Well of course I have a job we are trying to get done by mid week and while it has been running today fine…after doing a filter clean out and hopper/filter cleaning…keep getting a Code 2.8.2 Fan Speed Timeout Error and cannot Blast anything at the moment.
Did multiple attempts, restarts, even dropped down a firmware and tried. Same Error.
Of course the is one of those Errors it says to “stop everything and contact Formlabs”…I did that but in a hurry and figured I would ask around to see if anyone has experienced this?
I had a weird issue where the adaptive airflow would pause the blasting cycle but not restart once air supply had caught up. Support had me re flash the FW and all is well now. I wonder if the same might apply here?
Oops- Saw you did the reflash. Must be a deeper issue, interested in the results.
Does it sound like the fan is spinning up normally?
yea…they are already sending me a new motherboard.
Support responded really quickly and of course required me to pull the Blast machine apart to confirm that the speed sensor cable did not come disconnected from either end…its sitting here torn down waiting for that part to see if that hopefully fixes it.
This will be my third faulty motherboard, my brand new Sift came here with a faulty mother board (but they swapped the entire machine)…same with a Fuse. These motherboards seem to be finicky…
Fans spinning fine. I actually asked if there was a way to just “ignore” the speed sensor for now just to get these parts done…but the answer was no.
Supposedly, they can see that there is no signal coming from the fan sensor…so hopefully they are right and it is in fact the motherboard.
I wonder if static buildup causes some of these issues, when vacuuming things like the hepa filter etc. The vacuum canister itself is grounded but (I think) static can still build up and discharge from the end of the hose. I noticed this happening and have since installed a bare braided copper wire through the vacc line and connected that to ground point on my vacc, which is in turn grounded to my facility. I’ve not noticed any static buildup since then.
Not sure…on the blast I’m never using an external vacuum directly. I pull the hepa and screen out to vacuum.
But, if you start pulling all the panels off the Blast like I just did…you will literally be amazed at how many ground wires are attached to EVERYTHING!
There are ground wires all over the thing and every component and hose.
With amazing Support this time around with Formlabs, they literally responded almost instantly, they overnighted me a new MotherBoard. I swapped it in and we are back up and running in less than 72 hours!
Not sure why these things going out…but appreciate the quick response time to get backup and running
Side note: while doing this and with the Blast all torn apart…on my first test run I noticed air was blasting out and inside lower rear end of cabinet…during the Blast phase. I was able to trace it to one of these lines. I pushed them in to reseat it and the leak mostly stopped. I had noticed a lot of blast media “inside the floor” of the cabinet… I mean it was ALOT of air…imagine an air compressor with a blast nozzle… so if this motherboard did not happen, I would have never known that leak existed…
Ill have to check mine out to see if its doing something similar. Those pneumatic fittings are supposed to be pretty reliable, I wonder if it was that way from the start. How many hours on your machine?
I imagine it was probably doing that this entire time… It was actually hard to tell which, but it was either coming out the red tube or clear tube press fitting line… By time I was back there trying to figure out where all this air was coming from, it had switched to “rinse mode” and stopped. Right as it did that I was pushing them all back in… so when I ran another cycle it stopped and was not sure but I did see some black residue under the red hose connector so I imagine it was from that one.
But I can’t express how significant the leak was… had to be half my PSI blowing out and into the inner cabinet…It is not easy to check that either as there are about 25 screws holding those rear panels on…
I mean who knows…maybe that was creating enough static to fry the motherboard…but I’m not sure.
Can’t really tell you the hours for sure now…because I essentially just put a new brain into it so lost all that data…but I can say I still have the same Formlabs Polishing media in it from day 1…so not too many.
Also: during the trouble shooting I had pulled the hose off the blower fan to see if I could look in and find the Hall Speed sensor… there was a significant amount of white residue piled onto each fan turbine… same residue as I was getting before I switched from glass bead to polishing media in the tumbler basket. I stuck an air compressor in there and blew it out while vacuuming the dust.
Thanks for all this info, in particular about the buildup in the blower area. I’ve not switched over to the plastic beads yet, as I don’t think it will adequately clean some of the tight corners in my parts (threads etc). I have noticed some of this residue but its not been excessive as in your case. Ive kept an eye on it. I cant imaging the broken down glass is good for moving parts!
I have an issue of air escaping but its at the POS HF quick connect fitting I have on my air line, which will be replaced. My regulator sometimes starts to vibrate/sing, does yours do that? Perhaps that can contribute to this issue.
