Hi,
I just finished a cartridge of Black V1. Went to start a new print and my new cartridge is V2. Can I mix the two? Or can I drain the tray and “reset” it to be a V2 tray? The tray itself has a lot of life left, and this project is due in 2 days (not enough time to order another tray).
Help! 
I guess it depends on how much is mixed between the two and how different they are. The resin level sensing system requires a specific chemical makeup to determine how much resin is in the tank, so it could affect that and might cause it to overfill. You could probably use it just fine in Open Mode though.
If you want to clean out the tray, I recommend using a plastic syringe type thing to pull out the resin, pouring it out from the tray can very often create a mess. Using the syringe takes longer but is very clean, and you use the scraper tool to push it all to a corner and you can get 99% of it out.
Zachary, I think the resin level sensor is just optical. It doesn’t care about the chemical composition of the contents of the tank, only that it can see the contents.
We don’t really know what the differences are between the V1 and V2 resins, but I can’t imagine they’re significantly different. They’re optimizations not reformulations. So V2 may not print quite as well as V1 if it’s printed on V1 settings, but it will almost certainly print and I’ll bet it prints fine so long as the print isn’t very “delicate”…
If you’re really worried, pour whatever remains of the V1 resin off in to a container. When the printer refills the tray with the V2 resin, it swipes the wiper a few times and that’ll mix up any remaining coating of the older resin. I’ll bet you $$ you’ll be fine. But since you don’t have time to order a new tray, you don’t have many options besides “go for it” anyway. So go for it…
FYI: The level sensor is not optical. It does care about the chemical composition of the resin.
Then I’d guess Capacitive or Inductive? And the chemical composition of the resin matters to the calibration, since a parameter like capacitance would depend on the electrical properties of the resin and that probably varies some as a function of the specific resin’s makeup/composition? Do those properties vary sufficiently that a large enough error could result in overfill, say from mixing Tough 02 in to some Tough 01? I would expect the variation to be fairly small, especially within a “family”, though I know nothing of the chemistry of the resins…
[quote=“Randy_Cohen, post:5, topic:8989”]
Do those properties vary sufficiently that a large enough error could result in overfill…[edited][/quote]
Apparently yes. Here are two examples from recent threads:
In this thread a user tried to refill a cartridge with 3rd party resin whose properties were sufficiently different the printer could not fill the tank. Formlabs employee Dmegret described how resin sensing works.
In another thread here a user tried to refill a catridge with a 3rd party resin whose properties were sufficiently different that it caused the printer to overfill the tank and spill.
Light pigments often contain metallic oxides, and blacks often use (inexpensive) carbon. So different colors might exhibit different dialectric properties even if the rest of their ingredients are identical.
BUT that is off topic for this thread.
Addressing @Declan_Halpin’s original question, I’d recommend draining the V1 from the tank/tray and starting fresh with V2 resin. (The machine will ask if you want to re-associate that tray with the V2 resin.) Although a mixture of V1 and V2 might work, it could cause a wide array of problems if their parameters are sufficiently different–including overfilling, spilling, unsuitable laser power, and model defects as a result.
It’s just not worth experimenting when your deadline is only 2 days away!
Well, I did specifically say “01 with 02”. I wouldn’t advocate mixing 3rd party resins with FL resins even on a Form1. But yeah, I agree with your last statement. With 2 days to go, why mess around?
Hi all,
I left the 01 in the tank and just ran it in open mode. Seems to have printed fine - I’ll know today when I start assembling! Thanks!
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