I’ve just had a second print failure with Elastic 50A where rafts lost adhesion and detached from the platform, leaving a mess (first with beta settings, now with standard settings -last firmware, last Preform)
As it’s weekend, I can’t contact support.
But what I’ve never experienced is that the resin in the vat, after removing the fallen material, seems fully 100% lumpy, like almost turning into jello. See: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FJmmPpUPfxPtABE58
So my problem is that it’s impossible to strain to be able to try again. It just sits above the paint filter. Viscosity is too high.
At first I thought it was too cold, but it seems not, as you see in the picture:
As far as the print failure, I have also no idea. It’s a print I’ve done like 6 times already, no problem. And I’ve never had detaching problems.
I’ve inspected the LPU, seems fine, and I’ve just sanded the BP with 400 grit, just because I don’t know what else to do.
There seem to be a number of threads with people having some trouble with Elastic 50A. I haven’t had any problems with it, but I’ve only printed 1L, and that was over a year ago. How much print volume have you done with 50A? My impression from the previous threads is the people having trouble with it have printed larger volumes than me, and perhaps used a more recent revision of the formula than I have. I think I had the first generation of 50A.
I recently acquired some Apply Lab Works “Spring Black” and am looking forward to seeing how it does.
This is half way the second liter. Bought about 1 year after the other, so they are mixed for a while already.
Total print time is about 120hs
Haven’t had any problems since I started. Actually I was still on my first tank, which I had used for 630%.
So when it failed, I thought it might be that, but coincidentally I had used Beta settings with 0.3mm touch points on fairly big parts .
So the second try I did with a fresh tank, but also with standard settings.
But on both prints I noticed the raft detaching, which was a first for me (also for any resin)
This morning I woke up and the phenomenon is still present, the resin didn’t pass the filter
Meanwhile I printed something else with Flexible 80A, on the newly sanded build plate, with success.
But the E50A on the filter stays the same: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Rgvgrp1naSk1GTZ58
At the end of the video you see the collected resin is fine, but I calculated that it will take one million years, for everything to pass through the filter.
My Form 3 lives in the dark!
It has a dedicated room in the attic where no one goes so the only window is always closed.
The light you see in the video is only on for the photo and to clean up messes I mostly only use the one bulb in the ceiling
Nevertheless, it would interesting to know more about “UV + luminophore type white LEDs” (=all white leds?) because I thought there was negligible UV in led light.
Given the marketing photos of Formlabs, I would think my setup is a cave actually. I’ve never seen anyone working under colored light.
@rybu it does look like partially cured, but definitely, I wouldn’t know what went wrong then to loose all the tank.
Meanwhile I did 3 clean meshes so almost all the resin is lost.
Which leaves me with both unidentified causes: why did my 2nd print fail and why did I loose all the resin.
But more importantly: how will I succeed in the 3rd attempt!
Yes, all generic LED light are UV LED and then luminophore make UV as white visible light. Anyway big part of UV light pass trough luminophore and cure resin. Same color leds also use this techniques.
if you tell about “million years of filtering” and make video of it, i think your resin catch enough light for turn to “jelly fish” I see it regularly when assemble optic devices and install lens and protective glass by elastic 50a, once it turn to “jellyfish” state put assembly to formcure for final fixation.
I will contact Support about these requirements for a printing room.
Last year I’ve spent a bit of time researching “SLA rooms illumination” and by the lack of findings, I’ve concluded this wasn’t so critical. But maybe specifically for E50A it is, I don’t know.
If you have a recommendation for a suitable light source, let me know!
But if it is, Formlabs should be advising how to setup a proper room…
If how I handle gets me to partially cured resin after 1 failure in no time, then we should learn how to avoid it in the future…
Meanwhile after the 3rd cleaning mesh, most of the resin is gone, but the viscosity of what it’s left makes it really difficult to clean the tank.
I would think partially cured resin would be more static…
Meanwhile, I think I have an idea of what went wrong so I’m risking my last tank and resin with the 3rd retry.
This probably needs a separate post but in a nutshell:
Earlier successful prints had a raft 2.5mm thick, the one that failed: 0.75mm
In between there was also a successful print with 1.5mm thick
Preform could definitively be better here: a) there’s no way to enquiry raft details of a model. b) there’s no way to edit raft details once created. c) if you regenerate your raft, you lose all edited touch points
So I wasn’t paying attention since I never touch this value manually! Maybe is this the std value of beta settings? Maybe it changed in Preform versions and went back? Who knows!
form3 cant manage as you want. support even manually selected not always acceptable for exciting design.
only find when it printed normally and draw model together with support and raft. Ignore warning “model directly to the build platform”, “cups”, “undersupport”. generally print normally with ribs instead “hair” supports as for rigid materials. many techniques can be taken from FDM printers which not implemented in the preform - like guard tower, stars support etc - it all can be maked together with desired model.
for Chinese LCD 3d printer and flexible 3d resin, i choice very slow 1mm/s lift up after layer print, pause 30 seconds, a little faster move down below 3mm/s, pause 30 seconds. It crazy slow, kill LCD after few prints, but compensate accumulative deformations. Final print as expected. for form3 you can manage print delay by placing model near LPU parking side, minus 1 cm from edge, there printer collect bubbles when remix resin after each printed layer. and use fresh resin without “jelly fish” contamination.
generally approach like print rigid details with extremely tiny walls, with strong base near and side supports to base. And happens miracles of printing, not count on cost of this printing
I’ve never filtered 50A so I don’t have your experiences hoolito.
That said, I keep my Form 3 in a room with an essentially always-on LED white light. It’s not full spectrum, but to the human eye it produces a white light. So I’d be amazed if ambient room light is the problem in your case.
I do have a lot of experience filtering resin, and when I do filter it, it’s in a fairly bright room with white lights. It’s never caused a problem for me. Presumably whatever resin is cured in the process is trapped in the filter.
FYI, I experienced your problem for the first time today.
It was with ApplyLabWorks’s “Robust Champagne” resin. This is sort of half-way between Flexible 50A and maybe something like a “Tough” resin.
I left the resin in the build tray, in my (mostly) dark-ish garage. There is one light on in my garage most of the time, but it isn’t very bright. The resin was sitting in the tray, in the orange Formlabs tray container, for a few months.
Had a 1mm film on the top, sort of the consistency of jello. Currently filtering it out now, very slow.
Lesson learned, I suppose.
I’ve never had this problem with other resins. If your experience and my experience are anything to go by, it appears these clear-ish engineering type resins that have a decent amount of pliability are a little more photo sensitive than others.
I suppose you have a Form2? Else how do you use setup Preform to use that ALW resin?
I don’t know if the issues are related, but I surely wouldn’t have described the phenomenon as a “film”. Rather very dispersed lumps, only visible when the resin moves, actually beneath the surface.
Eventually it filtered after like 3 days. The filtered resin, (about 200ml) I poured again in the tank, and I printed my parts successfully with it.
Though with a 2.5mm raft!
I’m sure there’s a bug changing the raft thickness with some sequence of operations, I just need to catch it…
To speed up the resin filtering process, all you have to do is use the plastic scraper (the z-shaped one) they supplied with your Form 3, to remove the build-up of cured resin on the surface of your filter. I find resin flow tends to stop after a minute or two. After a light scraping, it continues. I can get all the resin filtered in 5 minutes, with maybe 5 or 6 “scrape cycles”.
Regarding ALW resin, you put the resin into a Formlabs container for a similar resin type. ALW gives you a guide on which resin settings work best. But you can use it on Form 2 or Form 3. Using non-Formlabs resins on the Form 3 is a bit clunky at present. Hopefully a proper open mode will be available soon.
Now that I think about it, I’ve been using Robust Champagne in my old Flexible 50A container. So it’s possible the “film” was the leftover flexible resin, and not the ALW resin at all.
Yes, my normal procedure. But this particular time, this really didn’t help. The liquid resin really clung to the “lumped up” resin and it was like all rubber. What it was really weird is that A) the resin that eventually filtered was a lot, and usable. and B) the left over in the filter was really not much. So the resin was in a reversible state.
I see it regularly when assemble optic devices and install lens and protective glass by elastic 50a, once it turn to “jellyfish” state put assembly to formcure for final fixation.
