Gelled resin globs on print

I am forced to use my defective third printer while I await the replacement (4th printer in 5 months) to finish a project for a client. Due to its size, it has taken 5 prints to get to where I am now and I still need two pieces. The really intricate one I had to farm out but the simpler one I am trying to print.

I can see the piece now that it is half way through and it looks to have these globs of resin that appear “gelled” over. I won’t know if they wash off for some time and I’m reluctant to try even with the print paused.

I used a new LT tank and new black resin, RS-F2-GPBK-04.

I wanted to use grey but didn’t have a new one and I wanted to use new to avoid any issued introduced by a possibly contaminated resin or tank. For those of you using the black, do you like it? Thus far, I have had nothing but a bad experience with the black. My first use of black resulted in malformed prints and extremely soft prints. Now this gel like behavior.

EDIT:

A little back story just to fill in some gaps.

Printer 1) Received in December and failed within 2 weeks with resin sensor errors. It was replaced in January
3 weeks after receiving the initial printer.

Printer 2) Received February 12th and within a few weeks was giving me motor jammed messages and this is when a few ball bearings were discovered resting on a rail the wiper arm uses to glide left and right.

Printer 03) Received April 3rd and has lasted the longest but the current printer is making odd gurgling sounds. When a print layer finishes and the tray slides, the print platform raises so the wiper cam complete a sweep.
When the platform moves into a print position again and just before the platform comes to a rest a strange sound that can only be described as a cross between a gear grinding and a gurgling sound.

Formlabs is replacing this printer and I appreciate that but I have zero confidence that four times the charm.

I bought and received mine about the same time and had ALL those symptoms in the 1 printer.

Formlabs replaced it with a machine they assured me they had tested, and thus far I have not had a single print failure on that machine.

I think sometime last year Formlabs received a container full of printers from their manufacturer- half or more of which were improperly assembled, and /or had sub-spec parts.

This is the only reasonable explanation for the sudden rash of similar problems, while other users report relatively trouble free experiences.
The problem is that they have no way of identifying which printers from that batch are the bad ones, until they fail, because their manufacturer did not capture enough info on the production line to isolate the cause,
For example- it could have been just those produced with a particular worker on shift.

i understand your frustration… it took me a while to get them to agree that the printer had major problems… but I think they now realize that they got a batch of lemons.

I was lucky that the second printer seems to be without issue. The only hope I can offer is that lots of other seem to have no problems, and that I did get a working replacement. ( fingers crossed that it stays that way )

Formlabs initially didn’t troubleshoot the first printer as anything more than a part failure so I had to disassemble the new machine to first clean and make adjustments to the sensor. The I had to open it a second time to replace sensors. Then it was replaced.

The second printer was different, upon opening it I discovered bearings had been forcibly ejected from the rail.
This warranted a quicker replacement.

Only then was I told that a second supplier was sourced to produce those rails as the primary supplier had issues meeting demand. The failures were limited to those printers assembled with the secondary supplier rails but Formlabs stated they had no way to determine which printers were built using said rails.

The current printer doesn’t seem to have a rail issue, if anything it might be the motor or screw drive for the platform head. As for the $h!t results I get with black resin, I will NEVER order that crap again.

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.