When there is an empty resin cartridge, the printer tries again and again and again to fill the resin tank during the pre-heat/fill phase of a new print. It is a good little soldier and doesn’t seem to give up. I propose it gives up sooner and recognizes that the cartridge is empty. It wastes 15 minutes or more trying to fill the tank before it pops up and says the cartridge is empty.
Additionally, it would be nice to be able to tell the printer that your cartridge is empty at the start of a print so it doesn’t perform the fill portion at all. There are various situations when I knowingly run with an empty cartridge and this is a big waste of time.
Thanks for the suggestion! For an empty tank, it can be necessary to go through a few fill cycles to get a proper level sense and this does factor into the persistence you’re noticing with empty cartridges. I’ve forwarded this to our Software Team and we’ll look into ways of expediting this.
We don’t see too many cases where users are intentionally printing without a cartridge, but this is something we’ll look into as well.
The main reason it happens is because I have resin on order and it just hasn’t arrived yet. There are other odd reasons but that is typical.
I would like to bump this up with an update. I just had another print run out of cartridge resin mid-print overnight (this happens almost every time i run a cartridge dry). I got the email notification but I was at home, not in the office so there was nothing I could do. Come into work with 4 hours remaining on the print and plenty of resin left in the resin tank to complete the build. I got a warning when starting the print saying there may not be enough resin in the cartridge to finish the print (i appreciate this warning). I selected continue. It seems like that warning of the user and the user acknowledging the risk of the lack of resin should be enough to continue the print when the cartridge actually does run out. Another solution could be connectivity through dashboard or an email link to continue the print, but I understand there could be additional risks and complexity with that option.
Bumping again. Same issue. I have a print I want to start with a full tank but empty cartridge. There is plenty of resin in tank. I don’t want to go to open mode and lose wiping/heating. But the darned printer is stuck on “filling” forever. Hours. Will it ever give me an option to override?
Is your firmware up to date ? I have often done what you are trying to do and have “not issues” meaning I wait like an idiot until the printer realizes there isn’t any resin in the cartridge and then override the warning.
The “low resin warning” comes from 2 to 10mins (guestimating) after launching the print, and the “cartridge empty” warning comes after a few attempts a refilling without any rise of the level of resin in the tank… for me it definitely doesn’t take hours but you sure loose several dozen of minutes because it makes “refilling/level sensing” loops almost after every layer for a while.
The “cartridge is empty, are you sure you want to continue” take about 30 minutes here. But that’s not the problem. As soon as you click continue, the machine will slow down significantly. It took a ~2 hr print roughly 8 hours to finish. As you say, every layer, for the full print it will do the -pull to top, wait and go down- cycle.
I also would like to see this feature. Often I’m out of resin in the cartridge but have some in the tank / vat. Resin is either on order or maybe I’m just using up this resin and I don’t intend to purchase any more. I know the cartridge is empty. Let me tell the printer the cartridge is empty and just skip all the formalities and just start in with the printing. I know how many milliliters are in my model, and I can estimate how many are left in the vat.
I share the sentiment that printing with an empty cartridge (but full tank) is a problem. It takes a very long time trying to fill the tank before giving up and allowing the user to override by hitting the button to continue. There HAS to be a better way to handle this. The time it takes to go thru this process is WAAY too long and pretty much requires printing in open mode which means you loose the heater and the wiper.