Continue print after power outage

#1

My power went out on an expensive print which I now have to throw out. If we don’t touch the print or platform and the platform is in the air when the outage occurs, it should be able to continue printing after power resumes.

I guess a challenge would be if the platform is down in the resin, the laser’s last position would be hard to gauge. However, if the platform is up, it should be able to salvage where it left off.

The UPS idea is a nonstarter since it’d last at most 2 hours if that, and mine is already on a UPS.

Side note: my printer shows as “Offline” after the power outage despite the printer being online after the power outage, and I just made it send diagnostic data to Support.

#2

For your side note -> have you tried power cycling the printer by pulling up the power cable/waiting 30s/ replug ?

#3

I have lost some prints to this also. Would be great to have a solution. Rare occurrence though.

#4

My printer has frozen up 3x on expensive prints also… not really rare at all.

If there were a way to “resume print” after a fail that would be great.

#5

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve likewise lost a few prints from power outages (power has gone out at HQ a few times and knocked all of our printers offline), and a recovery feature would be useful. I’ve forwarded this to our software team and we’ll look into implementations.

#6

Yes, that fixed it. It seems like a bug though for the online Dashboard to continue to see it as “offline” when in fact the printer is online as it can appear to be. There’s no polling or recovery feature in the Dashboard for the power outage scenario.

#7

It just happened to me.
I really wish you guys could figure something out.
Many printers have recovery features…

#8

I learned recently that, aside from other outage causes, my apartment management likes to randomly shut off power to the building on random days with no notice. Yes it’s their problem and I could bark at them (to no effect), but it’d be one less inconvenience if I could have a Form2 “continue print” feature. :wink:

#9

Hi there,
same here. After a blown fuse the printer reported the print was cancelled. My parts were hanging half done from the build plate. Many cheapo FDM printers nowadays have a resume print function, why can’t we?
regards, Maarten

#10

Failed prints mean more wasted resin which means more resin sold for Formlabs.

#11

Attach it to a UPS.

I happened to have one already in use for my FreeNAS Server and while Switzerland in general, or at least my region of it, is fairly secure from power outages I still felt the need to get one when reading the potential issues caused on FreeNAS because of a power outage.

Saved my Servers ass and allowed it to safely shut down the last time I accidently drilled into the wrong spot :wink:

#12

I’ve set up my Form 2 and my Picobrew on a UPS and I have a 16kW whole house generator. I didn’t install it just for them, but…

#13

resume or enable us to export the preform data so we can print the missing parts

#14

I lost my work… after the power went out… Why this machine does not have a resume feature… this sucks… I waste 20 hours of printing… and find out that this formlab does not perform any summary and start from there… bad bad…

Recomiendo se compren una UPS… antes de imprimir con esta impresora…. tengan cuidado….

#15

wow im surprised there is not a resume feature on this printer.
this is a no brainer option to keep customers happy…

#16

This is definitely not a rare experience and it should be as simple as knowing which layer it stopped on and telling the printer to resume at layer XXX! This is a common function in CAD/CAM. Please implement.

#17

A UPS is the solution to this, however to do it right the printer needs to be able to check the UPS status and enter a graceful pause state when the UPS runs low on power. Most UPSs have a USB connection that allows for this sort of thing. The USB port on the printer is a “downstream” port and you’d need an “upstream” port to make this work. So some extra hardware - either adding an upstream port to the printer or an Ethernet dongle or some such - would be needed. But it would certainly be possible to add graceful pause via UPS support.