Does anyone have an idea of the failure rate on V1 tanks? Are there any clues to watch out for before a tank fails?
And if a tank fails during a large print, using a significant amount of resin, I know FL will replace the tank. What about the wasted resin?
They’re shipping product with known problems. Do they own up to the full costs, or are we on our own?
I just received the new V2 tank today after submitting a request to support. They haven’t offered to replace the 4 liters of wasted resin, then again I haven’t asked, but I assumed if it was an option they would have said so. I am going to see if I can mail them back the 4 V1 tanks we bought with the printer and receive the V2 tanks in return, because 2 of the V1 tanks have failed now, and I’m too worried to try and print anything on the other two for the same reason, it takes half a liter just to fill the tank (at least). Out of 12 prints I’ve had two successful prints, one of which was only partially successful, meaning I could use ~half of the parts printed, so either a 12% or 16% success rate depending on how you look at it. The support team is awesome, very responsive and more than willing to help, but it’s seeming more and more like this product was released too soon.
In regards to things to look out for, there doesn’t seem to be any until your print is at least half way done and you notice that it’s failing, and on a 20-50 hour print, it can be hard to sit and watch the entire print to know when you should stop it to not waste more resin. On a side-note the V2 tank looks exactly like the V1 tank, ships in the same box with a “V2” sticker placed over the V1.
I just finished filtering the resin (per instruction) from the old tank and installing the new one, going to try a test print today. Will update tomorrow. Hopefully this $14,000 beta test will end soon.
Thanks for the information. Unfortunate, but helpful. And scary.
I’ve asked what the tank failure rate is, but I didn’t expect them to answer, and they didn’t. Proprietary info.
I’m really curious as to how they’d respond to a request to replace your resin. You’re beyond patient, which should be respected. I doubt they’re going to volunteer; surely these costs are hard to support, without adding to the burden by volunteering. Maybe ask for a discount, if they can’t do a replacement?
The $600 - $800 you’re out is a lot more than their COGS. As a moral issue, I object to anyone profiting from known problems that they send out into the field. OTOH, bringing out a printer of this size at $11k is quite remarkable, and “sorta works” is pretty good, considering.
Scitex, a company that had a large share of the prepress market at the end of the last century, had the corporate policy that, since they sold cutting edge stuff, failures were an expected event. I think “Quit whining, you’re lucky that it works as well as it does” was in the FAQ’s.
I’m getting my 3L today, and my anxiety particle is vibrating. I didn’t order any shelf spares, hoping I could wait it out until the 2’s get out of beta.
Well Rob! Hopefully this will alleviate some of your anxiety. I just got back into the print lab and the test print I started yesterday, which was a calibration test they sent me, per my request, came out perfect. I even added a few models that I needed that were at least 4 times the height of their tallest calibration model, and they came out great. Now I know we’re only talking one print here, but every print we had done in the past had some type of warping/shearing/missing component, even if it was still functional. This print had none of that. I’m going to try and print a 54t Spur gear on it over the weekend, I’ve tried three times and it has failed every time, if the spur gear succeeds, then I’ll be 100% confident it’s the tank, but even now, coming in and seeing a completely successful print, feels REALLY good, and has boosted my confidence with this machine probably more than it should. Either way, I am happy today. Definitely skip the V1 tanks if you have the option.
Good Luck!
I also got V2 tank and it looks a way lot more robust so definitely better.
One thing I noticed was that the price for the V2 tank I got is 299€ instead of 275€ as the V1 ones are (plus VAT) so I guess we can expect a higher cost when it comes out.
Interesting, I did a pretty thorough visual inspection and couldn’t tell the difference, also weighed both of them and they were roughly the same weight, my guess is a chemical and or tension change. Either way, very happy it worked this time
Hey everyone!
We discovered this issue with the tank wrinkling earlier this year and have been working on a new design ever since. For some more background, the flexible film on some Form 3L/3BL Resin Tanks can wrinkle and cause print defects or failures. The issue affects resin tanks at random. Fortunately, the vast majority of Form 3L/3BL customers have not experienced this issue.
Right now, we have a new design (called Tank V2) that reduces the likelihood of the film wrinkling issue. Resin Tank V2 has gone through several months of extensive print testing and is in the final stages of validation. As a last step, we are running a beta program with select customers—a few of which are in this thread! If validation continues to be successful, we expect to launch this product in late summer.
As a reminder, Form 3L resin tanks might look wrinkled when they are not inside a printer and in the tensioned state. These wrinkles are not a problem. The problematic wrinkles are ones that remain even when the tank is tensioned inside the printer. They’re usually difficult/impossible to see and only detectable via photos of your print.
As always, if you have any problems with your prints, please contact our support team. If your tank is causing the problem, we will be happy to replace it for you!
What is the Failor rate of the V2 tanks as well. We had 2 of our 6 v1 tanks replaced and we tried the new V2 with the same issue. Now there saying that our V2 are bad. To me seems like they keep pointing their figure at one thing. We have only gotten 3 good prints off this printer since March 2021.
Hi @Eric_Lyon,
I’m sorry to hear about the poor results you encountered with your V2 resin tanks. While I can’t speak directly to the failure rate of the tanks, I wanted to share this article which provides some insight on the issue: Tank film warping (Form 3L/Form 3BL). I appreciate your patience with this, and our Support team will continue working with you to ensure that the issue can be addressed.