Bad prints out of brand New Form 3

Oriented horizontally:

Other side:

And before someone asks - yes, it had plenty of internal supports:

Hey everyone,

I don’t have my F3 yet (soon though) and I’m following the issues you are all having with interest.

In case it hasn’t been mentioned before (sorry if I missed it), it looks like the shifting is occurring when the object reaches “maximum footprint”, not counting the base.

One test I would also run is putting two identical objects next to each other, with the same orientation and everything, but making one of them a few mm higher off the build platform, just to see if the same error occurs in the same spot or what happens.

I have forwarded several of these images along with my most recent communication with support. We’ll see what happens from there.

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Not quite.
Look here for example:

The very first shifts are very clearly not at the point where the footprint / cross-section surface area is largest.

Perhaps the resin profile setting doesn’t have high enough exposure, the resin is too soft and it’s more sensitive to any force. You would get markings where the supports attach because it’s forcing a position at that point, but if the overall print is soft then that’s also why you could get lines on one side and not the other.

Ideally, the print uses the lowest amount of exposure as possible. It should be strong enough to withstand the forces caused by the layer separation technique (low force stereolithography for the Form 3)

Thought of that too (supports “pulling” back a layer in its place, essentially), and it does seem like there are lines around the spot where support attaches in a lot of these cases, but there are clear instances where that’s not happening either. E.g.

or

You’re right, it’s possible the overall exposure is low (perhaps in an attempt to fix the original blurry features issue) and making the prints too soft, however, that would make the smallest and least supported features the most succeptible to this issue, which isn’t really what i’m observing.

There’s also instances where this doesn’t happen at all, and there’s way way less support, and features are even thinner and more fragile and/or have thicker cross sections. E.g. all the resolution test prints we all did in various threads of this forum.

Then there’s this print:

where there were no layer lines at all, despite minimal support and size of features, but there were odd irregularities on the back of the head (which i think might be just laser diffusion, as that part was facing the platform).

One thing that keeps bugging me is that the affected areas do not change with the orientation (around the Z axis) which should happen if it were a clear, bog-down standard peel force issue.

Even with this new LFS paradigm, there is a peel, and it’s directional - orienting the object at 90 degrees and reprinting should yield different results, but it doesn’t.

I`m seeing the same layer lines - Using clear printing a bulb shape it doesnt matter orientation or amount of supports - the lines are always there.

If this happens on same model on different printers as mentioned above I`m hoping this is a software fix that can come soon.

Hoping the same.
The first step is to get Formlabs to acknowledge it as more than just an “orientation problem”.

Hopefully the fact it happens regardless of orientation gets them to.

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Just let you know that I’m having exactly the issue, only on one side the shift appears. 25um is the worse, 50 better, and at 100um it almost goes away.
Formlabs needs to address this issue soon.

I’ve directed them to the forum posts like mine and the others that are showing this same issue. Hopefully that will help instead of me downloading and saving photos and attaching them to every support email communication I am having with them.

Wanna see something interesting?

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Do the errors happen when it does the pause/stir action?

I say that because I learnt not to pause my Photocentric printer to add resin as it caused lines and or failures.

There is an open time when the last layer is still “green” enough for the next layer to form correctly.

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Something along those lines is my guess, yeah.
It doesn’t just stir, it also decouples the tank (or, rather, the film) off the rollers via the movable right tank rail (that’s the really loud BZEEEEEEEeeeeEEEEE you hear every x layers).

That IS interesting… but I still don’t get what it could mean. I mean LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF SUPPORTS. Especially on the print furthest to the left. NO WAY adding more will make one DAMN bit of difference. I have sent all the relevant info I could to Formlabs. I don’t expect to hear back until at least Monday, as they said they are closed Thursday and Friday. So that’s awesome… another big block of time wasted with my brand new printer. Maybe I’ll print a few more random things I have printed before just so I can show them they are all bad again. Grrr…

Yebbut…

OK you say, if I increase the height above raft, it should lift the part above the place where the problems are occurring.

Yes?

Well No actually

While increasing the height above raft to its maximum moves the defect downward, it doesn’t move it proportionally, it actually moves maybe half the distance expected.

This leads me to suspect that this problems caused by some sore of resonance effect, and so may be much more difficult to solve than we imagine.

Oh well, back to 100 microns for all my prints.

I tried printing the cups as well, and got similar results on my Form 3 as you all did.

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yeah I just got mine and already having issues is like waves or bumps on the surface


this is how I printed
print%20form

ohh man that looks pretty bad

So after tons of back and forth support has gotten back to me and confirmed the waviness/layer shifting is a legitimate issue that they now recognize and are working on. Unfortunately the timing of when to expect it to be resolved is… unknown.

I went ahead and printed some very fine glasses frames that I have also done on my Form 2. These are in 1/6 scale an in general these frames are only 1-2mm in thickness in any given spot, and the Form 3 handled them perfectly. And as a matter of fact there are some very fine details (not visible since I didn’t take close ups) that the Form 3 resolved BETTER than the Form 2. Now, I can’t say there isn’t waviness… the glasses may be too fine structured to SEE it, even if it is there. But if they can iron out the kinks and THIS is the sort of thing I can expect, I’ll be happy.

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