Yay Catherine! I’m so happy to hear the new tank worked out for you. Please keep posting new images–I find your project very interesting.
G.
Gonna submit a ticket. This last print was amazingly bad. XD
Ah, man. Sorry to hear that. Good luck. 
G.
Are you printing at a high resolution? You might want to try to back off to .100 mm layer thickness to see if you can get a successful print there. The higher the res, the more layers, more dips in the tank, more opportunity for resin pooling and causing issues? I’ve found that sometimes the lower resolution prints turn out better than higher- depending on the geometry, etc. I agree with the suggestion to change the orientation so that the part is open at the bottom (open facing down when printing) and parallel to the build platform. You have a lot of “weight” to support in the current orientation as the print progresses- and I’m not sure about the strength of the interior supports compared to the ones directly attached to the base. I would expect a failure most likely to occur toward the end based on the orientation in your last picture.
So far, I am seeing only about a 5 to 10% useful print result. The same file with multiple copies give drastically different results in the same printing session. So far I have gotten the best results when I create the supports myself, but that is pretty time consuming. With all that, still a 85 - 90% print fail, some Epic.
I’m only printing at .05, it’s not the highest resolution but not the lowest. The frustrating part of all this is, my printer was printing beautifully and giving incredible print after gorgeous print… and now I can barely get anything useful off the printer. A ticket has been submitted to see what can be done to fix my problem. Which, quite frankly, I shouldn’t have to lower my print quality when I know for a fact that this printer has the potential to produce exactly what I’m asking of it. ^.~
The first 30 prints off my printer, 29 of them were absolutely perfect. I just want my machine to go back to being that good. T^T
Nice doll
Your 29 good prints were done with which software version ? the same as print 30 ?
I reverted to the 0.84 version since the 0.9 gave me a failed print right away on a brand new resin tank.
maybe uninstall and go back to a previous version, as for reverting the firmware maybe more difficult at least try the previous software version.
Thanks for the compliment on my boy. He was printed before the printer started doing weird stuff and giving so many failures. All of the files I’ve printed were run off the 0.84 version of the preform program; I never bothered to update to the newer version, since the new support system didn’t interest me.
I too had great prints when I first got my printer. I was using 0.8.2 software and all was well. Moved to 0.8.3 and all was well for a while then things started failing. Went back to 0.8.2 with things continuing to get worse. Went to 0.8.3 and then to 0.8.4 and still the fail rate was near 100%. This leads me to believe that the software versions probably have little to do with any high print fail rates. Well that is unless the objects being printed are pushing what the printer and software are capable of. Which was clearly not what was happening in my cases since prints that were working great for the first few weeks wouldn’t print later on.
It really just feels like there are some things that can become uncalibrated over time. Or maybe it’s components going bad? Hard to say but clearly there are some printers like mine that have issues that require the printer to be sent back to formlabs. And with the price of resin and new resin tanks I’m glad that after a few weeks of frustration and spending money on wasted resin and resin tanks that I filed a support ticket. The only down side is that I don’t a form1 printer right now while I wait for my replacement. I really did love my form1 while it was working well. Can’t wait for my replacement to get here.
Hmmm…as mentioned here, definitely open up support tickets as soon as you have issues. In general, if you’re seeing a steep drop-off in print success rate, it’s probably an issue with the tank. If there’s other issues afoot, we’ll track em’ down and take care of you.
In general, I would recommend that you always update to the latest software. There’s a lot more under-the-hood, going on, than new support structures. Material settings are updated; algorithms are tweaked, etc. That’ll be the first thing that our support team asks you to do. The new supports are fantastic – and you can easily disable internal supports, if you don’t need them.
Sam J. I am not so sure about 0.9 being so great. I had a strong success rate with 0.84, with hardly any failures. Ever since I have been using the new software I have had supports failing during printing, and “erosion” of the edges of any flat surfaces on the support side, when set parallel to the base. I will be logging a support ticket shortly, with files and photos, but definitely have less confidence in 0.9 than I did in 0.84. I have been printing with clear and gray, and a brand new tank for the gray ones too…
Adrian, that sounds almost exactly like my issues. I’m wondering if it is the software version. I was doing fine until just recently now almost everything I print is failing for one reason or another. Like you said, missing supports, bad texturing, flaps of resin sticking out, etc.
Attached are some pics from the last print. I’ve wasted SO much resin and even bought a new tray and nothing fixed it.
Adrian,
Definitely submit a support ticket with us containing files and photos of your prints so we can help troubleshoot!
Yes, at this point you should definitely do that. Our Form 1 was having issues a couple of weeks ago and the Form guys got us up and running again as quickly as possible.
BTW, I ordered these books on the subject of ball socket dolls:
Yoshida Style Ball Jointed Doll Making Guide
Ball Jointed Doll Making Guide Kisohen
The second title arrived the other day. The section that most interested me the most is how the ball joints are formed and assembled–it’s pretty cool. Can’t wait to base one of my own characters on this design. The text is in the second book is in Japanese but, just like the first book, the illustrations are easy to follow. (Plus, our family is learning to read and write Japanese now anyway, so it will be good practice.) 
Thanks for the suggestions Catherine.
G,
Oh, I guess the usual codes don’t work as expected on this forum. Oh, well, the links still work.
G.
Unfortunately I have also run into a steep decline in print quality after upgrading to 0.9 as well. I had zero failures before the update and now I can’t get a print off without something failing, either poor supports, surface anomalies or other gross failures. Just for good measure I changed to a brand new resin tank and brand new material but still it has not helped. Here is my most recent failure, this is a huge print and wastes about 80cc of resin each time and this is my 4th failure. I hope there is a fix for this soon because I miss how reliable the printer used to be.
Justin, did you use internal supports? If you did, you may want to try the print without them.
The option was turned on but the way it was oriented it did not need to generate any internal supports. In the picture it can seem confusing but the little “nubs” that looked like they should be supports are on the outside where the external support was supposed to meet the model, but the rest of the support didn’t form from the raft.
I’ve been printing small cylindrical objects that need to nest inside one another, so I’ve been aligning them parallel to the base (if printed at an angle, as PreForm suggests, the parts come out slightly eccentric and no longer nest together…I suppose that’s an issue for another thread…)
With those parts I get similar results to what Adrian describes: " “erosion” of the edges of any flat surfaces on the support side, when set parallel to the base." The two attached pics show the difference between the non-support side (first pic) and support side (second pic).
I just got my printer last week and have only run it with PreForm 0.9.0, so I can’t comment on previous releases. I’m curious to try 0.8.4, but it’s no longer available on the formlabs website. Does anyone have a download link?
I have similar problems. I need to send back my printer to FormLabs. And the good news, I’ll have to pay around $280 euros to ship it since they are covering the shipping cost only within the US.
I’m happy (irony) since I lost a resin bottle on this problem and replaced perhaps too earlier a resin tank. And I’m afraid to pay again the VAT tax ($645) when they will ship back to me in France. I’ll need to wait for a full month at least to send it back since I spent my extra money ordering some resin and resin tray just before…