Yeah agreed. Formlabs mentioned in their email to Thomas that it sounded counter intuitive but seemed to be working with their internal tests.
This tough resin clearly seems to have different properties than the standard stuff which I’m assuming these “troubleshooting” pages were written for.
So i have followed the instructions per FormLabs Support and very first print failed… I rest the offset back to 0 and ran the same part it worked! but then … I ran it a second time only to get a lack of adhesion to the build platform. Ran it one more time and it appears so far to be working correctly (about 50%) complete… so out of 3 attempts with out changing a single thing I will have 2 success and one failure. I am starting to think that more and more it could be a simple bug or glitch in the software perhaps something to do with the LASER intensity and or slicing data? its becoming a real head scratcher again…
Chris,
We have recently purchased a formlabs for the first time, I have been trying to find a UV curing cabinet for some time with no luck, is this something you have made yourself or brought online?
Cheers,
SImon
Simon, we bought ours through MSC industrial supply I believe but they can be found on Amazon and Ebay as well.
Chris i have looked on amazon and cant really seem to find anything similar as the one in a post i have found on here is no longer available.
i have found this one, do you think this would work?
http://www.salonequipmentonline.co.uk/germ-x-twin-shelf-uv-sterilizer-cabinet-9-p.asp
Cheers
It looks very similar to the one we have
It seems like in most of the failed prints, the models are “laying down”. Is this part of the problem? I see that with the butterflies, this is not the issue!
Typically, with no failed prints since (I have not tried Tough yet), I stand the model so most of the walls run vertical, then adjust manually to about X:7° Y:7° Z:21°. (Taking long overhangs into account, rotating the model so they hang closer to the bed than not.) I realize that this is closer than the recommended, but it has worked well for me.
I’d be interested to see if this helps anyone with the Tough resin.
@Mariann_Cary I realize this is an older thread, but have you had any more luck with the Tough resin?
I tried your model, and the supports are very peculiar! They go through your model all over the place - even after I tried to rebuild them and re-orient the model - the tips of the supports are inside the walls of the model. I am wondering if the support issue isn’t an STL issue. Just curious, but what software are you using to design your models in?
I plan to mess with it again today. I’ve been so busy lately with other projects that I sadly haven’t had the time to do anymore troubleshooting on it. I had the same issue with the supports. And then it turned into not sticking to the platform at all and printing in the tank. I’ll let you know how today goes.
M
What software do you use for your models?
Our CAD guys do them, convert them to .STL and send them to us.
Solidworks then save as .STL.
Hi
Had some success printing with Tough Resin today.
Using the Formlabs ‘Tough Resin’ setting failed time after time with nothing sticking to the bed.
I even used fine tuning to crank the bed down; firstly to .1 and then .2 with no results.
I also have ‘Vorex’ and have great results with this and not one failed print. Vorex uses the ‘Grey 01’ setting so…
I tried ‘Formlabs Tough Resin’ using the ‘Grey 01’ setting and had partial success.
Tried again but fine tuned the bed down .1 and got an almost perfect print except for part of the support base detached from the bed.
Tried again with the bed down to .2 and got an even better result with still a bit of lifting but the object itself was almost perfect.
This last item was an adjustable spanner which should be cured sufficiently by mid morning tomorrow after some time in the sun and then supports off and try it on some nuts.
I
If you haven’t already, I’d like to encourage anyone experiencing printing issues with Tough Resin to contact our techs. We are aware of an issue printing on some machines, which doesn’t appear to be hardware or resin related. We’ll do our best to post more here, and contacting our team directly will always be the best and fastest way to ensure Formlabs can determine and deliver a solution.
I just shipped our printer back for warranty after a lengthy trouble shooting process.
Most of the lengthiness was on my end, as my job sometimes doesn’t allow me to get to the action requested by Formlabs tech support for a bit.
I will report back when I am up and printing again.
I have had a fair amount of luck getting the printer to behave properly with the Tough over the past few prints. I can’t say I’ve got it perfect, but it is close enough that I thought I’d post about what I did.
I had all kinds of adhesion problems, and got excellent support from FormLabs in altering my layouts and supports etc, and was able to get some small parts printed that let me move forward with a project. After that I decided to wait for tweaks to the software to improve Tough resin adhesion. So I had left it alone for a few days and then got bored one evening and decided to take another poke at it. I used my calipers to measure the thickness of the build platform at each of the 8 screw posts around the build platform to get an approximation of how level and uniform it was. I figure this was actually a reasonable proxy for how the metal plate interfaces with the tank. The platform I had bought to use with the resin turned out to have more than 1mm of variance (I had tried another platform that has always been perfect with the clear while experimenting and the Tough behavior was the same so after all of this I might go measure and tweak that one too).
I had looked at a number of posts about fiddling with the platforms, so I decided that I would disassemble it, clean out any resin, then carefully tighten the screws down and take repeated measurements to get the delta down to something much smaller - I was aiming for within 0.1mm. I realized that this would not help with any warping towards the center, but figured it would help at least.
This process went reasonably well, the only things worth noting in doing so is that you need to be careful about putting the calipers across the hex pressed into the platform as it is not always flush and can skew your measurements, and that I needed a small spudger to reach in and flatten the seal again, as it didn’t want to lay perfectly flat around one of the corner posts without some encouragement. I tightened down one corner to get the seal pinned by the small plastic shelf, and then measured it. I was able to go around the sides from there tightening the screws a small amount at a time (as I did not want to overshoot, as I had seen very little rebound during initial disassembly). This was sufficient to go from a >1mm variance to within +/-0.05mm.
I then fired up a print that had only kind of worked due to erratic adhesion at different parts of the base layer, with a 0.1mm lower offset, and got pretty good adhesion, with one small failure in the center that didn’t really affect the part in a meaningful way. This was a huge improvement, as up to that point this print had failed badly with adhesion problems and generation of lots of floaters. I then set it to 0.2mm lower offset and fired it up again. This time it went quite well, with perfect adhesion, but was extremely difficult to remove from the platform. 1.9.1 got released, so I downloaded that, did the firmware update, and then ran a 1.8mm base thickness at 100 micron resolution instead of the default 2mm, got ok but not great results (one leg of the base in the center front did not adhere but part geometry was ok). So then I did 1.9mm at 100 micron and got a good print. I tried it again at 50 micron last night (Roughly a 6.5 hour print) and also got a good print, so overall I seem to have the Tough resin working reasonably well now in exchange for 10 minutes or so with a caliper, a screwdriver, and some paper towels. I suspect that if I shimmed the center post a bit I wouldn’t even have to mess with the offsets anymore.
First I must say that I absolutely LOVE my 1+ printer and I never experienced any problems with resin.
So when a part printed with the standard black resin after many months of use showed a crack I decided to get the “TOUGH”
resin thinking that based on the advertised qualities it would be a better material choice.
Little did I know how much frustration this decision will cost me.
In all fairness… perhaps I have a bad batch of the resin so my statements are limited to my experiences only.
By knowing better, I started with a brand new vat and the platform was meticulously cleaned.
First print… 0.1 mm and all defaults set resulted in 30% of the base was pealed (lifted) 2 mm above the platform.
Second print same settings except that the printers 3 hour long job was started at 10 PM and left alone until the next day 9 AM when it was removed.
As with the first print… the base was lifted about 2 mm but also the remainder of the base was completely “welded” to the platform and it was a huge struggle to get it off.
Further I observed 10-20 mm convex mounds around the base (nothing unusual I thought) what looked like left over liquid resin left over on the platform. NOT the case… the resin mounds are completely cured and welded to the platform.
So I started wondering why I would have cured resin in areas that did not get any laser exposure.
First thing that I thought was excessive ambient temperature caused the resin to cure during the ~ 8 hour before the platform was removed.
But… my office has a tight environment control and the Night ambient temperature is set @ 72 F.
Given the fact that I experienced this mysterious resin curing, discussion over or playing with print settings is purely academic as far as I am concerned.
My conclusion with this particular batch is that the resin is highly unstable and for me it was an epic fail.
After cleaning the platform and reverting back to the black resin ALL is good and working.
My conclusion with this particular batch is that the resin is highly unstable and for me it was an epic fail.
After cleaning the platform and reverting back to the black resin ALL is good and working.
Congratulation. Even if we have cleaned all, the dimensions are incorrect in case of original.
Hi @Mariann_Cary, It appears like your STL export may have nested, separate interior bodies, which the supports attach to. Because you have a larger body blocking access, the supports are impossible to remove.
If possible, I’d recommend opening the file in Meshmixer or Rhino and deleting or boolean union-ing the interior bodies. That should give you one single body mesh for the supports to attach to.
I plan to mess with it again today. I’ve been so busy lately with other projects that I sadly haven’t had the time to do anymore troubleshooting on it. I had the same issue with the supports. And then it turned into not sticking to the platform at all and printing in the tank. I’ll let you know how today goes.
…
If I let preform make the supports they print into the barrel. If that makes sense. They can’t be cut away. I had to edit the supports to look like that. See in the picture. It even happens when I turn down the density/point size. I’ve noticed that different resins have different support styles. These are super dense and thick.
Hi,
I ended up having to do a ticket with formlabs to get it fixed! Thanks for the suggestions on Meshmixer/Rhino 
M
