my Form3B+ does not start anymore (suspicously just 2 months after warranty ended). Called customer service (being very friendly, no criticism about that) resulting in a diagnosis of a dead mainboard.
Being howsoever irreplaceable due to “calibration” routines being necessary, my last straw was asking if there’s known electronic issues I can try to fix myself since my 3500+ € printer is now totally worthless. Customer service remained vague, which makes me furious about this whole story.
Since customer support let me down, I want to try to get some information here, since I don’t believe that damages happen randomly on the mainboard. Is here someone who ran into the same issue and was able to fix it? Does some merciful engineer or service specialist have precise information to give to me?
The form 3 series is already discontinued and another investment of this much money is not an option for me, at least not if formlabs hardware is supported that horribly. This printer was just over its first cartridge of resin, it would be a shame to not get this problem sorted.
Hi @jwagn, unfortunately if the printer isn’t booting and we’ve ruled out the SOM, it’s likely the mainboard. On the Form 3 series, that board isn’t replaceable because it requires factory calibration that can’t be done in the field, which sucks, and that’s something we’ve tried to fix in the future generations of the Form printers.
I’ve flagged this internally again, but sadly, there’s no DIY path or documented repair we can point you to. If support didn’t offer any options beyond that, there likely aren’t any at this time. The good news is, Form 3 has not been discontinued, and we’re committed to provide Form 3 gen (Form 3, 3B, Form 3+ 3B+) consumables , support and spare parts until at least January 2028. You can read more about it here.
Let me know if you want me to double-check anything else.
This is what I noticed while looking for a printer: there are many Form 3/B/+ units with failed motherboards.
I thought about buying one with a failed motherboard and trying to figure out what was going on, but currently, I’m out of spare money and physical space for it.
In some cases, my assumption is that the eMMC on the motherboard has failed (boot-loop, slow start). Replacing it is quite simple work, but without a procedure to restore the filesystem on it, it would be useless. So, you could install Linux on this SOM and play with it, but that’s all.
I don’t want to experiment on my still-working F3B. If someone has a failed motherboard and wants to donate it to me, I will be grateful.
BTW: I suppose I bought a printer with an already replaced motherboard from another printer.
Hi @henryqiu, thanks for your reply. I totally understand that this is not an easy task und calibration has to be done in factory. My hope was that calibration data would not be lost if the problem could be solved by just replacing some power electronics on the PCB.
Sure, I’ve heard of that, But that won’t help anyone who’s not willing or able to pay a new printer with a 3000-6.500 € price tag. Especially from a company that sold a printer that lasted exactly for one resin cartridge. For me, that is a problem clearly concerning quality standards in product design. A quick research on Ebay also reveals (like @strojano already stated), that the Mainboard issue of my Form3 printer is not an isolated case.
Concerning this, I’ll just translate the original quote from the service technician i contacted about sending my printer in and having it repaired and recalibrated:
“Unfortunately, there is no longer a repair option, as we have dismantled the workshop in favor of the Form 4. We currently only repair all Form 3s with the help of our customers and by providing spare parts. Unfortunately, the motherboard on the Form 3 is not a replaceable part (only from Form 4 onwards).”.
Does this in any way sound like Form3 is still supported? In my understanding, this is not a service continuation. Especially not for such an expensive product.