More resin tank self-destruction

After the cracks, the haze, the peeling, I present you : the warping inferno.

Is this a retaliation from the time of the colonies when Europe sent over all the crooks and scoundrels ?
Now, Formlabs sends to Europe all their lame consumables ?
Or am I just on a streak of bad luck ?

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They didn’t just send them to Europe… I have about 6 orange trays and they have either cracked after a couple long prints or the pdms started to come off.
However, I ordered the LT green tank and they are very well made and I have printed over 300 hours on it. It is still working well. I bought a back up and tested that one and it is as good as the first green one. My suggestion is to order a couple green LT tanks

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While I have also had a good experience with LT tanks, they still have atrocious lead-times. These days it’s about 2 months in the EU shop (12/2018). Sometimes you have an unschedueled need for a new tank and the only ones available are the standard ones.

Tankgate

Is it time already for a tank with replaceable FEP layer? :wink:

What you’re showing in the video is something I’m experiencing for the past 2 years, so it’s not new. One tank survived only one print(with original resin).

I’d rather see a new machine with an oxygen inhibiting layer in the tray so that the resin didn’t stick and so there was no peep cycle.

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Something we all dream of. :slight_smile:

It’s not that easy however, if you cure a large cross section, you still need to pull up the platform and wait for resin to distribute. See the carbon printers with such layers. They become slower at large cross sections.

That being said, if we could add such a layer to the form 2, you probably gain accuracy and detail due to the low(non existent ideally) peel forces.

The technology is around, so it would probably just be a question licencing the right material.

The new 3D Systems Figure 4 uses this system, though the build area is smaller than a Form 2. Talking to the 3D Systems rep at TCT it was clear that the build times were expected to be much shorter than the Form 2 to the point that it would not be practical to run the machine overnight without a fully automatic system for dealing with the built models.

Well, of course it is faster than a form 2. My hobby wanhao D7 plus is faster too(and more accurate). The problem is the laser, it’s slow. Small cross section parts are relatively fast on a form 2. Bigger parts increase printing time a lot.

The figure 4 uses DLP, so it doesn’t matter how big the part is. Combine that with a no-stick layer and you can retract way quicker than the form 2. There lies the problem as well: DLP machines usually have a smaller platform to get decent detail.

Licensing and costs. These no-stick spin extruded materials are way more expensive.

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