Hi everyone, I thought I’d chime in here with my own failing printer. I am an international backer from Singapore, and received my printer in late November last year. It printed fine for the first few months, and we didn’t have issues with it for a while. Any print failures then could be solved with reorienting models, and it usually worked out. We took a break from printing for a month or so, and recently got back into it a few weeks ago. That’s when we started having issues with our white resin prints. We thought it could be a bad batch of white resin, so we swapped to clear and it worked fine for the first few prints, but now the failures have worsened considerably. This is how our laser currently looks.
That’s another final stage failed laser with the characteristic squared off shape - which as I mentioned before is due to the now torch like beam from the laser being squared off by the galvo mirrors. Prints will get worse and worse until you nothing on the build platform, just sludge in the resin tank.
It sure does look like it Kevin. The base of my prints aren’t even printing properly at this point. I’ve already shot off a support email, but I’m not particularly hopeful they can do anything to save the printer. I just hope shipping it back won’t be too expensive.
Sung, Angie and others with failed lasers - one thing that would be easy to check is confirm the output voltage on your Form1 power brick. Power supply voltages can vary significantly from their rating, and the Form1 power supply is Chinese - this one: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/24V-DC-2-5A-LED-Power_631995526.html
Just put a voltmeter against the plug as in the picture - it should be 24V. If you don’t have a multimeter, they are dirt cheap - you can get them for less than $5 on amazon.
Kevin, i thought the same thing. Like you said, the laser diode is sensitive to current varations. I recently bought a voltage stabilizer. But apparently you already tried that without much succes … :(.
I suppose there is an important amount of working printers in the wild which does not have any laser/galvo issues ( like monger’s printer )
Maybe it would be good to gather informations and know how they use their printer.(like away from any electronics, in a certain room temperature or whatever it work) Because it appears that we do something that the printer don’t like.
What shocked me is the failure of my first printer. I was using it without any problem, i stopped printing for almost 3 weeks and next to that, all my prints was only failures because of a degraded laser (apparently i’m not the only one)
So, even if we don’t use it, it may broke meanwhile. That’s why i thought about current variations ( but the laser diode is sensitive to everything … )
To be more pragmatic i think it’s more related to hardware failure rather than the environment.
Hi Kevin, the output voltage of my power supply reads the same as yours. With regards to the environment the printer is situated in, the room temperature fluctuates between 28-23 degrees celcius, and it sits next to a computer monitor. Our print time for previous successful prints were along the lines of 17 hours if I remember correctly, and we did this for about four prints, not counting the failed ones. As the printer started to fail though, we have shrunk our prints and print time down to 7 hours and now, 2. The more our prints failed, the more attempts we tried, and the worse the prints turned out, till we’ve reached this point.
@Gilles - actually I was only using a surge-protector-plug-board which from a quick google is a long way from a voltage-stabilizer. That’s a really good idea, I’ll get one of those now.
@Angie - thanks for that, so I guess we can rule out static differences in power supplies then, not that I really thought it would be that, just that it was easy to check.
@Teck Wee - Support failures mostly. Supports that were very near each other came out fused and eventually stopped printing, leading to a cascading failure of the print. No matter how we adjusted support density, or model orientation, one area of the supports would fail, leaving a cured layer on the silicone and causing the rest of the print to fail after that. Our last print was the worse though, because the base wasn’t even adhering properly to the build platform, and this was within the first 20 layers of the print.
That’s very interesting - thanks Koji, so I guess that confirms that the issue with lasers failing is due to the laser module itself, rather than any other component exceeding the laser module’s tolerances.
I don’t suppose you’d consider popping the laser module out and taking more pictures of it - especially of any identifying marks (as well as that tag)? It’s very easy to remove and replace. I’ve done it with my laser several times without any issue. The aluminium bracket locks the module back into perfect alignment every time. Just make sure to earth yourself before touching the laser.
So what are Formlabs going to do about all the 1000’s of machines out there now with the old failure prone laser modules?
Are they going to “stand behind” the Form1? Considering the short 3 month warranty and it’s undefined extension for the kickstarter backers that has now expired - I doubt it. But all they need to do is make the new laser module available separately, or tell us where to get it from.
I put zero credence in Sam’s claims of a replacement laser module requiring unspecified “full-factory recalibration using specialized tools” - explain that process and tell us what these specialised tools are - and then perhaps I’d listen. FL also claimed re-levelling the resin tank vat (which can really help after replacing the PDMS) requires specialist tools, and also refused to document how to tune the galvos. Both of these exercises I showed to be simple things you can do yourself without any special tools.
What I really fail to understand is why FL feels the need to sow FUD around maintaining our machines ourselves - what exactly are they afraid of?
Did the laser spot test. Sorry it’s really hard to get a good focus. Best I can describe the laser spot is that it looks like an arc with a higher intensity centre. Is that normal?
Surprisingly, when I tried the test with the cover opened in an attempt to get better focus, the laser looks like a torchlight. I’m confused.
Hi Teck that definitely looks like another failed laser - the square shape is the real give-away. It happens because the laser starts shining like a torch instead of a tight beam, and the edges are squared off by the two galvo mirrors (one mirror squares off the sides, and the other squares off the top and bottom).
I’m not sure what’s going on with that wide arc though, I don’t see how that could be coming from the laser directly, as I said when it starts shining like a torch the edges of the beam get trimmed off by the galvo mirrors - perhaps there’s something on one of your mirrors? or there’s something odd about that paper?
You were right to take a photo with the cover open - since the red cover is doing it’s job filtering out the blue laser - which makes laser issues much harder to detect/diagnose with the cover down.
For basically everything in the electronics world voltage regulators work great to keep things powered. However, laser diodes should never be powered like that. They should be controlled with a constant “amp” method instead of constant “voltage” method. Why? Because as the laser warms slightly the amps it takes increases exponentially, causing itself harm.
For those interested the amp method I was referring to is technically called “constant current”. And these drivers go on the Printed Circuit Board that the laser module plugs into.
Looks like I am another ‘lucky’ guy with the faulty laser. Chatting with support took more than two weeks already, no results so far. One message in three days. Does anyone know if Formlabs can send me a replacement laser or bringing a printer back to US is the only option?
@Maksim I think you are placing the paper wrongly. It should be right over the hole where the base of the tank sits. If you take it like this, it will most definitely be off focus.
Does anyone know if Formlabs can send me a replacement laser or bringing a printer back to US is the only option?
