Just to make you aware we have had printing issues with the new printer!
After taking delivery of our new form1+ printer 2 weeks ago all was well, we had printed models out ok and was using black resin due to the reports that it was the most successful to use for holding fine detail.
After a week we started to experience errors in the prints and parts starting to fail, thinking this was simply our inexperience we re orientated the model and tried again sometimes with success sometimes not.
Today we tried 2 parts that can the all clear for no errors and found that slithers were for no reason attaching themselves to the model causing failures again. We replaced the tray with a new one and used new material, again failures.
I then checked the mirrors in-case of dust and to my horror found a laser burn mark on the main mirror
I have contacted support to see why this is and keep you inform of the reasons why this may have happened on a new 1+ machine
I’m sorry you’ve been having difficulty printing recently. Rest assured though, it is unlikely that the marks you are seeing are burn marks. It’s more likely that dust or other particles have collected on the mirror.
You will likely need to do a little mirror cleaning. Please be sure to contact Customer Support. They’ll help make sure you have the proper instructions. We recommend using PEC-PADs for optical cleaning. It may be helpful to have some on hand when you talk to Customer Support. You can get them online through Amazon and other photo retailers pretty easily.
While Customer Support is getting back to you, if you haven’t seen it already, take a look at our article on Checking the MIrror to get a better look at the condition of your mirror.
I will clean the mirror using a optical lens wipe and report back with the findings, also I have replaced the material to ensure that this material being used is not to heavy with pigment and causing the prints to fail? i.e. resin very thick
I had the same problems and did the exact thing they are recommending and now my printer works perfectly. It’s amazing what a little bit of dust can do to the system.
Mirror cleaned however the prints still fail in places and have slithers attached to them or unwanted this layers of resin
I have been advised to strip the printer and clean the galvo mirrors, a little uneasy in doing this to a 2 week old machine but i understand you had the same problem at the same time period?
Also not sure how this will effect my warranty on a brand new machine?
As long as you contact support first your warranty will be intact because they will tell you exactly how to clean the mirrors. I would guess the warranty would be void if you decided to open the machine on your own and clean them.
I know they have had a lot of problems with their contract manufacturer and having dealt with quite a few myself I can say that they tend to not be as detail oriented as the people who design these machines. The dust probably stems from the contract manufacturing facility and is in there when the machine ships and has no bearing on the quality of the parts. Hopefully Formlabs can get with their supply chain and fix the issue if they haven’t already.
Well I think we have sold our problem after a lot of resin and new tanks being used, it was a faulty batch of black resin.
The resin had blobs of thick material deposited within the bottle and after purchasing a new bottle of black the prints started to work ok. Both bottles we brand new but arrived at different times and were not exposed to sunlight while we were using them.