Interesting… Our second printer seems to have optics issues now. Did the optics test and the piece in the middle had hardly recognizable features and there were no pillars.
Are all the affected printers old Form2s?
They are one and two years old.
I’ve just had one of our two form2 back from repair for this very same problem. Only information they gave me was ‘degraded optics’. Printer is less than a year old. Interestingly the other printer which is nearly 2 years old has never had this issue.
Thankfully it was in warranty.
The question and how many hours of working the printer for the lawser to be changed the printer should have this count of hours worked, a curiosity how much it cost to change the leiser?
Seems very unlikely after 50 prints. I am at 260 lifetime prints at a 96% success rate I haven’t seen optic degradation. Sometimes new versions of resins come out that are complete trash… Happened with Black V3.
I have been using my form 2 for over a year flawlessly and when I updated the software in December/January everything went sideways and I cannot get a decent print!?!
I updated my software in December January and I’ve had nothing but failed prince ever cents. I have a form 2 and I am extremely frustrated and feel this printer is completely worthless. I had very good success up until the update but feel totally helpless at this point.
I also have not had good results with the new update I have the printer environment for a year and eight months I can not make print in closed mode failure all just works out in open mode I’m using the V3 gray resin.
Dear Rodrigo-Antonio
I have posted recently a post regarding my sudden form 2 failure in printing and loss of accuracy.
After I read your post I also ran an optic test. Our results seems identical sadly.
I have attached the picture :
My post is Link to Post
Formlab is proposing to repair, and are in a close and appreciable communication in order to solve this.
We keep posted.
Very best regards from Switzerland
Stanislas
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I too have had a sudden Form 2 failure, it happened two weeks ago, right after I updated preform and the firmware. The last time I used my printer and was January of this year. I use my printer for my business prototypes and sometimes it sets for a few months between projects. It is in my office and the temperature there is kept between 50 and 70 degrees F.
I have opened a ticket with formlabs and the person helping me has been very nice…
My issue is identical to the above, tough parts not sticking to build platform and having very distorted dimensions. before this I had made a total of 50 nearly perfect prints on my machine, no problems. My printer was new in 2016, .I have printed with tough, clear, black and flexible. The problem really took me by surprise because the parts it just spit out are so bad.
Test print pics below.
they told me the issue is most likely due to optical degradation somewhere within the printer. I
t has been setting in a clean office and not being used. They told me to clean the glass after I sent them a pic that shows there is some dust on it. I hope this solves the problem.
Cheers
I feel right at home in this thread. More of the same, had unbelievably great results for the first year and half until I started running updates. Now I have endless failed prints. Been going back and forth with support and they too are asking me to drop $800 usd on repairs because I’m out of warranty.
I’m willing to admit that perhaps their resin quality has degraded over the years resulting in the terrible results. In my personal case over the last year I’ve started having cartridge and tank recognition errors consistently that have required me to print exclusively in open mode. That would seem more like a software error in this case I’d say.
Either way this all seems so suspect. Hope the formlabs team can get their stuff together…
below are images of the latest failed prints:
$800 USD not looking forward to that! But Well this is an fairly expensive and pricey “state of the art” machine.
If you expected to use the FL2 on the cheap you should have purchase a different 3D printer.
It’s a case of: "Don’t buy a Mercedes if you cant afford to fix it! "
This is the BS attitude that seems to prevail from some of the users here. Just because something is state of the art, it doesn’t mean it has to be “fixed” all the time. In fact I buy a Mercedes because I expect it to last a long time and save me money in the long run.
Additionally, when I buy a Mercedes, I get a warranty to go with it, and repairs don’t cost 20% of the value of the car, which is what $800 is for the Form 2. AND I can take my Mercedes to an independent mechanic if I choose to, and he can repair it. I’m not forced to pay the inflated prices at the dealership.
I’m happy for you that your so well to do that a $800 repair is just an expected nuisance (the price of doing business so to speak), but for a lot of us, when we buy an expensive piece of hardware we expect it to last. I bought my “state of the art” Samsung fridge 3 years ago, and I expect it will run glitch free for at least 10 years, same thing with my state of the art 4K TV, and entertainment center.
I also expect my PC to last a long time, although it will probably not be very usable with the software available 5 years from now, but you can see where I’m going.
Cavalier statements like "Don’t buy a Mercedes if you cant afford to fix it! " are really counter-productive, and it’s because of them, that FormLabs doesn’t feel very motivated to do anything about all these problems, because they know they have a “devoted” audience that is willing to put up with it.
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You are still using the same resin you bought 18 months ago? Resin only has a shelf life on 12 months max.
No, it’s a new resin bought couple of months back.
Have you tried to print in an open way? I was having the same problem in closed mode and now I’m doing it in open mode and it’s printing steadily.
This is nonsense. If a lot of people are having exactly the same problem after little over a year, this is clearly a design related issue and repairs should be for free for anyone facing the problem.
20% of the value of the machine for a repair that seems to happen very often sounds crazy.
Same problem here.
We have a couple of 2 year and 1 year old Form 2 that have been printing flawlessly about 30 liters of resin ( Tough, Grey, Black, Clear mostly ) for low volume production.
We have had our failure rate jump from 5% to 90% since the beginning of the year on both machines.
We need to roll back to previous Preform and firmware versions.
What versions do you guys recommend?
Thanks.
I think that it is a firmware/ slicing issue. Not hardware related. No repair needed.