Came to work today and set out to use some components I printed last week. We print a lot in both Durable and Tough 2000, and rarely have issues with anything. But the quality of these recent Tough 2000 prints shocked me…
The components are EXTREMELY warped. 90 degree angles are 5 degrees off. A component was supposed to be 13.8mm wide, but came out at 15.4mm!(other measurements are spot on…). Even the tiny rectangle bracket came out distinctly rhombic.
I am very confused as to what made these come out so bad. I used default support settings in preform(I often reduce it a lot without adverse effects, but used default this time), and angled them roughly ~30-45 degrees like I always do. The parts were washed in the washer and immediately cured in the official curer, following recommended time and temperature.
Anyone got any idea why these parts came out so poorly?
Thank you for reaching out! I am sorry to see that your parts have warped, but I am sure that our Support Team would be able to check the logs and .form file for your print to help see what might have gone wrong. If you open a ticket, they should be able to get back to you quickly to start the troubleshooting process!
Hmm, I deliberately never save form files, since what I do is almost entirely prototyping. Dont want to accidentally end up printing an obsolete version. But how would I access any logs?
However, this just keep getting more weird. After discovering the warped and useless parts yesterday, I immediately set up a new print from scratch. I orientated the parts different and cranked up the support touchpoint and support density. I just need those parts, dont care about visuals… And this is what I come to work and see:
That is indeed strange, you would typically see some sort of cured resin either stuck to the tank film or bits of cured debris floating around in the tank. The logs would be accessible by our Support Team and I would definitely like for you to open a ticket if you haven’t already; they will be able to help you get this issue fully resolved and provide actionable steps for you right now.
Yeah. Had parts detach and continue to just print loose slices before. But this is different. I cured the failed “part” along with the others, and this is what I got:
Might be hard to see, camera does not to macro well. But each of the outer supports have a perfectly uniformly formed petal(which comes from the geometry of my part). But there are no visible signs that it actually tried to print the main section of the part.
I will write up a ticket once I got minute. Was mostly just interested in hearing if anyone else had similar problems and how to avoid them. Might try and print from an earlier Preform version next.
It is a brand new tank. Printed a total of 4 prints now. I did 2 prints before I went on holiday, and those came out perfect. Only thing I can think of that has changed, is that I updated Preform.,
There’s been a history of tank manufacturing issues that can lead to immediate or premature warping.
From my experience typically any sharp increase in failure percentages are usually a) user error or b) tank has issues.
If reverting preform doesn’t solve this, I would not discount the tank as the issue. Support will always send you a new one for troubleshooting regardless.
I agree with @leonhart88 that more often than not, sudden print issues often can point to a tank issue or even possibly just some sort of optical contamination. Since all of the parts are affected, I think the more likely cause here is the tank. Support will be able to help check logs and have users set up a test print so we can see how it performs compared to the expected outcome which can help us get to the root cause.
Update: Send in a support ticket, but so far not resulted in anything useful
I tried printing a few parts in a different material(Durable), and thereby a different tank, and the issues persist. Parts come out warped and with chunks missing. Strangely some of the sections missing on these new prints are perfect triangular holes.
I did some more precise measurements on some of the parts, and it appears that the prints are somehow scaled up along the axis parallel to the mixer by ~5-10%. Other measurements are spot on.
I will try and experiment with using different versions of Preform, including the one released a few days ago. But any insights or recommendations on other things I can attempt are very welcome.
Did you try printing a different part? Maybe a simpler design off the internet to check whether it’s printer’s fault or your imported file’s fault.
Upon importing, does it ask you to fix or repair the part?
Tried printing many different parts. First Tough 2000 print has 4 different STL files, all coming out bad. And I printed those same parts/files before the holiday break and they worked fine.
And all parts are designed and exported myself from CAD software(Inventor). No warnings or need to repair upon import.
I just wanted to make sure that you do have a ticket open and ongoing; if not, please update them regarding these most recent print failures so we can ensure you are back up and printing as soon as possible.
hmmmmm from my view I’d say one of those may have fared better being printed flat on the plate, no supports.
some parts I’ve printed are similar, and get pretty good results printing flat no supports
you may want to give that a try
see my comment above…
Also, placing parts in just one section of print tray, over time you’ll get failures due to the tray film becoming “foggy” (can’t recall the actual term for this) at which point you’d replace the tray.
Don’t be afraid to print parts flat on the tray with no raft, depending on part geometry, it’s often the best option.
