Form2 resin over fill DISASTER!

It seems to me that Formlabs should take some responsibility for this failure and at minimum offer to do a factory cleaning without interruption of your warranty. This cartridge valve is an old design which is known to be problematic on other machines that are not 3d printers. I also suspect that these resin cartridges are supplied by a 3rd party supplier and Formlabs may need to work on quality control with that supplier.

Mike A.
Scout Design & MFG

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mlabird, They are so far!

Formlabs had me disassemble the printer (i made sure for the record that they know the printer is a month and half old and under warranty) and clean and drain the resin and there was A LOT in there.
It was on the electronics and power supply and optical window and on and on :frowning:

.

This is painful to see. :disappointed:

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Yep. Happened to me only 1 week in with a grey cartridge. It dumped 1/4 liter of resin into the printer, All over the laser housing and fried something as the printer would never level. Luckily I have the advanced support and they sent me a new printer. Still lost $75 worth or resin though, Out of curiosity I put the empty cartridge in the new printer and it would not register Said it was empty but when I took it out of the old printer it registered 1/3 full, I was testing as I may be buying a second printer and wanted to see if I can swap cartridges between different printers but it looks like you can’t.

I had made a suggestion that they put a drain hole in the back of the printer so when this does happen it drains out the back into a puke can… I will be making my own so this doesn’t happen to me again My comment never even warranted a reply so I guess mission critical changes are not of the highest priority.

Here is my original post if anyone cares aka “FORMLABS”

Thanks for sharing the pix. Ugh. It is painful to see all that. Please update us when things settle down.

Yeah, I think if that happens the printer is pretty much trashed, you’re never going to get it cleaned enough when it goes everywhere.

billiejean,
Sounds very similar to my problem. Sorry to hear that.

Part of perfecting a product is the disasters that happen and taking care of the, but Formlabs support have been very good so far.
I just repacked the printer and i am sending it back as soon as i get the shipping label.
I am hoping i get a new printer because this is not a fix for a mechanical or an electronic issue. This is an issue to witch its very difficult to return the printer to the original shape it was in before the problem.

I will keep updating this as we go…

jimy_f_84

Glad that Formlabs is stepping up to take care of your “DISASTER”

Good for you that you will be back printing soon.
Good for Formlabs because they can analyze and reconfigure things
and fix this issue with resin cartridges.

Cartridges is a good idea but…there maybe better ways.

Holy Crap! That’s awful. So much for the sealed enclosure. What happened to the testing where they were spraying dust at it from what appeared to be a firehose? Some kind of mil-spec sealing job supposedly. Apparently not.

That totally sucks!!! I would send it back immediately and demand a brand new one - not a frigging refurb either. Like someone said above - it’ll never be right now. It’s on the boards, in the power supply, and in every nook and cranny. You will never get it all cleaned up. The error is a design flaw - not your fault at all.

DEMAND a new one NOW while you can. They owe everyone this happens to a new printer ASAP. They’re forcing the cartridge on everyone to lock-in the resin market and make it hard to use third-party resins. OK, fine, so they can pay for their mistakes then.

Q: Is Open Mode still a crippled joke too? I haven’t heard anything about it lately.

It’s sealed for the most part on the outside, but on the inside around the tray it is not so in big spills like this it will drip down inside.

As for the cartridges, I’m perfectly find with pouring the resin in myself, it doesn’t seem like the valve design is reliable enough. For an inexperienced user the idea of cartridges makes sense, they’ve really made the printer easy to use compared to most others, but it really has to be solid in performance.

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I would be perfectly happy myself to be able to just add the resin myself but the chips prevent you from doing that also unless you go to open mode and like you said it cripples the printer… I have not been able to get one successful print in open mode.

I am almost tempted on my new cartridges I just ordered is to pour the resin into an old cartridge and seal off the bottom then insert them into the printer and manual fill the printer from the old cartridge as needed, But I think they have a sensor that will block you from doing that also.

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You know after this failure i am really weary about using the cartridge. But its under warranty.
Also filling the printer in open mode disables the wiper and heating. so unless you install a dummy cartridge i dont see how it will work fine.

Plus, the valve gets worn out over time so if you refill one then you runt he risk of it failing and ruining your printer.

When my Form1+ overflowed and dripped resin into the optics and electronics, Formlabs said I’d voided my warranty and charged hundreds of dollars for repairs. So if they’re taking responsibility in this case, I’d call that progress.

But in the F1+, YOU over-filled the vat - not the proprietary, computer controlled cartridge you had zero control over. Big difference.

Are the resin over-fill issues entirely due to valve failures? That seems to be the case from the postings here, which calls for a different method to mitigate the risk.

Is there any sort of inspection/test protocol that could be performed prior to using a cartridge? For example, gently squeezing the cartridge with the relief valve closed to stress-test the dispensing valve?

Given how poorly the printer handles overflow (hence the term “disaster”), it seems really unwise to let the printer run unattended. I suppose one could close the relief valve for short periods, but that’s not a long-term solution.

A valve failure is beyond the scope of the current printer’s control systems, but I can picture adding an overflow siphon that could clip onto the edge of the tank to preemptively pull away excess resin before it crests the top of the tank. A peristaltic pump could be used, which can run dry and self primes. Anyone have other suggestions?

My suggestion was a proper spill trap. The Form 2 spill trap is the size of THIMBLE - HOPELESSLY UNDER SIZED for anything more than a very small spill. It needs a drain tube and a polythene bottle on the left hand side inside the machine where there is plenty of pace for it. It would add pennies to the cost of the machine and save loads of returns.

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I would hope the resin never, ever spills out of the resin tray. Once that happens then we’re simply talking about mitigating the disaster - why not avoid it? I’m rooting for Formlabs to eliminate the single-point failure of the gravity-fed dispensing valve altogether!

In what could be the rather lengthy meantime, what can we as users do to prevent these overfill disasters without putting Formlabs in the critical path for that solution?