I got this issue (Error 216) months ago and have been struggling with it since then, the Print Watcher warning stops me from finishing any print jobs even though there is absolutely nothing wrong with the setting, I’m certain because in the rare 1% occasion when the error 216 doesn’t show up, the print is successful.
I reached out to the support team and they just simply asked me to wipe clean the camera lens and window glass. I told them cleaning was done properly, and proved that the error was not caused by dirty camera lens/window by removing the entire optical window panel (the error persisted).
Then Formlabs’ response is: either I purchase another refurbished Fuse 1 printer, or pay over 3,000 USD to replace the camera because it’s a “non-standard component” without any guarantee of resolving the issue (yes, they don’t even know if replacing the camera will solve the problem or not, and have the guts to charge me 3K USD for a single camera lens).
I was astonished to see such absurd proposal coming from a mature business. They seem to really believe that a beta tester who paid 40K USD for a single Fuse 1 deserves to be treated as a lab rat without considering any ROI. Imagine how you would feel when you bought a vehicle with a faulty igniter, and the sales person told you to pay 1/10 the vehicle price for replacing it, or “go buy yourself another car”, this is pure arrogance.
I even submitted a feature request through their support to add an option to disable the print watcher during printing so I can bypass that error, at least I can make this expensive money-eater to print something, and no response.
So I want to make the request here again publically to see if it makes any difference:
- I want to add an option to disable the Print Watcher.
- Alternatively, I want to add an option to fine tune the brightness/contrast of the camera feed so I can get rid of the false alarm of Error 216.