Form2 resin over fill DISASTER!

I honestly think the printer is fine, i do not know however the percentage of failed “Bite valves” on the cartridges.
I think as an idea they should have the drip tray drain into a drawer type reservoir that you can removed and empty or filter and reuse. Just a thought.

I second @Zachary_Brackin suggestion for a more reliable valve! Better yet, I’m rooting for a fundamentally fail-safe dispensing method - it’s a solvable design problem that could even work with existing machines as-is.

As long as the metering system is gated by a compliant structure (the bite valve) resisting a force they don’t control (gravity) they can never eliminate the failure mode. Open mode wouldn’t prevent a piece of debris jamming the valve open so it would continue to flow regardless of the hardware or software state of the machine.

So, how does open mode relate to the valve? honestly. I don’t have a form2, but my assumption was the valve was related to using a cartridge. I had assumed that no cartridge needed to be present during open mode, as you would be pouring resin into the vat manually, similar to the form1. Is that not the case? are you still dependent on a cartridge you are not actively using?

Maybe someone can post some good pictures of the cartridge valve and how it dispenses?

Dam! That’s a serious mess! Hope you get this sorted. Did resin get on the mirrors? :open_mouth:

Just saw billiejean post also! I can understand the autofill feature is necessary for large prints, though there should be an option to disable it completely, not even use the cartridge and just manual fill if all you wanted to do was small prints.

If this happened with a bad cartridge outside of warranty it would be very bad! :open_mouth:

@ChristopherBarr, my bad regarding Open Mode - I was thinking about the method of re-using a Formlabs resin cartridge to hold the 3rd party resin. If there’s no Formlabs cartridge involved and you’re pouring manually, then yeah, it’s up to the user to not overfill the tray.

@Edward_Peretti, I don’t know if it’s entirely clear that the warranty covers an overfill disaster.

On one hand, the Warranty states “This warranty does not apply: … to consumable parts, unless damage has occurred due to a defect in materials or workmanship” - that would seem to say that if a Formlabs cartridge empties itself all over your machine to the point of damaging the machine, then you have a valid warranty claim, although it may be considered consequential damage. A less severe overfill incident might be a grey area for warranty coverage.

On the other hand, the warranty states “Formlabs does not warrant that the operation of the product will be uninterrupted or error-free”, so if a resin overfill is considered an “error” than maybe you’re outta luck.

I had a similar experience recently. A piece of my print welded to the tray and the wiper arm couldn’t clear it successfully and was splattering resin all over the inside of the print area. Probably had about a quarter of a liter spilled before I discovered the issue. Luckily none got into the laser housing, on electronics, or on the glass, but I had a lot to clean up. Something in the resin really messed with my enclosure and now I have big cracks running through it even after I made sure to not clean with IPA. There really does need to be a.more effective way of collecting resin if it spills as the spillage well is miniscule and made of soft plastic that will spill the resin into the machine with minimal effort.

I got new from formlabs, They “repaired the printer” but are giving me an option of shipping the same printer back or a replacement one.
Now i do not understand what “repaired” means as there was a lot of damage that i have personally witnessed. So i asked for detailed information on the repair.
Also i dont know what “replacement” means, but my gut tells me its a rebuilt and not know.
I reminded them however that the printer was still one month old and i have seen the actual damage that happened and i need to know detailed information of the repair,
Also they asked me to ship the defective cartridge back and they are sending me a new one.
i will keep you posted

I would take your repaired printer back, You at least know everything that was wrong and if you have another issue that is related to the components that where damaged you should have a argument to have them repair it. You would not have the option with the replacement one. Is the replacement one new?

Mike A
Scout Design & MFG

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.