I just wanted to put this out there in case it is helpful to someone. It may be obvious to some but it wasn’t to me initially…
It seems that if the formlabs resin spends a lot of time at relatively low temperatures, it can crystalize, like honey.
I had some resin in my vat that I thought was just going bad because it looked gritty and the prints weren’t coming out. A friend suggested that it was crystalized and that I should warm it up. I have a low wattage hot plate that heats up to around 140 degrees f. After a while at that temperature, the crystals dissolved and the resin was smooth again…
My shop gets down to about 40 degrees at night when the heat sets back.
I hope this helps someone out…
Yea there here in my home state of Massachusetts where the weather outside today was -9F. If you had been through the same hell that resin has seen you would be crystallized too.
Brrrr! You should move to California! My shop only goes down to 50 degrees at night. I put a small electric heater in the room with the Form1. I wired a 120V thermostat so I can set it to 68 degrees when I’m printing. I had bad luck last winter with print jobs failing in the cold. I know the newer lasers have more power, but I’d still recommend keeping the room temperature at 68 - 70. Seems like it should be promoted a bit more by Form Labs. Not everyone keeps there printer in trendy design loft!
FYI most stereo lithography resins are very temperature sensitive. Even if your resin isn’t crystallized low resin temp can result in poor build quality. The average operating temp for most resin’s such as 3d systems accura 60, Somos Next, or 3d systems extreme white 200 is within 29 and 30 degrees Celsius. Most machines should have heaters installed to regulate vat temp as well as inside chamber air temp at that range. I have had failures result and poor quality from trying to operate even a few degrees colder such as 25C Resin is expensive! just some food for thought. Get those temps accurate!