Yea this was weird. I just cleaned the entire system, printer, wash cure, build platforms the lot. Then installed a brand new tank and mixer.
It immediately went to printing before even dispensing resin into the new tank. This went on a number of times with me hitting RETRY all the time. I even changed platforms just in case, wipes the LED panel and triple checked the brand new tank… there was nothing. Then after about 25 retries there were eventually enough resin in the tank and it started printing.
That said… It never went through the resin heating phase, so not sure how this print will come out.
Preheat is enabled by default. The mixer arm will wipe during filling, so there may be some odd error going on if you are trying to wipe a dry or nearly empty tank. I always pre-fill the tank to ~400-500mL when I get a new one. As @SteamFactoryLLC mentioned, the error occurrence should be reduced when the resin is fully pre-heated.
Clarification - pre-heating of resin prior to the print (i.e heating to the optimum temp) is always enabled. Pre-heating in the configuration settings which enables a faster print start is by default disabled.
no. “pre-heating” is not on by default. yes, the resin will start heating when a print starts but the wiper will start moving before the resin is heated and may produce the ‘debris detected’ error. The pre-heat is burried in the settings menu.
Ah ok… so this is in addition to the heating of the resin that is done prior to printing? Just so I am clear:
Up until today, when a job has been uploaded, the wiper started moving and the printer displayed the temperature. The wiper then kept mixing the resin until the resin temperature reaches 35C. So the pre-heat is something different to this correct?
Might be not that winter is starting here and the viscosity of tough resin might be higher than that Standard V5 hence the error… probably makes sense.
Curious to know how your print went? I see now it requires two separate washes of 10min each. Second wash in fresh solvent. Do you have two Form Washes?
I’ve got a bunch of prints ahead of it so I won’t be testing until next week. My solvent setup is a form wash and then an ultrasonic cleaner. 15 minutes in the first, and 5 in the second.
hhmmm… I have an ultrasonic cleaner as well, but exclusively using it for PCBs (which is my core business) so would not want to contaminate that with resin
Curing time is a drag though… 1 hour at 70C. It now has me looking into the Cure2 despite the fact that there I was not a week ago ready to box this thing up and sell it for pennies in the dollar
Just wanted to hop in and mention that the most recent release of PreForm 3.48 includes a new field in Print Settings Editor, which slowing it down should help with this error if you’re getting it repeatedly for a specific resin.
Preprint mixer speed setting in Print Settings Editor: Control the speed at which the mixer moves before a print.
We’ve also adjusted some settings for some of our more viscous resins that were more prone to falsely triggering resistance as debris, so if you’re still encountering this issue please let me know and I will take a look and see what we can do to improve further. (It would be the fastest and most helpful to submit a bug ticket in PreForm’s feedback box and upload your printer’s logs)
I did update Preform before printing as I did not have Tough 1500 V2 material option. After updating, cleaning everything and installing new tank a mixer as described before… this problem presented.
At the end of the print it happened again. I heard the photo being taken but when I went over to the printer to remove the print a couple of minutes later, I saw the same error screen. I opted to close that screen and was presented with the “how did it print screen”.
It is worth noting that winter is starting now and ambient is around 10-15C.
Will do. I am mot sure about the firmware now, but can check in the morning. I can confirm it is the latest one as I tried updating the firmware manually on the machine when I was having these issues this morning and it indicated it was up to date.
cautiously optimistic but it actually looks better than anything I have printing with standard resin so far. It has a wavy pattern but it actually looks nice and it covers the entire model. I will have a proper look in the morning and post some pics.
Now just need to find a way to afford it, quite expensive locally
It actually looks quite ok. The only issue I would say is still the part closest to the build platform and the part the attaches to the supports. I can make revert back to printing the break-away tabs, but was hoping to find a way around this. In the last photo you can see the part line up with a Standard Resin Lid as well a LED “light pipe” insert. Seems it is dimensionally accurate and nothing seems warped
The bottom looks terrible. I sanded it lightly and then treated with a drop of vegetable oil to see. Looks better but I would prefer not to have to do this. It is ok if you have to do this for a couple of parts, but becomes less fun when you have to do it 50 times.
Looking forward to someone else’s feedback as well, hoping I am just clueless and there is a way to improve on this.
What did you use for touchpoint size? Did you cure with the supports on? Did you use the default V5 cure setting or did you use an older setting with heat?
Try reducing some of the support touch points (not all) down to 0.4 min. Add heat when you cure and take the supports off immediately after curing while they’re still warm. Try tilting up more. You should be able to print with fewer supports at about a 40 degree angle (from vertical).
Did you use the default V5 cure setting or did you use an older setting with heat?
This was done with Tough 1500 V2 so used the profile for that, 70C for 60mins if I recall correctly. Touch points were set to 0.45mm. The model was tilted 45deg, so when you mention deg, do you mean more upright then?
my bad, was thinking this was V5 black for some reason. Seems all I ever print in is black these days
as for tilt, yes. More upright. 40 degrees from vertical would be 50 degrees from horizontal. 45 should work too and you can manually remove supports and see how Preform reacts. But 40 should not cause any problems, if you can tilt that high and still have it in the build volume.
Black and Grey V5 used to be my goto as well, but I found it to be very brittle hence me trying out Tough 1500.
I will give the 40deg from vertical a try. One of the problems I have when not printing on the platform directly is the “ugly” side where the supports attach (side closest to the platform). I am running a print now with the angle 40deg from horizontal. The reason being this gives me the option to add the supports to the under side of the enclosure.
Very minor comment but I’ve had better luck with mineral oil over vegetable oil for buffing out surfaces. Plus, vegetable oil goes rancid over time and mineral oil does not, though that might be negligible with the amount that’s used.
I typically manually support my models (or at least edit them) if I reduce the touchpoint sizes. I find that it works best if I keep the support tips on and around local minima larger in diameter, to sort of “anchor” the part, and everywhere else use smaller support tips to stabilize the part (sometimes increasing density on certain areas). We’re always improving our support algorithms, but more often than not, intuition and context from a human can greatly boost getting a good part to looking great. For most parts I print nowadays, I auto-generate supports and go in and edit them, as the auto generated ones are a good starting point.
