I’ve had my Form 2 for less than a year, and done a lot of great prints with it! I’m still in love with my Form 2, but the honeymoon is over I think. Now its the real work of this relationship.
I’ve had my share of issues lately.
I had a tank self-destruct while in cool & dark storage for a few weeks (following the recommended FormLabs protocols). It made a huge mess and cost me a bunch of black V4 resin, plus a destroyed tank.
I’ve had a number of failed large prints, the aftermath of which is not just draining/straining the resin, and cleaning the tank, but I’ve noticed a big dent in my PDMS layer from the wiper scraping across resin stuck to the basin.
The most annoying problem lately though has to be the tiny holes and “pitting” I’m noticing in my Grey V4 prints fairly consistently. I printed a big flat coaster this weekend and the entire surface was covered with tiny bubbles/holes, as if it were a bad resin or plaster cast, not a fresh-off-the-printer 3d print. Also, there was major bending/distortion of the shape on some sides, which I had to significantly fill & sand just to get a straight edge.
I had this problem with some prints before, and so I emptied my tank, cleaned it, filtered the resin, then put it through my vacuum chamber to eliminate any bubbles. After this, the parts were immediately better and free of the pitting. Now it seems I’ve got to degass my resin again. Yet, FormLabs claims they’ve verified the foaming does not cause print issues. I…doubt the accuracy of that claim.
Well, I just had a total failure trying to print a small benchie using the new feature “Build directly on the platform”.
It looks like I’m going to be emptying, filtering, and cleaning the tank anyway! I’ll try it without degassing, and then with and see if I notice a difference. I also have a new unopened tank I can try to compare.
So I emptied and filtered the resin from the tank and cleaned it out gently.
It appears that the PDMS layer has separated from the acrylic in numerous areas, and bits of adhesive or acrylic have drifted in between these two layers. So, not only do I have weird (and large) bubbles, but I’ve also got detritus trapped in the tank layers as well.
It can be a little hard to photograph and see in these 2d images, but in person its completely evident. Its like a poorly adhered decal or sticker, with grit and bubbles between the sticker and the intended surface. Only its the optical print area on my Form2 tank…
Apologies for the late reply in this thread. I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been having some less than ideal print results recently.
I suspect most of these errors are related to that roughed up resin tank. That being said, 1 liter is significantly less resin than we’d expect to get through a normal tank that’s functioning properly.
If you get in touch with our support team at the link below we’d be happy to investigate what’s going on a little more closely, and I’m sure we can get that tank swapped out for you, as that’s not normal expected behavior.
Do you happen to have a fresh tank available to you at the moment, and if so, does that produce cleaner results?
Yes, I had a fresh tank on hand, and it + filtering the resin 2x appears to have cleaned up my results perfectly.
I’m also still vacuum degassing my resin after filtering, and that seems to help. I’ll contact support about a replacement tank.
