Hi!
I would like to know if its possible to manipulate the Chip of the Resin Cartridge so the Form 2 thinks always the Cartridge is full.
Because we have a lot of Cartridges that have still around 200ml left, and our mainparts that we print have 250ml and more. So 1/4 of the Resin of all the Cartridges we use is not useable, and I dont want to throw all of it away only because formlabs has´nt thought about a “ignore Cartridge fill level and continue printing” Button.
kind regards
Flo
This feature exists. Once you start a print and the volume of the part is higher than what the printer think is left in the cartridge, it will be throwing you a warning (something like “there may not be enough resin left to finish the print”). You can always override/ignore this warning and continue printing, at which point the printer will continue to try to dispense resin from the cartridge. I often do that and try to launch prints several hours before I leave work, so that I can switch the cartridge mid-print to a full cartridge to ensure the printer doesn’t run out of resin in the middle of the night/week-end.
As for reprograming the cartridge chip there used to be a contraption built by the community but I don’t know if it works with the last versions of the firmware :
The printer was throwing a warning about the fill level of the Cartridge, but the description from Formlabs says that the printer will stop the print after the Cartridge is emtpy. So your suggestion works only if somebody is there when the Cartridge is empty to switch to a new one. But the Printer runs 20h for our parts, and in the middle of the night no one is there to switch it. And since the Printer cant tell how much resin is in the Cartridge left, i cant estimate when the Cartridge runs empty.
This is why I am removing the almost empty cartridge before leaving. I have run several 40+ hours, 700ml+ prints in Grey Pro back to back recently. After the first one, I launch the 2nd one with the “old” cartridge, I know there’s a bit more than 300ml left, and I could probably leave the printer and switch the cartridge in the morning but I want to ensure that the print doesn’t pause for a few hours so I put a new cartidge in. When I come back in the morning I either let it run or I put the old cartdidge back in to continue emptying it knowing I’ll be there if there’s an error.
This is not ideal but it’s not a deal-breaker by any means.
What has been asked of Formlabs many times in the Feature Request category is for the printer to not stop mid-print if you already have overriden the “low resin” warning at the begining of the print. With the cartridge level being an open-loop system there isn’t much more that can be done.
IMHO tricking the printer into thinking the cartridge is full is a bad idea. For one it will try to continue to dispense resin and will eventually throw a “cartridge error/empty” message, and if it doesn’t do that the tank wll not be filled enough and for a big print there’s a considerable chance the resin won’t be able to flow back at the center of the tank after the wiper’s movement… leading to a failed print.
When the cartridge is empty it will carry on printing. You can even start a print with an empty cartridge as long as the tray is full, and you can keep topping the tray up as if you were in open mode. There appears to be two resin level sensors, an overfill which seems fairly accurate and a lower one. Since I rarely have prints over ~100 ml I’ve never found where this kicks in. However, I would be inclined to be proactive in refilling the tray as it will minimise the risk of the print cooling and leaving witness marks on the print from when the print has stopped.
I believe there have been changes to the firmware in the last couple of update that have addressed the long searches for resin.
You can start a print, even if the tank is not full. The printer with throw an error after roughly 30 minutes when the cartridge is empty and you can click continue to do the print. However, the printing speed is significantly slower(as the printer waits a long time between every layer so that if the tray is almost empty, the resin gets time to settle again). Some 2hr prints van turn into 8hr prints.
There is just one capacitive sensor, which can measure over fill and under fill of the tank.