Prime Remotely?

I am away from my printer and thought I’d do a remote print. However, I did not prime it before leaving. Is it possible to prime remotely?

Nope, not as far as I know.

1 Like

Nope, sadly.

1 Like

Thanks folks. That’s what I figured. Unless I’m missing something then, I gather Priming is just a safety measure to ensure you don’t print with the printer in an improper state (no tray, a print already on the platform, etc.).

Basically, yes.

Formlabs philosophy has generally been that a human should always do a visual check of the printer before it begins to print (e.g. to make sure there’s not something obstructing the path of the build platform, or other obvious issues that could damage the printer or impair safety of those around it). When the Form 1 came out, that’s one of the things the iconic button achieved. You had to be at printer itself to start a print.

With the Form 3, they relaxed things a little. The idea is you do the visual checks up front then close the cover. As long as nobody opens the cover in the interim (which IIRC undoes the priming) you can initiate the print remotely and they have a reasonable level of confidence in its preparedness. The printer has additional sensors and internal checks which contributed to them having the confidence to provide the feature (e.g. senses presence of build platform, runs the mixer along the surface of the platform to check for unremoved models, etc).

1 Like

More to the point, you should close the breather valve on the resin cartridge when you’re not printing. That’s the only thing standing between a leaky bite valve and a machine flooded with resin. If they let you prime remotely, people wouldn’t close that valve. And then they’d have a potential warranty issue if a cartridge leaks. So if you follow the recommended procedure, there’s no way to remotely prime because you have to be in front of the printer to open the cap.

My printer is in my basement workshop. My CAD system is in my office upstairs. When I’m going to print something, I go downstairs and open the breather and prime the printer. Then I go back to my office, finish messing around with supports or whatever, and then fire off the print.

1 Like