Dispensing from 1 cartridge at a time

It looks like my 3L is dispensing from both cartridges equally, resulting in them beeing empty at almost the same time. this sucks if it happens over a long print over a weekend. so now i have to replace both with full ones if i leave it alone for a long time, then put almost empty ones back when im around.

Wouldn’t it be better if it emptied 1 completely before starting with the other? Or is this supposed to happen and am i having an issue?

I am printing a lot of 25/50um, so its taking a long time with relativly little resin usage.

Remco

Hi @consol,

The Form 3L resin dispensing behavior was actually changed in the latest update, 1.11.14 (see Firmware downloads and release notes). The printer used to dispense resin from one cartridge at a time for exactly the reason you described, but the behavior was changed to cut down on mid-print dispense time. Reverting to the previous firmware release should bring back the old dispense behavior if you would prefer it.

Thanks for the information, but going back to, and staying forever on an old version is simply not an option. Please add a method to select the new or old behaviour.

Or do something smart like if the tank level is getting low, opening the valve for a few seconds after each layer is finished. that way any dispense time wont affect the print time at all

Hi @consol,
My name is Jake Misra, and I lead some of the engineering development on our current SLA printers. Reliability is paramount for our current SLA products, and the old dispense behavior was found to occasionally fail prints in fast-printing resins.

However, as you point out, this should be balanced with UX concerns such as yours. We are listening to your feedback and will continue to develop this feature.

I just wanted to add another voice to @consol’s comment. I understand that slow filling is causing issues for some resins however I don’t see this change as a practical solution. From an actual usability standpoint, this change removes any leeway operators had previously to replace an empty cartridge. With the new method, operators must be present immediately after the cartridges read as empty otherwise you are left with a significant mid-print pause while the printer waits for new resin. This is especially problematic in a professional setting with 30-40 hour prints running mainly outside of working hours. The 3L and 3BL are already suffering from significantly undersized resin cartridges relative to the build volume and this filling method is something that has noticeably decreased our reliability and amplified the effects of the relatively small resin cartridges (we also had these same issues with past versions of the firmware that used simultaneous resin filling).

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