May be good to hear from a new user here.
We bought a used F1+ a couple weeks ago (only 6 months old!) cleaned the mirror and began printing. To our delight the butterfly test print came out great using the default settings in Preform. We are using FL resin, v2, Grey and printed it in the center at .05
The first print was the last good print we got.
We loaded a 2nd model the next morning and just got a hardened layer on the build platform and in the tank. It would not adhere to the build platform. Each time we followed the instructions and cleaned the failed resin off the build platform and out of the tank and filtered the resin. We repeated this 3 times with the new object then fine tuned the platform height offset to - 0.10 still would not adhere or rather it starts to adhere and then stops.
This is all that I am getting from the build plat and tray
We thought maybe it was the resin so we emptied the tank, cleaned the tank, and poured new resin in. We thought maybe it was the model so we went back to the original butterfly test model and still the same failure. It will not adhere to the build platform. We cleaned the build platform each time by scraping lightly with the knife supplied, and wiped with a paper towel,.
As a note this was done with a brand new tank from FL. On the 3rd try we started seeing clouding in the tank
The claim made by FL is “One tank lasts for about 2 L of our resin. With a separate tank for each individual resin color, switching materials is as easy as sliding in a new tank.” I have seen in the forums they say that they have printed with clouded tanks at HQ and have not seen a difference in the quality. (roughy quoted) I think this is a little misleading and they should change that as it is very generalized. What if it was the same size part printed repeatedly with no varying of placement? Can we see pictures of the cloudy tank used at HQ with the same results?
Nonetheless we moved the location out of the clouded area and got the same results, no adherence. As a new user this makes no sense since we had success the first time and followed the directions to repeated failures and now wear and tear on the tank just trying to get reliable results. I guess we could keep fine tuning by negative increments by why should we have to do that when it worked the first time?
While I have heard many good things about FL I am equally disappointed at what seems to be a meticulous and costly production to try and achieve a simple repeatable result out of the box. This has not been our experience so far. We have ordered 2 new tanks and a new build platform to trouble shoot. but again this is an expensive process and hardly a simple button push experience.
A concern was also in the build platform as it does not appear to be to spec as it is not perfectly flat. Might this have something to do with it?
Initial first impression is this will be a real tips and tricks fact finding and gathering of lots of comments in the forum to try and get reliable results. Resin tanks should be re-designed to easily remove a bottom portion of the tank not the entire tank, too expensive. Once it prints correctly you should be able to repeat reliably each time. The amount of costly resin wasted on trying to achieve a good print is discouraging to say the least. Our reliability failure rate? 1 out of 5 so far.
We bought this to quickly prototype parts for a deadline but this will not be the case as it will require a lot of patience and cash to get reliable results. We have taken to asking if some would be willing to print for hire so we can make our deadline and are hoping we can learn by the way they set up the form files.