Clear Resin Woes

I love my Form2s, I really do. Not only do I love the engineering resins as-is, I love blending and coloring and altering them to suit my needs and whims. I have very little issues printing various blends of Durable, 80A, 50A, Tough 1500, with all sorts of crazy add-ins and pigments…

But Clear? Trouble every time. Pin-holes and weird voids and parts left just a thin empty shell in places for no discernible reason. Brand new cartridges, brand new trays, mixed and blended and shook til smooth.

What gives? What am I doing wrong? If I can get Durable-80A blends with opaque uv-blocking pigments to print flawlessly why can’t I get basic, standard model Clear to behave?

I’d guess you’re down on optical power. Not a lot. But Clear I think uses the lowest power setting. So if the laser energy reaching the resin is attenuated a bit, the power may be insufficient to cure the resin. The other resins you’re using are pigmented/opaque and the exposure power has to be higher.

Standard question for this kind of question - when was the last time you cleaned your optics?

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I am with Randy on this one. I had the exact same issue on one of my printers last week. It only happened on CLEAR where I would get empty dry shells or shells filled with jelly! These faults started at transition between the support struts and the actual model. Also totally random air bubbles.

I went for the quick option and only cleaned the glass screen and the main mirror and it got me going again. Really must clean the galvo mirrors as well but was in the wrong frame of mind for that.

Only use PEC PAD and supper clean/fresh IPA. Do not blow the wet IPA to dry it, as that will absorb moisture from your breath and create “water marks”. Patience, delicacy and diligence is the order of the day. I know that you have all of those from the work you share!

Do not use compressed air canisters or airline air. They are too dirty.

Best bet is to reach out to FL for best procedure if you have not done it before.

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It’s been a few months, but even when the printer was new I had issues with Clear. I’ll clean it out again but if that doesn’t work I’ll need other options.

Looking at 3rd party Clear resins that are made to be Form2 compatible most seem to use the Grey profile, so I may just try to run some Clear in a cleaned Grey cartridge and see if that works any better.

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