During print Form 3 tells me there is a tank-cartridge mismatch!

Support & Troubleshooting Form 3/3+
1

During a print the Form 3 sometimes stops and complains about a tank-cartridge mismatch. i.e. the printer thinks the resin cartridge has been changed mid-print and the current resin cartridge does not match the print job.

This is odd, since the resin cartridge has remained constant.

This has only happened to me for this one resin cartridge. It’s Tough V5. I’m guessing there must be a weak reading of the RFID tag. Around 5am it happened, and self-corrected. i.e. it misread the RFID tag, then correctly read it two minutes later. The same problem occured around 6am, and it self-corrected 18 minutes later. The same problem occured at 9am. I removed and reinserted the cartridge and it corrected itself.

Has anyone that has had this problem heard-back from Formlabs on this? IMO if a “smart” operation can’t be done reliably, Formlabs should let us override it.

2

I get this with my Form2. It happens when the printer looses contact with the cartridge. My solution has always been to lift the cartridge half way out of the printer and drop it. That usually works, but some cartridges are recalcitrant and need the punishment to be repeated.

3

I put a bit of solder on both contacts. This improves contact a lot.

4

One other thing. The contacts pads on the cartridges were changed some time couple of years. The new, bigger ones, may work better.