I have a small Form 3L print to run and there’s plenty enough resin in the tank. The printer has been stuck “Filling” for over an hour. Does anyone know an effective trick to get it to bring up the bypass dialog?
The resin in the tank is all I’ve got, and I need this print for this evening.
You could shim or otherwise hold up the resin level float
Thanks for the tip but it’s a 3L, so there’s no float. (I seem to recall someone mentioning successful use of a thin strip of conductive tape but can’t recall the details at the moment and was hoping there might be a more convenient method).
Alright, so I was finally able to coax my 3L to start the print. For anyone else similarly desperate, here’s how I did it:
Shortly after hitting Print, but before the Filling step, I raised the left side of the printer slightly. I very gently lifted it just enough to slip a 1/4" thick shim under the left pair of feet.
My first attempt to do so was too soon - it quickly prompted a Leveling error and took me into the Leveling process. I put it back down, canceled leveling, and allowed the preprint sequence to proceed a tad further.
Just before the Checking Optics step, I raised the left side again. By the time I finished doing so it was into the beginning of Checking Optics. It felt like that step may have taken a little longer than usual, possibly the strain of lifting one end resulted in momentary alignment noise that made the optics algorithm take a little longer, or more likely it just felt longer because I was “watching the pot boil” (EDIT: After doing another print and paying attention, I can confirm the time taken was normal).
The printer then passed through the Filling step very quickly.
After that, it detected the tilt again and brought me back into another leveling sequence. I put the left end back down so the printer was once again flat. It was happy and proceeded to start the print. So far it hasn’t paused with any errors, hopefully it gets through to the end.
Note in my case the tank was already nearly full; I probably only needed a very small amount of height to placate the sensor.
I’m sure Formlabs will tell you not to do this. My response is “give me back a working override knob please so I don’t HAVE to resort to silly workarounds like this”.
One thing I miss about the Form 1+ days, is the thing did what you told it to. No fuss, no muss, you hit “Print” and it started right away, with a countdown timer that was accurate to the second. I would happily trade automated dispense for that quick and predictable workflow, even if it means I need to manually refill periodically. I bet in practice on Clear 200um it could still beat the newer models for very small items, if you take into account all the time spent on preprint fuss (which in my case added up to roughly 8 hours of time lost today).
Update: Everything worked great until layer 51. Then it complained again with a dialog on the touchscreen about the cartridge being low / empty (or possibly dispense error, I don’t recall the exact verbiage).
I hit “Skip”, that was several hours ago but it hasn’t resumed printing yet. Tried reseating the cartridge, switching to another one, the leveling trick (which is detected then clears when I put it back down), even briefly opening the lid, but can’t get it to resume. I can navigate around options in the screen (e.g. view printer info, etc) and it says “Printing”, it’s just not actually making any effort to print. I even put a cartridge in with some old resin I’d prefer not contaminate the tank; it sensed the cartridge and accurately estimated the resin in it, but doesn’t even attempt to dispense. It’s just kind of hung with the build platform a few inches above the tank (not all the way up) and the heater / fan running.
After a long time I tried to hit “Pause” to see if I could manually kick it into action with a pause/resume, but now it just says “Pausing”.
EDIT: Left it overnight and it’s still stuck in the same place. I’ve seen the printer hung like this once or twice before since I’ve owned it - so I don’t think it’s due to how I started the print - and I never found a workaround other than powering off and on again 
.