Prints failing before getting to supports after a previous print ran out of resin

[Sumit_Sarkar]

Hiya

after a very good run of perfect prints, I’m now getting a series of fails, where just the base is printing and thereafter just a blob on the resin tray. The last (going to be) successful print was one that needed a top up half way through. I came to check on it and it was dangerously low on resin (it was full when I started the print) … I kinda presumed it would stop automatically and didn’t know then I could just manually pause the print and top it up. not sure why the pause came so much later. Anyway I got distracted and it continued to try and print with some areas with no resin. as soon as I realised I paused it and topped it up and let it continue printing, and it was fine on the areas where there was still resin.

anyway since then all I’m getting is the base being printed and the rest sticking to the resin tray.

I’ve tried thickening the base, and lowering the platform height in fine tuning, but curiously the lower I put it the thinner the base that’s printing/ earlier the fail.

erm my brain hurts, any ideas what to do?

or did the printing on the (relatively new) resin tray with no resin left in some areas mess it up? (it looks fine )
thanks for help in a advance

[Frew]

There can be a number of different causes for this. The easiest ones to rule out are tank clouding and resin contamination. Typically, a tank will last 2-3L of resin before needing to be replaced.

I’ve gotten in touch with our support team and one of our members will be in touch over email to help troubleshoot. Here’s to hoping we’re able to get you up and running again quickly!

[Sumit_Sarkar]

thanks for your reply Frew. it’s been mixed bag! I had a perfect print before the above two

then the above two happened. I then used a new tray and new black resin and got a nearly perfect print…

I then went back to the white parts I needed printing, used a brand new tank and new resin and unfortunately back to the issue

strange as the errors are inconsistent…

[Frew]

We’d prefer to do a little better than ‘nearly perfect prints’ Thanks for doing a bit of troubleshooting and trying with different tanks and materials. It looks like there might be something obscuring your laser which can cause failures like this. Oftentimes, this is from dust on an optical surface which will obscure the laser in a specific location. Our support team will be best suited to help out and oftentimes if it is dust on an optical surface, we have procedures we can have you do to correct it.

[Randy_Cohen]

I suspect the running-out-of-resin issue was just coincidental and not an actual contributing cause. Looks like a Form1. The symptom of “it was printing great and then it wasn’t” is a common enough complaint (I made it when it happened to my Form1+). So if I were to bet, I would bet this gets fixed with a mirror-cleaning.

[Sumit_Sarkar]

yes mirror indeed. with guidance from the formulas support team, I cleaned the mirror and the test print came put perfectly! ran off one of mine,and it all printed. sought roughness in some areas but a long way from where it was. more fine tuning…