Models need more support Issue

There have been an update of the PreForm and the Form 3 firmware that seems to have significantly improved the print time (or at least the estimated print time is much quicker), but now PreForm warns me that there is a Printability error: “Models need more support”.

I have been printing dental models for the last year without any supports and everything was working really well. I am worried to see that now I need to add supports, because this will significantly increase the manual processing time.

You can see on the attached screenshot what error message I receive on the current version of PreForm. If I open it with an older version, no error is seen and the print is successful.

Is it possible to print reliably dental models vertically, without adding supports, as we could do in the previous versions of PreForm?

Hello @ivelinakoycheva ,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention; I will start by saying that I personally never print Dental arches so I have reached out to my Dental Support team to get their opinion on this matter. I will reach out shortly as soon as I hear back, but would also advise reaching directly out to our Support team whenever you have a question that impacts your daily use of the printer (just to get you a faster response). I will reach out shortly!

Thank you very much!
My support period is over, so I thought here would be a better place to ask this question. However, we are now considering to buy a second printer because our printing volume is increasing significantly. I like my Form 3 printer, but this would be a serious problem if more manual labor will be now required to print the dental arches with the Formlabs printers.

Hi @ivelinakoycheva ,

Although your warranty period may be up, we will always provide troubleshooting for free; the only difference is that if a part or the printer need to be replaced, there would be a service fee due to the expired warranty.

With that being said, since these parts have printed in the past, they are likely to continue to work despite the newer version of PreForm highlighting those areas in red. One of my Dental Experts said that they have received some reports from users experiencing the same issue on the new version of PreForm; you should still be able to run the prints at this orientation.

If you would prefer to reorient (either if the upright orientation fails or if you would prefer to try a “safer” orientation), then we would recommend to try to tilt them at a slight angle and overlap the rafts; alternatively, you could try to manually add some supports to the gum-line or areas that are not the tooth surface. I hope this helps!

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