Identifying the need to replace tank by looking at use pattern?

Hey all - In an attempt to keep down costs, I would like to be able to wring as much life out of my tanks as possible. I just finished my second liter of grey, in the same tank.

In looking at my tank’s heat map, it doesn’t appear to be particularly dense. Can one vet a tanks longevity, by looking at the heat map? If so, how does this one look?

Thanks!
-Lee

I replace or repair tanks when the print quality starts to suffer.

The heat maps are great but in the end it’s print quality that drives a change. You can empty the tank and physically look through the PDMS and evaluate how clowdy it is also.

I have almost 3L of clear resin on one of my tanks and it’s still fine. Some of the functional materials cloud much faster. High Temp clouds the most for me but it prints fine on a fairly cloudy tray.

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Yeah. There’s no “absolute” measure of wear that you can get from the heatmap. It can certainly tell you if the PDMS has almost no wear. And it will probably be obvious if the heatmap shows an area with really heavy wear. But there’s a huge grey area inbetween (pardon the pun).

The thing the heatmap is good for is helping you ensure the PDMS is worn as evenly as possible. When you place a new model on the build platform, you can put it someplace that has less wear based on what you see in the heatmap. But that’s about the extent of its usefulness.

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