Did they oblige? It’s crossed my mind that the circulation of refurbished printers has become the worst ones. When someone gets a replacement that has laser problems they send it back, and FormLabs sends it to the next guy. Since they don’t fix laser issues, the circulation of replacements has to have all bad lasers by now.
I only emailed them yesterday so do expect to hear back until after the weekend.
One thing I notice here: http://forum.formlabs.com/uploads/formlabs/2737/e7be5f6d63e8380b.jpg is that if you had oriented the part with what’s at the top switched to be at the bottom, you would not need any internal supports on your critical surfaces.
Hi all, just a quick update.
Formlabs support got back to me on Friday and are going to change the laser at their UK facility. The original laser will be shipped back to their headquarters for testing and investigation etc.
Obviously this is great news.
They also explained a little on the some of the difficulties they are facing with regards to determining form a customer’s laser spot test or print, whether it’s the laser that’s causing prints failures.
This I totally understand. I’ve been guilty in the past of blaming a failed print on laser flare, when it has been down to lack of experience and poor part orientation on my part.
When I first looked at my laser spot test I automatically assumed that the laser was faulty. I was expecting to see a small focused dot, instead and I saw the typical carrot shaped pattern.
I how understand this is a fairly typical laser spot test pattern for the Form1+ and doesn’t automatically suggest a problem with the laser. It’s only the very small, brightest part of the dot that cures the resin. This makes it very difficult for us or Formlabs to determine whether there is a flare or what they refer to as laser aberrations from the images we take.
To demonstrat this, reciently @KjellNilsson printed the minimum feature test and got awesome results. When you look at his laser spot image, it’s not that dissimilar to mine.
@KjellNilsson Minimum Feature Test, FL Black Resin @0.1mm Layer Height
My Minimum Feature Test, Clear V2 resin, 0.1mm Layer Heights
@KjellNilsson Laser Spot Test Image
My Laser Spot Test Image
Formlabs also explained that the porosity I’ve been experiencing has not been linked with the laser or the mirrors. It’s something they’ve been able to duplicate in their labs and are addressing it with software updates. This follows @Ante_Vukorepa theory in his post –
That sounds like excellent news @Steve_Johnstone! It’s great to hear that you’re discussing this issue in depth with the Formlabs team and we’re all learning from this.
It’s nice to see you’ve compared the minimum feature print with that of KjellNilsson’s. Especially as he has a similar laser spot as you have. However, perhaps the minimum feature test is not the print we should be comparing. Of course it’s great to see that the result of the minimum feature test is astonishing, but I think we’ve all noticed that laser flare causes much more issues with taller prints. Shouldn’t a taller print be a benchmark as well? (like the test crosses of @KevinHolmes)? This way we can definitely rule out that a laser spot like yours and KjellNilsson’s is an issue.
Yes @Alex_Vermeer, Its great news. Have you got your printer back yet?
I’ve updated my last post to include a picture of my minimum feature test. I agree that is’s not the best test if to suspect laser flare (aberrations).
I think my problem only affects a very few of us. I just wanted to point out that you can’t take it for granted that if your laser spot test looks like mine you have a laser problem.
Just FYI: I’ve updated the black resin thread (Does this look like a good bottle of Formlabs black resin?) with some shots of rooks printed in black, but at the castable setting, confirming the issues with black (at least in my case) are due to undercuring.
@Alex_Vermeer yes there are several prints that would do a better job demonstrating flare. However, any prints that we the community print with the same orientation and positioning, that result in one printer producing clean and correct results and another producing clearly incorrect results is a good indication that the problem being seen is not due to user error from positioning the part poorly, but instead due to either hardware, or materials, or handling, or environment variables. This is a huge help in the diagnosis process, and any test that may differ greatly from machine to machine is of great value. As for the minimum feature test it seems like it has high potential to come out differently on different machines for a variety of reasons.
You’re right @RocusHalbasch, we can learn from every single print! I’ll be definitely printing both the crosses as the minimum feature test when I get my printer back to check the results!
Try my helical walls as well. 
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