Crinkly surface

Hello everybody.
I’ve been consistently getting wrinkled surfaces on my prints.

These defects appear consistently in the parts facing the back of the printer, regardless of the part position on the build platform. It can be more evident on vertical surfaces.

I’ve been through it with support already (Brian and Nicholas were very polite and attentive) and we tried a lot of things. Increasing the height above the base to see if it had anything with resin flow. I’ve cleaned all the mirrors spotless. We tried different orientations, cleaning before the IPA bath.
I’ve tried with different resins and different trays. In every case the first few prints with new resin and tray come out flawlessly but then they start to get wrinkled,
I’ve run out of trays to keep testing, but I’ve tried cleaning the tanks and straining the resin and that didn’t had any effect.

Support has ran out of ideas and the only option I’m left with is a factory repair, but since I’ve had a very bad experience last time when I sent the previous machine to repair because of defective galvos (the machine I have now is a refurb form1+ I got in exchange for that defective original form1) where I was left without the printer for almost a year because the shipping company failed to properly handle customs regulations (despite our warnings about that). And now I got this machine which, while able to print whole pieces, I can’t rely on for detailed prints.
And during all of this it seems that my warranty expired so I’m looking into ways to fixing it myself. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Support declined to comment on possible causes and have no idea how to diagnose it.
Given the nature of the effect I’m mostly worried about it being a laser issue but I think it’s the most likely cause.

Here are some other pictures

I’d appreciate any help the community could give me.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

Did you try to clean the galvo mirrors? If all the mirrors are clean and there’s nothing else like the resin or the tray that could be causing the issue, then it’s likely something that would require sending it in to be fixed. Which sounds like it would be the worst thing that it could be

You are using Formlabs White? Don’t. Use clear instead. Obviously, the tank is getting cloudy quickly.

Buy a new tank and some clear resin and see how that goes.

@ChristopherBarr, I was going to purchase white resin and am interested in your opinion? Why wouldn’t you take it?

Thanks!

Phil

I’ve found that the white pigment falls out of solution in the resin fairly quickly, and sticks pretty aggressively to the PDMS layer of the tank. It seems to stain or cloud the tank as well.

I used to use clear a lot until I found a 50/50 mix of clear and tough printed with the black settings in preform worked best for what I do.

1 Like

Hi everyone, thanks for your replies.
I’ve cleaned the galvo mirrors. I’ve tried with white, grey and clear (which I didn’t photograph since it’s hard to capture). I haven’t noticed any fogging in the tank either (and I’ve been printing on different parts of the platform to avoid clouding).

I’ll guess I’ll have to dig out the laser test from the depths of the forum.

_Chris is right about the pigmented resings. The clear is the easiest to work with. The pigments won’t damage the pdms but if not mixed really well will cause variations in the print. In your case you may have dirty galvos. I had a similar problem and i sent the machine back. Formabs fixed it and now it prints amazing. On my 2nd liter of clear on the same tank and almost no failures.

For my self the color of the parts don’ t matter because i use them for making molds. Clear is a little stronger than the colored versions with less hassle.

If your tank is clean and pdms in good shape, check the main mirror. If that is clean then open a support ticket.

Must say after a long time of no printing (more than 2 weeks), the pigments of black resin always settle to the silicone. The silicone requires quite a bit of scraping, but can always be cleared up again.

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.