Printer stopped printing

Support & Troubleshooting Form 3/3+
1

Hello,
Our Formlabs Form 3 printer stopped printing a part before finishing. This has happened twice
The images shows two parts. The one on the left was the first print, not completed. The image on the right the part has completed further further but stopped before full completion. I’ve included a screen shot of what the part should look like. I’ve not seen this before so can anyone explain why this is happening?
Thanks!

IMG_1818
IMG_18181920×1003 89.9 KB

P02011
P02011854×912 42.4 KB

2

Hi @Miguelmnst,

Thanks for getting in touch! This is certainly unusual behavior. Was the printer screen frozen after these prints partially completed, or did the screen just indicate that the printer was ready to start another job? In either case, I would encourage you to get in touch with our Support Team for them to check your printer’s diagnostic logs and take a closer look here.

3

Hi Jesse,

I got a bit more information from my colleague about the prints. He did another test print from a file

already in the printer’s memory and it printed fully. No issues there. So it seems it may not be the printer but

maybe a corrupted gcode, or possibly a corrupted STL file, which may have created a corrupted point

within the gcode.

As for the printer’s screen, he did get an error message, but it read ‘unknown error’.

My colleague is creating a new part, in SolidWorks, and will 3D print this. I’ll let you know the result.

My guess is that the STL file that created the failed print may have been corrupted, but not detected when imported

into PreForm. When exported to a gcode the fault was within the file, causing the printer to stop. Though, it’s

intermittent, meaning the failure point is not at the same place for each part printed. Two attempts were done

with the same failed result, but at different points.

Miguel

ST Restricted

4

Hi @Miguelmnst,

Thank you for the additional context. I agree that testing with a different or modified version of the original file would be a good idea to rule out file-specific issues. As well, connecting the printer to your computer directly via USB will lower the odds that any sort of file corruption is happening in transit between the devices.