I sometimes leave my resin for a week or two, without printing anything. How bad is this or is it not a problem? Its in the tank, with the black plastic cover over the tank/resin, then the orange lid shut of course. Also a towel over the whole thing to keep light out (I know, overkill). How long can it sit like this?
Second question, I will go in and stir it randomly with a business card, or the metal scraper, lightly. When I do there is a grey/white that comes up as I mix it. Is this residue from the bottom of the tank from me leaving it, and how does this affect my print?
I’ve had tremendous trouble with the tank getting it in and out, so I seldom print now unless it only takes a few times of adjusting to recognize the tank, otherwise I give up. Try again when I am less frustrated with the tank. This seems to be a bad batch of tanks so its been reported to FormLabs.
Not sure why the tank would be tough to remove, maybe there is some resin in the track?
Anyways I always leave my tank in until the pdms is shot or I have some print failure and need to strain the resin.
As for mixing you can mix the resin and not worry about bubbles. Swirling to me would indicate it isn’t mixed enough which may or may not affect the print.
Are you talking about a Form 1+ or a 2? My form 1+ has set for months without printing. I stir the tank and scrape the bottom to remove the film off of the PDMS layer. The black resin will look grey. It prints fine.
I have had the tank in the 1+ get stuck. There are some ball detents that hold it in. They can get resin on them and get stuck. I wound up having to remove the gummed up detent.
The Form 2 has set for weeks with black resin and I didn’t do anything other than turn it on! No problems. I didn’t stir any. The wiper did all of the stirring.
You can leave the resin in there for a very long time. You will need to stir it quite a bit before printing again, the kind of grey colors will mix in and it’ll go back to normal but it does take a lot of careful stirring.
Resin can be stored in the tanks with the cover on for extended periods of time without adverse effects. It’s important to note that light can cure the resin through the bottom of the tanks so we store tanks atop the black covers (we have quite a few spares around).
For some materials, components of the resin will settle out of the solution and it’s always good practice to stir tanks that have been sitting for a while.
Have you been in touch with our support team regarding difficulty removing the tank? There are steps we can try to make this a bit easier to remove for you.