Wow. I’ve put about two dozen prints across my Form2 now. Mostly medium sized objects, but a few that occupied the entire build platform. All with Tough V01 resin. About 1/3rd of a liter from a bottle in Open Mode before my cartridges arrived, then a full liter of cartridge resin, plus I dumped the remaining about 1/4 liter of bottled resin into the cartridge after I’d printed a couple 100ml worth of resin from the cartridge. The printer’s been complaining that there may not be enough resin for my print for the last 4 or 5 prints now, but resin is still coming out during the tank fill operation (though it’s starting to just dribble out).
But I digress…
I have yet to have a print failure. I’ve scavenged the tank a couple of times with the putty knife out of habit (learned with my Form1+) on the off chance there might be some flakes stuck to the PDMS or floating in the tank, but to date none have been found. Today, I took a careful look at the PDMS under a bright light as I ran the scraper over the tank bottom. Still no debris. But I was shocked at how cloudy the surface was. I could clearly see the areas I hadn’t used much (corners) as they were still crystal clear. But the cloudiness in more central areas of the tank bottom was significant enough, if this was on my Form1 I should have had total print failure long ago. I mean “cloudy” like a thin overcast. Clear areas I could easily see into the printer, cloudy areas were verging on opaque.
I still have some V01 resin left, and all my new supplies are V02, so I want to use up what’s left before switching to a new tank and the V02 resin cartridges. Even though my tank looks horrible. Rather than just throw it away. So with nothing to lose, I just ran another print, positioned so it was at the cloudiest area of the tank. Printed beautifully. Down to maybe just about 100ml so I just fired off another print that’ll use around 80ml.
I did not expect to get this kind of life from the resin tank. The new peeling process in combination with the higher powered laser really appears to be a winning combination. If things hold up, the Form2 may well turn out to be quite a bit more economical to run than the Form1…
I’m curious how many prints other users have managed to run through their Form2 and how often you’re changing your resin tanks. Anyone care to respond?
This is interesting, I used about 1.5L of resin on my first tray on my form 2 and I started to see the clouding after about a liter. I did not have a failed print but based on my use of the From 1+ I was worried that I would fail a print so I replaced the tank. I was thinking that the tank life was shorter than the Form 1+ but now I will definitely wait longer this time based on what you have experienced.
I noticed that the peel operation on the Form1 seemed to pull tiny divots out of the PDMS (PMDS? I can never remember).
The supports are always drawn at the same place, so models with tall supports have the laser gluing resin to the tank bottom repeatedly throughout the print.
The Form1 peel yanks down on the print. The Form2 uses shear which I assume takes less force than pulling the print off the tank. But it would also eliminate my (assumed) explanation for the tiny divots I would see in my Form1 tanks after a while, and at least in part explain why the Form2 tank appears to be lasting longer.
I used up my first cartridge of blue cast 01 and started getting failures in certain areas. I cleaned and filtered but I also noticed the same clouding. I was told this is happening faster then usual because I run all my models at 0.025. It seems that the higher the resolution the faster the clouding. So I ordered extra print trays. I am moving the models around to the less cloudy areas until I use it all up and put in the new tray.
The “stress” that wears the PDMS out is the act of curing resin. So while we all talk about how many prints we got out of a resin tray, the real metric is “layers printed”. If you’re printing at 0.025mm vs. 0.5mm, you’re printing 2x as many layers per print, which means you should be using up the PDMS 2x as fast as I am since I generally only print at 0.5mm (or 1mm).
Tenho acompanhado esse fórum pois estou pensando em comprar uma formlabs 2, eu tenho uma impressora DWS-028 SLA também usamos bandeja de acrílico com silicone uma bandeja tem a vida útil entorno de 500ml de resina, depois disso eu troco o silicone da bandeja e volto a usar a mesma só que com o silicone que troquei, minha dúvida a bandeja da Form 2 não tem como trocar o silicone dela?
Não, não há maneira de FormLabs substituir o PDMS inferior do tanque de resina sancionados . Acho que me lembro de alguém falando sobre fazer isso no ano passado , em uma impressora Form1. Eu não me preocuparia . Eu tenho que correr cerca de 2L de resina através da minha Form2 , todos utilizando a mesma bandeja de resina , e as impressões ainda estão saindo ótimo. Eu plano para substituir o tanque em breve, quando eu mudar para o mais recente de resina , mas parece que o tanque que estou usando agora ainda tem alguma vida significativa esquerda.
FormLabs diz algo como " um par de litros ", antes de o tanque precisa ser substituído . Isso parece precisas com base em minhas experiências até agora …
Courtesy of Google Translate, I don’t speak Portuguese. What I wrote was:
No, there is no FormLabs sanctioned way to replace the PDMS bottom of the resin tank. I think I remember someone talking about doing this last year, on a Form1 printer. I would not worry. I have run nearly 2L of resin through my Form2, all using the same resin tray, and the prints are still coming out great. I plan to replace the tank soon, when I switch to newer resin, but it seems the tank I am using now still has some significant life left.
FormLabs says something like “a couple of liters” before the tank needs to be replaced. That seems accurate based on my experiences so far…
Is that correct? The failure of the PDMS that I’ve seen is it clouding up. 100 micron uses a stronger laser power than 25 micron. I would expect 4 layers at 25 to cloud at the same rate as 1 layer at 100. I’ve found this to be true with my F2 and with my DLP printers. Have you experienced otherwise?
Well, based on direct experience, the Form2 resin tank appears to be lasting much longer than the Form1+ tanks lasted. The clouding of the Form2 tank is of a level sufficient that if this was a Form1 I would have had to replace it already, yet it continues to produce excellent prints. Like I said, I’m reluctant to replace it just so I can see how long it will go, but I have to switch resins and cleaning out a tank is something I think does more harm than good, so I’ll be moving to a new resin tank before the one I’m using now actually needs to be retired…
As bandejas de resina F2 não são projetados para ser rebuildable . Lembro-me de alguém que tenta reconstruir uma bandeja de resina F1. Foi um ano atrás. Mas se você pesquisar este fórum você pode ser capaz de encontrar esses lugares …
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The F2 resin trays are not designed to be rebuildable. I remember someone trying to rebuild a F1 resin tray. It was a year ago. But if you search this forum you may be able to find those posts…