New Improved Resin Tank?

General Discussion
41

What else is in your office that might emit chemical vapors? What about in the building where the office is, or nearby?

I work in the electronics industry and I’ve had problems in the past with equipment installed in industrial areas where, for instance, there are steel mill processing plants (or fertilizer plants) within a few miles. The air wafting past the offices where these systems were installed was higher in sulfur content and combined with a humid environment the components in my systems started to corrode very quickly.

Not saying this explains your issue, just a possibility to consider and eliminate.

42

We are in the center of the city, inside a house. No industry close by.

Next to the Form 2 printer, there is a Zortrax printer. I don’t think that should be the reason, as the second tank stayed on the shelf and the shelf is not in the same room.

I received a reply from the support. They replaced the tanks and now I am waiting for instructions from the engineers.

43

OK. So that leaves defective tanks or defective resin as the possible explanations. Be sure to post an update when it’s figured out!

44

Hello everybody- I’ve been away from the Forum for a while and am just seeing this now. Good conversation! I wanted to clarify a couple of the questions and points above.

First, I have not abandoned tank modifications, producing resin tanks, or sales of any of my other products. What I did do was put sales of the Z-Vat 2 (my tank compatible with the Form 2) and the Z-Vat 2 modification service on hold for the last couple months to work out a technical issue. I’m happy to share that I have recently got everything worked out 100% and am currently in production on a new batch. I’m waiting for some material to arrive in the mail for production and once it does it will only be a couple days before the new tanks will begin shipping. I’m looking at 2-3 weeks from now for the first orders to ship.

I just opened up pre-sales of both the Z-Vat 2 and modification service now that the timeline is clear, so feel free to visit my site and place an order if you’d like. And as I said, all other products such as Z-Vat 1’s, Yellow Magic, and Form 1 dust covers (the Z-Slip) have always been in steady production and are in stock.

RetXpres- I’m sorry for any miscommunication on my part or on my website that would have led you to believe I stopped manufacturing altogether. I’m glad it’s not the case!

fantasy2Regular- you say

Zachary_Brackin was asking for a more durable tray, which can be properly cleaned and used over and over again, resisting IPA so cleaning can be done thoroughly.

As far as I know, the ZVat still wears, you can’t replace scratched glass(which is harder than PMMA of course) and you can certainly not clean it with IPA.

This is not quite correct. Both the Z-Vat 1 and 2 resin trays are made of polycarbonate and glass, both of which can safely be cleaned with alcohol. There is no acrylic or the trays.

As for scratching, of course it’s possible for glass to be scratched, but the glass is recessed in the tank so with normal use scratching should be a non-issue .I have not encountered customers report this problem yet, but If there is an accident and a tray is dropped or otherwise marred then you could always contact me and I should be able to replace the glass for you.

I hope that clears things up.
Cheers!

Zak
Z-Vat Industries

8 Likes
45

Hi! The tanks were replaced by Formlabs.

It seems the best solution is to keep the tanks for Dental empty.

This was the answer from Formlabs:
“For tank storage with no resin, I’d suggest scraping out as much resin as possible using the spatula, and then storing the tank on its side, in total darkness. This means that the resin droplets will be resting on the side rather than the PDMS layer, so that even if they harden, they can be safely removed before use.”

1 Like
46

Just curious: did the issue you anything to do with the slight issue I experienced with it?

47

Higher walls would be nice. It’s a little disconcerting to see the resin slosh up the sides during a wipe operation.

2 Likes
48

Yeah, that bothered me a bit too, at first. I’ve convinced myself that they’ve calibrated the wiper speed for their resins so that it doesn’t slosh over. A 3rd party resin would be no better than a crap shoot. This is almost certainly one of the reasons FL doesn’t let the wiper run in Open mode.

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49

Scares me every time :sweat_smile:

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50

Every time I go to the ZVat website they are SOLD OUT of everything!

51

I had the same with 5 tray !!!

52

We just Bite the bullet and stay with FormLabs Resin and Resin tanks. I do not want to look for trouble…

53

Z-Vat is very much still in business in case you didn’t see his earlier post. Just wanted to point that out as I just ordered from him and communicated via email today. I for one am a little sick of the price gouging Formlabs is doing. Was about to buy a new tray, but $17 shipping is absurd for a less than 1 lb item. Have to finish a print that keeps failing and don’t want to wait until I have a bunch of items to order. They really need to change their shipping methods. I don’t even live that far from them.

54

We offer Resin Tank LT with lifetime up to 20x longer than standard tanks. https://formlabs.com/blog/introducing-resin-tank-lt/

55

I don’t suppose you plan to release a version of this tank for the Form 1/1+ printer?

56

You are correct, currently we have no plans to make LT tank for Form 1.