I was curious about the tank after seeing Billucas post an image of his…
Here is what i got from the dashboard. I will be sending this to tech support asap. I got basically the same thing!
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As we can see, many of us are having random issues. So, this is bad news but good to know that we are not alone. This is time consuming for all lost of prints, writing ( I have to translate my mind in English and this is longer for me ) here the issues encountered, money invested. Formlabs support will take care of us, I think, like they are doing with me presently. It takes a lot of patience with 3d printing. This what I conclude after 6 years…
I did a Form 3L Test Print last night with a replacement resin tank received ( as show in the previous pictures ) with T2000 resin and everything printed on it was perfect. So the conclusion is that we are waiting for V2 resin tanks…
Still having improper Preform time estimated, not accurate resin cartridges volume left, parts stuck on the Build Plate with some type of resins and we are hoping a V2 Wash bin instead of the one we got. Thank you all to help each others by talking about your problems with the 3L. I wish you all the best for your futur 3d prints.
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I guess we’re never to old to join a club…
Two odd things:
- It’s my 6th tank and this never happened with the other 5
- Others have reported it this week
I suspect issues with the latest firmware…
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Tried reprogramming the tank and while it said it was reprogrammed it changed nothing:
Have any of you that had this issue (@Titon, @BILLUCAS) contacted support and got any reply back? If so, what did they had to say about this?
I contacted support about it today. They stated there obviously programming issues with them when they are being manufactured…duh!.
They once again are shipping me a replacement tank. Thing is they can ship me a 100 tanks and they could all be defective…
With this issue this machine in my eyes might have to be recalled.
Welcome to the club!! 
This is not to bad! I have a score of 24992% !!
Yesterday night, I have contacted support by email and the answer is:
‘’ A few of our tanks managed to leave the factory misprogrammed. The good news is that you can press ignore and use the tank. The lifetime just won’t be accurate so you’ll need to keep track of it manually. ‘’
We will have to count days, or put a reminder in our calendar, depending of the resin we are using with this defective tank. I am not an expert but I don’t think the issues are related to the latest firmware.
I am supposed maybe to get another replacement like Titon.
Titon gets a tank and BILLUCAS gets a “Too bad, deal with it”.
I understand failures (or else I wouldn’t be 3D printing) but having to keep an eye on the date and always ignoring an error message for something that’s not our fault just doesn’t seem right to me at all. We already have been silently dealing with too many issues just to have that.
Let’s see what I get as a reply.
Thank you both!
Billucas,
I would make sure to keep on them about this. I also sent a message back to support about all the resin they are costing me because there machine left there facility basically non functional. So we will see if they respond about the resin.
I did already receive tracking info on another tank already on it’s way. But again who know’s if that will read correctly to begin with!
Good luck to us all!
Thank you Eks and Titon. Yes support is suppose to send me another tank too. I am waiting there last reply.
I guess maybe that some tanks will not last long before having failures or will have this errors again. We will see.Like I said, we are waiting a V2 version!
I got exactly the same “deal with it” reply as BILLUCAS after a “That is a vey unusual issue, I have escalated it to our engineers.”
I remind them that’s not what I purchased so I’m again waiting for another reply.
So I’ve recently begun qualifying and testing my 3L. First print came out OK. Second print has some issues in Draft V2.
I’m noticing some intense layer lines. This part is really tall and thin, so I would expect it to deflect a bit during peel and have some more visible layer lines at the top due to hysteresis. However, layer lines are occurring pretty early on. I’m fairly confident that if I printed half of this on the Form 3, I wouldn’t see these same problems.
Secondly, after inspecting the tank, it looks like the underside has some pretty intense deformation.
Just curious if this is the tank issue that others have seen in the field, or if others have seen similar problems on the 3L specifically.
For now, the tanks issue are not really visible from my side. Your tank must be defect a lot after seeing your pictures.
I would be afraid of a leak, but I am not a expert. Must ask support.
This is just the bottom film, which won’t result in a leak since the top film is where the bonding occurs. That being said, the amount of deformation in this bottom film could cause the LPU to not work or slide properly.
I do notice the tank sags quite a bit viewed from the top. The integrity of the seal between film materials looks fine though.
Lucky Adam Savage. Look his video https://youtu.be/Cj0uLKibPW4
Around the 7 mins. He has the great rinse bucket 2.0!
I wish to get one?
My 3L just arrived and I already hate it. I’m admittedly a nube and I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I don’t have any experience with their smaller machines, and I didn’t crawl the forums to learn about all of the beta limitations. The website clearly states that the machine can print at 25 microns, and I believed it. They told me when the machine would arrive, and I believed them. The lack of high temp resin is another big problem for our intended use. I’d be less disappointed if they had marketed this as a machine in beta, rather than passing it off as the best large format printer in the world.
Welcome SBaircraft.
We all believed lots of things. I’m pretty sure we’ll get there but at the moment this is what we get, unfortunately.
I guess one needs to advertise to get a proper cleaning station 
New tank is on the way.
On a positive note, Flexible 80A turned out amazing on the 3L and it detached easily from build plate. I see no difference in quality (except for being stuck at 100) as compared to the 3L.
Here’s the final result right out of the printer and also after removing the supports and raft (all removed in one go so there were still a few small ones to remove):
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I just encountered the tank lifetime issue as well when swapping tanks to try.
Support has told me my issue is probably tank related and are sending me some more tanks.
I actually already had 4 tanks so I swapped tanks and am testing again. As a side note, holy crap the tank design is terrible for pouring out resin…sigh.
I actually noticed the film on a new tank was already kind of deformed. Similarly, I printed something in clear - upon first glance it looks pretty good and the film underneath also has some deformation…so it’s not clear whether this bottom film deformation is actually important or not…but I need to do more tests to figure it out.