Have a Form 3 at the University makerspace I work at as a student employee. Had the tensioner error begin appearing late last spring. Worked through support with a few potential fixes but no avail. The tensioner sounds like trying and physical moves the bed ( though abit more aggressive than the other 3 we have?)
Ultimately always fails to tension tank whether it be error 148 or now just explicitly says it fails to tension tank.
We have since replaced with a new Form 3+ (as the 1300$ refurb honestly just seems like a a scummy money grab considering the printer is only 2 years old and has 1/2 the print time (LPU on time) then the other 3 units we have).
Since this unit is ultimately just destined for scraps or trash, we have decided to go a bit more into the printer and see if any obvious issues are visible. Obviously there’s a reason the tensioner is “non user serviceable” as it’s a pretty hefty spring.
Have successfully opened up the tensioning systems and found a few things, and thoughts of what to try.
Gear on the motor appears damaged to a small extent. Thinking it could be worth out sourcing a new one or seeing if it’s available anywhere as potentially this could be causing the issue even though the system is clearly moving.
Other thoughts are to replacement the motor and/or gearbox with a new one of same or lower RPM (higher torque). Not sure if the current draw is measured from the motor to determine health of system or only what appears to be the Hall effect tension sensor. If it only cares about positioning, if it’s only slightly slower it hopefully doesn’t time out too fast.
Any advice or additional experience in this issue would be greatly apprecited. Whether that be from community or if anyone from formlabs can give some at my only risk/liability advice. This seems like something that’s very doable to fix. I’ll try to update my findings and things I try as I go.
Thank you for getting in touch and for sharing those photos! As you mentioned, from a support perspective, we are unable to advise on this kind of repair due to liability reasons. With that said, other users can certainly advise if they’ve tackled this previously. Please keep us posted if you are able to successfully resolve the issue.
I had a similar issue. I took mine apart and put it together and I’m pretty sure that cleaning the magnet on the underside of the long black plastic piece that the goes directly over the tensioner sensor board did the trick. It appeared that some of the lubricant used by the motor had covered it so the sensor couldn’t pick it up. It’s amazing that Formlabs wanted us to purchase a new printer for such a small issue.
@Hestand any update on this? My printer just started having the same issue. The motor is definitely still trying to tension. Sometimes it gets there sometimes it doesn’t. Nothing mechanical looks problematic so kind of at a loss.
Hi, were you able to fix the tensioner?
I updated firmware on my printer and after reboot got “tank tensioner failure”. my Form 3 doesn’t print anymore, during boot initialization tensioner motor seems to be pulling the tank fine bit still returns error every time. To be honest it seems like it’s a software issue at this point. I tried to downgrade fw. didn’t help.
Unfortunately, I get this error on my Form 3L printer. In the e-mail we sent to the support team, we received a feedback that the tension motor should be replaced. I hope you can solve the problem.
Hestand do you have anymore images of the motor showing the label with all the specs on it. My printer has been out of action since early this year and I keep getting given the run around by our local reseller so I’m looking at sourcing a replacement myself and that information would be helpful as I haven’t pulled my machine apart yet.
I had been going through a “tensioning error” with my Form 3 a few months ago. I was given the response by the support team that it was usually a software issue and to turn it off and back on again. This worked for a while but then I was still getting failures even after rebooting several times. Support then washed their hands of me and said all I could do is buy a new machine. However, I SOLVED this problem by backdating the Preform Software AND the printer software. I had to go back to versions that were issued over a year ago before I was happy with the results. When I tried more recent versions of the software, I got cupping errors that I never had before. I am running Preform version 3.30.0 and Printer Firmware version 2.1.0 and having no issues now. I turned off the automatic updating in Preform and have to constantly tell the printer not to update, but I have no more failures.
