My Form3 just print the supports

Hello everyone. Yesterday, I launched my first big printing with our new Form3. Unfortunatly this morning, after 21 hours of printing, I found on the build plateform a beautiful forest of supports but no model on it. I’m really dispapointed to have spent so much time and resin for this result and I don’t why my print didn’t work. The model was detected as printable by Preform and I launched it with complete trust in the software. If any of you have an idea I would be happy to receive useful advice. Thank you in advance for your help.

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I answer to my own question but I wonder if I stopped printing by mistake. I assumed that Form3 prints with horizontally layers but maybe not. Does anyone have enough experience to tell me if Form3 prints layer by layers or it can use a different method ? For exemple in my case, I think the printer could have printed all the supports first and then printed the model. What do you think of that ?

The printer prints layer by layer.

Increase your contact point size. We’ve had similar failures on our form 3.

Thank you very much for your answer fantasy2. I was afraid that it might be the reason for the failed printing… we learn from our mistakes.
I’ll try with the “one clic print” function. I hope the result will be better.

what contact point size did you use? For larger parts with the Form3 I use the default 0.5mm size touchpoints. FWIW the one click print function does not work that great for the form3 yet. it looks like you have a tons of supports and a good orientation angle .

The other thing I would recommend before you print any more parts is to clean the tank.There are likely large pieces of cured resin floating around in there which will cause the mixer arm to dislodge and ruin your next print. The technique for cleaning is very different form the Form3 than the form2. there is a special tool they supply so you can retrieve parts without damaging the bottom of the tank.I have done it already and it is very easy you just have to be careful that you dont damage the tank.

https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Maintaining-the-Resin-Tank-Form3?language=en_US

Thank you for your answer Darbyvet. I used 0,35 mm point and some 0,7 on the flat zones. I hope the one click print fonction will work because I’m trying it right now. You’re right about the tank cleaning; when I tried a new printing after the first I forget to clean the tank and the mixer have been stopped by a large piece of cured resin floating just between the surface. I truned off, remove the cured resin and loaded a new printing. Now i cross my fingers. :roll_eyes:

Is there any way we could see a screenshot of what the full part should look like? That might be helpful. :slight_smile:

Hi DKirch. You’re right. I’ve attached an overview of the project.