Suddenly, catastrophic print failures and new rumble-grinding sound at the end of the peal. It also looks like the cycle reversed, with the laser shooting when the platform is too far away. This begins each time at the 45th layer, independent of whether I start the platform down .1 lower, or make a thicker raft, etc.
It definitely was a sudden new noise and completely different failure mode. The nearly-new tray being used when that first happened was removed and emptied, and has a crack line from the back acrylic forward a little over an inch that wasn’t noticed until emptied.
New tray, mirror checked and lightly cleaned, same noise. When doing the test print at 100u, the sound starts around 30 layers into the print, so it seems to be related to build distance from the start.
Stepper motors make noise. And they get hotter the longer they’re in operation. And many electrical and mechanical issues can be dependent on temperature. If I were a betting man, Id bet you need a new tank tilt stepper motor… which takes about 30 minutes to swap out.
Thank you for your help. Do I get the stepper from Form?
I was going to go through the galvo mirror cleaning, so the case will be apart (carefully).
Funny that the noise starts at 45 ±? layers pretty consistently, but I also think that the times where there was no or very very thin raft are maybe from the tank not moving all the way up even at the beginning??
I tried lowering .1 in fine-tune and it helped once. Before all this, I thought it was the optical path and took the relatively new tank out, put a new tank and new Grey 02 in, then drained the earlier tank and found a crack. My 1st crack in 10 tanks (I probably change them too often, but get worried if I am away from the printer for awhile). I am planning on making a light-tight hood to put over the printer. Can’t figure out the crack. No change in Z settings since I bought it, and made many nice prints.