Had a job of ~3 hours. 550 layers at 50um. it only used a small band of 2" in the middle of the build area, but the head moves from completely left to completely right super slowly for every layer. after the estimated 3 hours, it was at layer 50 of 550. but it did print…
canceled, rebooted the printer, checked for updates (there where none, firmware is rc-2.1.0-2004), generated the 3MF files again, positioned and supported them, sliced and uploaded, and had the same issue. PreForm version is 3.31.0
I send Formlabs a debug report from the printer itself after both prints and already made a support case ( #00846286 ), but 12 hours later and no reply yet, and i would like to finish this job.
Thank you for getting in touch. I double checked your Support case and I see that we have provided some steps to narrow this down. This may have to do with the placement of your parts within the build area, as the X-axis movement works differently during the earlier layers of the print.
I did a test print with the file edited by you, which moved all the parts to the mixer side, which does speed it up to close to the predicted time, but just by hiding the problem, not fixing it.
To test, i started a new job with the parts in the middle. It is currently at layer 5, and it is taking several minutes (!) to move from all the way to the left, to where the parts actually begin. for each layer.
I saw that you reached out to our Support team about this issue; please let them know if you have any lingering questions or concerns and we will be happy to assist further if needed!
I am giving up on this issue. The last info i got from support is that “it is normal that the print time estimate from PreForm can be off”. well yeah, but not 3 hours wrong on a 3 hour job. and im sure it would be 6 hours off on the same job if you place the part on the right side.
For now i will either accept that the time is WAY off, or place the parts on the mixer side of the printer.