Anyone else having issues with the replacement tanks becoming cloudy? With each print it becomes worse and less and less of the print peels away.
My first tank I probably put through 25 prints and my only issues was when printing at .025mm. I received the replacement tank from formlabs as a preventative measure and haven’t had but the the first print out of 5 complete successfully.
On closer inspection the coating on the bottom appears to have become cloudy. That’s strange since the 5 prints that have gone through this new tank were all prints I ran with the last one.
The image of the tank you can see the outline of past base and supports still there along with remnants of old print geometry?
And I asked them if they could be send back to be refurbished maybe? partial credit towards a new tank?
They told me the tanks for now are consumables. A $70 plus shipping consumable should last a little longer I think.
I have lines and dots similar to yours on one of my tanks (a replacement ordered). The original is still going strong. Another replacement ordered for the grey resin seems ok for now.
Maybe it’s an inconsistency issue in the quality of the coating?
Hello everybody, today I will experiment with my cloudy and cutted tank ( feedback comes soon): 1) Cleaning the tank with eyelense-cleaner (about 5 minutes massage with gloves - then over night still standing). 2) Some parts are ok - so i will try some colored experiments with highfluid and expensive cmyk printcolor. 3) Pull out the original silicon layer and fill in some new. (this will take a while until i got high performance silicone like that for eyelenses and finished 2 build my pump of vaccum). I will back 4 the results.
Eye lens cleaner is salt water mostly right. Not sure that’s a good idea, because PDMS takes on whatever you put on it. That’s why it’s not a good idea to wash it with alcohol or even soap.
The “PDMS massaging” or whatever you want to call it, that I posted on another thread, so far has worked well for me. The tank that I am using (and abusing by trying different resins on it, etc) still shows no clouding or any problems. The key is to scrape the tank gently with the spatula, for about a minute, to help the PDMS breathe, and that keeps it from clouding and degrading and gives you better prints.
Cleaning the tank with any chemicals or liquids is not a good idea.
Hi, I will use the combined all-in-one without salt for smooth silicone-lenses from acumed. Maybe there is no good result. But I try it. First impression is that the rest of resine peel of it’s own and some colorful tensile swims above. Let’s see tomorrow what is happen.
my first experience about cleaning a cloudy tank white eyelense-cleaner won’t help. My second experince to colorise resin is on the way. Some test will follow.
I just cleaned out my resin tank because of some failed prints and I’ve only printed 10 times and it’s already has cloudiness to it. I attached an photo of my resin tank. So what is the proper way to clean the cloudiness? Also will the cloudy spots affect future prints?
Great, thinks for the link Etienne. I went ahead and ordered a new resin tray from Formlabs and once I have it I will purchase the Sylgard and attempt to recoat the original vat tray I already have. I just wish I knew why the cloudiness has occurred so quickly after only printing 10 or so times so I make sure I am able to extend the life of the Silicone layer.
Monger is correct, you should not use chemicals to clean your resin tank. Also, be careful not to confuse clouding with settled pigment. The only cleaning the bottom of the VAT should undergo is gently even pressure “scraping” with the included spatula. When pigment is settled, it can look like clouding and should clear away with a few brushes of the spatula.
Etienne is also spot on that legitimate clouding cannot be cleaned away.
If your resin tank clouds after only a few prints, please drop us a message.
Sometimes if I leave the grey resin in the tank for a few weeks, no matter how much I mix or scrape, I still see some spots that look like clouding but it’s not. After a minute or so of scraping and moving the resin around, the cloudiness is gone. I have had times that it would not come off so easily, because one of my tanks was sitting with resin in it for close to a month.
So in those bad cases I remove the resin from the tank, scrape all I can and pour it out, and then use Alcohol to gently clean/wash the tank. I pour a little alcohol in, and move it around with my gloved fingers. The alcohol nicely dissolves the remaining resin and removes spots from the bottom of the tank. I then pour out the alcohol and do a few more rinses. Then turn the tank upside down at a slight incline on a paper towel to dry for a few hours. After that, it looks like a brand new tank. So far I have not experienced any cloudiness in any of my tanks. Except some damaged areas from using some very nasty/smelly 3rd party resins that got stuck to the PDMS (not the B9 resin).
If you scrape your tank gently using the spatula before every print, and cancel failed prints on time instead of letting them go on for hours, then your tanks should last a really long time.
Hey Jory, I submitted a request form and included screen shots of my cloudy tank and failed prints. I’ve only printed about 10 times. I tried scraping with the spatula but the cloudiness won’t seem to go away. I haven’t tried putting any alcohol in the tray though as Monger suggests. I’ll wait till I hear back from Form labs before attempting to clean with alcohol.
