Fuse 1+ is down again. This time it appears to be a doser calibration issue

[LEADNAV]

After the Formlabs rep left and we continued to try and switch to Nylon 12 from successfully printing Nylon 12 GF for over a year…something obviously went bad.

On our 8th failed/aborted print in two days. Haven’t been successful since.

Something went bad with our doser calibration as we no longer have an excess pile up of powder along the edge walls of the roller and there is barely any powder moving across with the roller.

Happening on two different chambers otherwise at first I thought it to be a chamber leak.

I’ve done a complete n total hopper cleanout twice now and re calibrated the doser successfully and still getting the same thing.

I also +5 degrees the doser offset n same result with no improvement.

What’s weird is it is priming and preheating fine with a big pile of excess powder along back wall then when it starts printing it stops putting down the same amount of powder.

This is a new one for me…and I’ve seen and worked through a lot over the years…

Up for suggestions or anyone who maybe experienced this…of course a Formlabs rep was just here on scene last week…who knows when this will get resolved

UPDATE: Looking at it more I am wandering if there may be a heat temp issue… my heater bulbs are browning up faster than normal and I am still running my temp calibration at a -1.75c based of the temp prints. Chamber temp is reading around 178 when printing which is lower than I’ve ever printed Nylon 12 GF.

I am still running Nylon 12 at a 45% refresh rate.

Just bizarre… Been running flawlessly over a year with Nylon 12 GF. Thought the move to Nylon 12 would be even more stable with the cost savings… but its like a bunch of Gremlins hit my machine all at once

FYI… the Formlabs Blast has been absolutely amazing and I was just saying the other day how I now look forward to printing more parts because the post processing is so easy and “hands off” now…but here I am unable to print!! Haha

[LEADNAV]

Still down… dealing with email support back n forth. They want to see all the print files that are failing as they say its the part orientation… (it is NOT the files nor the part orientation). If it were… I’d be moving back to Nylon 12 GF as I had printed hundreds of jobs with these same files and part orientation.

I also had printed these same files at least a dozen times the week before with Nylon 12 during my initial tests, with zero failures, so something catastrophic went out on the system since then obviously.

It is definitely under dosing.

I just can’t tell if that is from the doser itself or if it is leaking through the chamber. It almost looks like it is leaking out the chamber, as I am seeing a pretty descent amount of powder in the floor of the printer for being such a short print 1-2 hours, before the failure occurs… but if that is the problem, then literally two of my three chambers went out at the same exact time. Bout to try my third that I have not transitioned from Nylon 12 GF to Nylon 12 yet…

Been running the chambers in the Sift and the gasket seals all look good.

I am noticing how aggressive the “down and up bed motion” is between layers. To me it seems a lot more aggressive than when I was running last week whereas before it only seems to move very slightly now it almost seems like it is going down n up at least a half inch before the next layer. I assume that this and the chamber pressure could be pulling powder down…sucking it down along the wall more… I am seeing cavities for along the chamber walls so…

This is the last aborted failure not even 2 hours in

and the powder on the floor

Again it would be strange as both Chambers would have had to gone bad, back to back after running fine

Also, during warmup, I still see a nice pile of powder along the back wall showing it is dosing fine but whenever the print starts, that goes away and it barely looks like any powder is infant of the roller. I am used to seeing a descent amount and a nice “wave” pop powder going across.

I don’t know but again the Formlabs email support goes around and around and after a few dozen emails you’d think a nice phone call would be nice to have to get things figured out and resolved.

Last time we had a major failure it took months to just convince them through email that there was in fact a real problem before they acted. I am hoping it does not take as long to get this one resolved.

I am starting to think that it is a necessity to have at least two Fuse printers on hand to have one running for when you have an issue like this.

[br4n_d0n]

Are you also paying for this “non-support”?

[Kostbone]

Hi Leadnav.

I have a question for you. Do you have a grate installed in the powder hopper? I had the same problem. It looked like there was a little powder ready for the squeegee, but in the end I found that the powder just didn’t work well. He literally froze in the hopper. Perhaps higher humidity, perhaps a large ratio of used powder. Anyway, the powder didn’t flow as well as when completely new. First I made a vibrating feeder that vibrated briefly every 3-10 minutes, however I ended up removing the grid from the hopper completely and the problem was completely solved.

[LEADNAV]

No. The Fuse 1+ 30 no longer even has a grate… instead it has an agitator to stir the powder at the bottom of the hopper. Also my humidity is maintained at 25-30% max at all times. It’s dry as a bone in here.

Formlabs support did escalate it to their engineers this week.

Right now it is leaning towards two of my three chambers going bad at the same time so we have a new rebuild kit for both on the way from Formlabs.

I am hoping that fixes the issue… however at the same time that is surprising as all my Chambers just got fully serviced on site by a Formlabs rep and rebuilt within probably only a dozen or so prints on each since then…

I am about to run my third chamber for the second time, after converting it from Nylon 12 GF to Nylon 12 to see if it continues to print without failure. Fingers crossed.

On my other thread about the severe “burring” I am seeing on every edge of my parts when running Default or Speed Optimization… I have been able to minimize that slightly off their setting recommendations by adjusting

Perimeter Upskin Laser Powers changed from stock 28500 to 13200mW

Perimeter Downskin Laser Powers changed from 13735 to 8500mW

I still have a slight edge having but it has improved greatly to an acceptable level at least.

Been a hell of a past two weeks trying to convert from Nylon 12 GF to what we thought was an “easy” crossover to a more dependable and cheaper Nylon 12… but again hopefully this was because these two Chambers just happened to crap the bed within the same week.

Just ran a full chamber of parts on the third chamber so hopefully that is repeatable on today’s job. Fingers crossed!

[Kostbone]

My friend, it’s incredible what stories I hear from you. You have such big problems that formlabs should also give you financial compensation for the time and trouble. And one whole printer for free.

Do you have an open system that you can change the parameters? Did you purchase a license for powder testing? (€12k)