 10 times the maintenance cost of my other 13 machines,
Definately not a direct-to-consumer kind of printer at these margins.