I’ve been using Form3 printer for a month right now. So far my experience with the printer was great: no failed prints, great parts precision and finish.
But I was noticing that resin cartridges after various prints were feeling empty, while the dash board still shows around 700ml of resin left (I was experimenting with 4 different resins, and 4 different tanks of course).
But today it happened: printer failed to complete the fill task (after 3 retries) displaying message that either the cartridge is empty or jammed. I checked the cartridge and it was completely empty. Dashboard shows it as 757ml. So, what’s the workaround or if there a fix for this issue?
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I’ve noticed this as well. I usually just pick up the cartridges to see how much resin is left in them before I start a print. It would be nice if the dashboard showed the correct levels.
The dashboard resin level is so inaccurate, I’d argue it’s actually worse than not having the information at all. Formlabs should find a way to fix it, or scrap the feature completely. Nothing more aggravating than kicking off a print with a resin cartridge that appears to be half full, only to have the print stop halfway through because the cartridge was actually mostly empty. Having to pull the cartridge out to get a “feel” for how much resin you have left makes the dashboard parameter pointless.
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Yeah I don’t even bother looking at what the dashboard says for resin levels anymore. I always check the level manually, unfortunately.
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We might be better off just weighing the full and empty ones to get an idea
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I stopped paying attention to that meter quite some time ago, as it was always wrong; and not by a little either. I hadn’t thought of using a scale until just now when someone mentioned it… I’ve got try this
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Hey @RD_lab,
I hope the scale method has been working well for you! Our LevelSense system works off of making estimates based on how long the dispense arm is pushing on the bite valve; there are also other intangibles like how much liquid resin is clung to the surface of the parts and build platform that gets washed off during post-processing. The scale method, although an extra step, is definitely one of the best methods to ensure just how full your cartridges are.
If you are still experiencing large deviations between reported amounts, then please reach out to our Support Team so that they can check the printer’s logs to ensure everything is functioning as expected.
Wow, just had this happen. Agreed it would have been better to not have this info, I thought “huh I wonder if I should buy another bottle” and then saw my bottle was 90% full and so I didn’t. Today it went dry at 87% full, I’d have a backup by now if it hadn’t lied to me.
Hi billedluh,
Thank you for your feedback about this matter - we apologize that has happened to you. I’m going to go ahead and pass along this feedback and this perspective to the team to see if we can help with improving the user experience to avoid these types of situations.
You should also be able to submit feedback from the Dashboard home page directly (click your name bubble on the upper right corner) - this can also help get eyes on this perspective as we do look at this feedback for consideration.
Same for me as well, the best way is to take the weight of your empty one and periodicaly compare it against the current one inside the printer
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It’s shocking how long this has been a problem on my 3B. To measure the remaining resin off of how long the bite valve was engaged is a very inaccurate way of doing it. I’ve had bite valves come to me sealed shut and even after squeezing it repeatedly still needed to be cut open some. So it will always be a variable.
We no longer have usable heatmaps, and resin tracking does nothing. What metrics does the Dashboard even provide us anymore?!?!
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When the printer is in your workshop, it lets you monitor the print status remotely. That’s about it.
But even that could be better. Dashboard should display everything that the printer’s front panel displays. But it does not, for example, tell you what the resin temperature is during preheat.
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Hi Randy_Cohen,
We appreciate this feedback - I’m going to go ahead and pass this along to the team for consideration as well - I want to at least make this more visible so we can continue to work on improving the user experience. Thank you for taking the time to share your input in the forums!
Phil,
Not to be a jerk but it seems like FormLabs doesn’t care about this issue at all. I submitted a support request ticket on this subject almost a year ago. Heck, I even offered several good suggestions on how to improve the functionality with the existing hardware on the machine. I was told my feedback would be given to the engineering team and then never heard anything back. In fact, the FormLabs rep. decided to ghost me instead and stop replying to emails.
Fast forward to later and you’ve got this thread, along with others, where everyone is experiencing the same exact issue. This is crazy! Does FormLabs really care about supporting its users? It sure doesn’t feel like it given the lack of attention this issue have received. I have to say that every time I reach out to FormLabs support I get more and more disheartened and upset at the lack of action. There are cheaper printers out there that can do this better. There is no reason at all why estimated resin level should be wrong by 50%-70% EVERY TIME.
I beg you, please escalate this issue to have it resolved. It shouldn’t be so difficult to resolve, or prevent in the first place, on a printer that costs this much. As the other users have also pointed out–as it stands the resin level estimation is completely useless and should just be removed entirely from PreForm if FormLabs can’t find some way to improve it.
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Hi @OptoMaxP,
Thank you for reaching out - your feedback is heard, and I’m sorry for the poor experience you’ve had so far. We are actively looking into ways to improve the printer’s resin estimation. In terms of your previous Support request, it certainly sounds like we fell short of expectations. We do our best to respond to every active ticket, and there may have been a routing error or mix-up preventing communication. I would encourage you to reach back out to Support to continue discussion from your previous ticket if you would like. With that said, there is in some cases still a disparity between the estimated and actual resin levels, and for the time being, workarounds such as lifting or weighing cartridges are the most immediate solution.
The resin level estimates are essentially useless. I just keep a new resin container ready and swap when the machine fails to fill before a print. If you complain a lot about how this has caused you trouble, you can get support to send you a free liter of resin.
Yeah, after over a year of using the printer, I got used to it. Basically, I weight the new resin cartridge and, if after some print I doubt if it has enough to finish certain print, I weight it again. Didn’t have issues since then.
I just saw this thread after I created a separate topic on the same issue. (I removed it in the mean time)
So this is something Formlabs cannot (will not?) fix?
This is really annoying, because I don’t always have extra cartridges of the same resin on stock, so there are moments where the print fails (and thus wasted resin) because I’m out of resin, and I cannot add a fresh cartridge immediately…
For now, I try to estimate the volume with a dipstick…
Maybe formlabs should offer a free(!) dipstick (similar to the oil or fuel dipstick principle, like this or this ) with every resin cartridge (or tank)?
In a material with will not contaminate the resin of course
They don’t care. I raised this issue a long time ago, and here we are with the same problem still. Their software and firmware have been pretty bad lately.
It’s because there is no scale on Form3 to measure the tank’s weight, so all calculations are approximate.
@Jesse_K
A possible solution is for them to implement a manual scaling menu. You measure the weight of the tank and then enter that value into preform. The program would have a database of the weight of all their resin tanks and calculate the approximate resin left by the weight difference. Or let you manually enter the weight of the new tank upon unboxing.