I have come to terms with Formlabs no longer being the company of choice to own a resin printer from. I own a Form 2 in which it is now out of warranty. I purchased a new LT tank and a single liter of Grey V4 resin with it. I have used it flawlessly for about 0.4L of the resin until I upgraded the firmware and thats when all the issues started to occur. Did various tests from cleaning the optics, filtering the resin, etc. We’ve finally reached down to the laser being not enough power (or so they say) and I came across another thread in which others experienced the same issue of upgrading and no longer being able to print. My distributor says I can claim an RMA but because its out of warranty it would be $1800CAD to replace which is essentially $1200-1400 off from getting a brand new one. Now the reason I am so disappointed with this is because the machine has printed less than a liter of resin and now its laser is apparently optically degraded… With the amount of money spent on the machine, the LT Tray, and over half of liter of wasted resin I can no longer justify owning this machine as I don’t trust that the next machine if i RMA’d would last too long as well. I especially don’t feel comfortable paying over half of what I originally payed to replace a single part on the machine. If my local distributor determines that the laser is faulty I will no longer be using the machine as the cost I’ve spent on it and the time its been used has been a total disaster and loss. I can no longer support a company that I don’t have full faith in the machinery. Yes it has done good prints however when it comes down to running into an issue I can’t justify the cost to fix it anymore. Has anyone experienced this after their upgrade recently?
Hey @jeffreyso1224,
I truly sorry that it came into this problem. Myself experienced issue with the optical but fortunately it was just a cleaning process.
My suggestion is to try contact the support once again, or even try to get higher as they can see how many prints was performed during the machine lifetime period. I will insistent on it that it is something related to the update or to faulty part that came with the machine. I’ve printed over 16 litter with various resins and only had the clean-up issue lately, have the machine for like 1,5 years.
If after all your tries it came to that you need to spend the money to repair and you decide its not worth it, I would try to sell parts of the machine. I saw here in “Print service & Sales” forum that people are looking for parts sometimes. Sell it piece by piece and you will get close to the machine value if not higher. Keep in mind that the repair value is higher so you can demand a nice amount per piece but don’t go over-rated.
Keep me posted.
I have also been having problems with form 2, if you dont think that Formlabs is the “company of choice to own a resin printer from”, which company would be?
If you’ve only printed 0.4L it probably wasn’t worth buying your own printer if that’s all you’ve printed with it in the time that the warranty has expired
Hey there @jeffreyso1224,
I’m sincerely sorry to hear about your frustrating issues with your Form 2 and getting it working again. That’s absolutely not the experience we want any of our customers to have with our products or support.
I just want to let you know that while your distributor may have quoted you 1800$ to get your printer fixed, the Out of Warranty repair charge through us directly $830CAD+shipping. If you’d like to pursue this course, feel free to contact our support team here and they’d be happy to assist you with that, and any other issues you might have. Also, keep in mind you get an additional 3-month warranty on a replaced unit, so if any problems do arise, we’ll be there with whatever you need.
All that being said, I want to say I completely understand your feelings, but I didn’t want you to not be aware of all the options available to you.
If there are any additional questions you have please do not hesitate to let me know directly.
This is a little scary… Are there other users out there that have had this problem? I have not.
It’s not as prevalent with Form 2 users, but a lot of Form 1/1+ users including myself had the issue. Just search for laser replacement and you’ll find a bunch of posts.
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