My first liter only produced 793.2 ml worth of parts.
My second liter felt light and I wish I would have measured it! And I didn’t keep near as perfect records from it but I have made far less with it, maybe 500ml at best and I’m almost out already! So has anyone else tracked their usage, and are you experiencing the same amount of loss?
Thanks, Vince
Nobody?
I hadn’t given it any thought until I saw your post. I will be buying a new liter here in the next week or so and will track my prints on it.
We’d be curious about this, if you can pass us some reliable data. So far, we haven’t heard of this issue, but of course, it’s important if either the bottles are not adequately filled or our volume estimation is not working as expected. Make sure, of course, that you’re including both the volume of the part as well as the support material.
I’ve attached the job record I kept of my first liter.
I expect there to be a certain amount of loss just from resin sticking to parts that is cleaned off in the alcohol bath.
I got lazy and haven’t kept track lately but will try to get back in the habit with my next order of resin.
Wow, Vince. Thanks for this – super interesting. I’ll pass it on.
No problem, oh and I can’t find where I wrote it down but I’m pretty sure that what I measured the remaining resin in the tank to be was 12ml, I tried to run it as close to empty as I could.
How did you measure the actual resin being used? I hope you did not rely on what PreForm was telling you. That is not accurate one bit.
If you measure it with a measuring cup every time you add resin, it will be more accurate.
Yeah my chart measurements are from preform, physically measuring between every print would be a real job! I wouldn’t think measuring the volume of the stl or the added supports would be so difficult as to have that much error would it?
The Preform part volume is precise, it matches up with my CAD software. The actual amount of resin used may be different from the parts volume, or alot is lost in the process somehow, or the liter isn’t full to begin with, or some combination… or something I haven’t thought of?
I know the topic is a bit old, but have you managed to find out why the printer uses so much more resin than Preform states?
I’ve been tracking usage, only getting about 680ml of parts from my first litre.
Do you scrape the resin off the build platform after a print?
There’s quite a bit left on it, usually, and some trapped around the edges of the base.
It looks insignificant, but if you scrape it off with the spatula, you’ll notice you can drip quite a bit of it back into the tank. Does it amount to the missing 300ml per liter? I doubt it. But the actual discrepancy might be smaller (if you haven’t accounted for it).
I have been printing this project twice now, Formlabs says the print with supports will take 105ml per print.
I can only get 7 parts before my 1 liter is empty. I still have a full tank however. Is it safe to try to print what is
left in the tank? Maybe I can get one more print. I keep telling myself I should get at least 8 to 9 parts per Liter but I only get 7.
Any thoughts on this?
If the tank is full to the line- it holds about 200ml. You can not get all 200 ml out of the tank, because you need at least as much resin as it takes to fully wet the tank floor after each wiper operation.
The Preform estimate is accurate as to actual part volume… however, a certain amount of resin is lost with each print run- some coats the parts, and the Platform has some coating it. The platform eats about the same amount of uncured resin with each run, whether one tiny part or a bunch of really big ones… but the amount coating the parts varies with the volume of the parts… I figure rough loss estimate of about 5% of the print run volume.
With your part at 105ml- figure your actual resin use will be 110.25ml- that means your 7 parts used up 772ml of resin. If you ran an 8th part you would be up to 882mls That would leave you about 118 ml in the tank- which is pretty close to the minimum you can get away with having in the tank.
You should be able to successfully run an 8th part.
100 ml of your first cartridge of any material effectively can not be printed- its needed to wet the tank.
But when you stick the next cartridge of the same material in- you already have 100ml from the last cartridge in there- so you should get closer to the full liter of parts with allowance for loss.
If you buy a new tank, and pour the resin from the burned tank into the new tank- again, you have the initial resin already in and a new cartridge should net you closer to 1 litre of parts.
Thanks, that really helps, You will lose 100ml right out the gate to fill the tank. And you will lose approx 5% to residue on the platform and the printed part. So how much usable resin is available from the MAX line to the MIN line when the 1 liter is all used up?
about 100 ml.