I’ve been experiencing problems with printing in durable. The trays wear out more quick (even had 1 that already had holes with the first print). Secondly the shape of the support base is formed like a sort of suction cup. This tends to stick to the tray much more easily with durable. I’ve hadn’t had much problems with printing in tough or in clear printing the same files.
Does anyone have the same problems? I’ve tried to communicate with Formlabs but they keep on referring that my prints a not suitable to print at all. Not discussing the fafct that i’ve been printing like this for quite some time now.
while the print (in preform) does not look printable, I’ll trust it was indeed printed in other containers.
The only thing I can offer is that I had a new tray recently that I used for Tough v3. After 3 prints, all under 75mL in volume, the tray started clouding. Immediately had issues with a print delaminating and surface finish. Swapped trays and it worked fine. Is your tray looking good? If not, try a new one.
On another note, that is a HUGE amount of base material, which has multiple passes of the laser while it creates it. That will also wear out your resin tank much more quickly. The peel will stress every aspect of the silicone layer. Hope this helps a bit.
Hello areffelt,
Yes the print layout was already use numerous times (also a few times in durable). But in durable it gives problems almost always.
The base plate is shaped with a thinner inside and a sort of rim on the outside. This creates a suction cup, something formlabs addresses as a no go.
I’ve had a tray go from new to non usable (holes and tearing) with 1 print like this recently. Only comment form formlabs ‘your print isn’t printable’. But it is! I’ve done so multiple times. But I now read you’ve had this also. Maybe this is a production fault?
I’m now testing with an own created base. Perhaps this helps.
There are in my opinion way too many parts on the build plate and that will cause a bunch of issues. First, it will print a compressed/extra cured raft over the entire build plate. This is hard on the PDMS layer on it’s own. Second, the parts are oriented and nested so tightly that there are no suppoers at the tops. These top sections can flex during the peel cycle and drag across the surface causing cuts/scratches.
I would build a lot less parts per print and orient the tubes to allow some support on the tops. Think of the red areas as zones that can move around during the peel cycle causing all kinds of problems.
Ok just to be clear. I’ve have printed many many time with the same type of layout or even more in clear and though. This problem only occurred with the use of durable. As you can read the problem is that the build platform ‘sticks’ to the tray and that the tray gets damaged much to fast. Again only with durable!
Why do you think this is a production error/fault?
You can’t print this with flexible resin as well. Is that a problem of the resin? No.
I fully agree with formlabs’s statement, this cannot be printed correctly 100% of the time.
The orientation of the parts is sub optimal and the type of material will introduce different behavior of the parts and supports while printing.
I have had problems when I started using flex and high temp resin while printing exactly the same parts. They just require a different setup compared to other resins(high temp resin for example needs a LOT of supports and will wear down your tank within one liter and sometimes after one large print).
Durable is much more flexible than standard resin so you need to use much more supports in order to keep the parts in shape. S-shapes like this most likely behave like a stiff spring, having some hysteresis while being pulled off the PDMS.
The other tray’s used did print most of the time ok. But there where specific tray’s that would wear out in 1-2 prints. instead of the ‘normal’ 6-8 prints (sometimes even more).
About completely agreeing with formlabs ‘this cannot be printed correctly 100% of the times’.
I’m not saying I expect this. Since the formlabs (although quite reliable) never with any material or set up prints 100% fault free. They do not claim to be. So I’m wandering why you would say something like this.
The part where you claim I need to put in more supports is not true. I’m also having successful prints with durable in this set up. With the first update when durable came as an option the succes rate was much better.
The different materials have different print characteristics. They need different supports and often have different print limitations.
You’ve gone from the standard (fairly stiff) resins to a little more flexible resin (tough) to an even more flexible resin (durable). If it fails with durable you either need to orient the parts properly or go back to what works. It’s that simple.
If that’s the case then it should be linked to new firmware updates, material updates or something else.
You say that they state that it cannot be printed at all. I nuanced it a bit. They try to be on the safe side, hence they advise to use 0.6mm supports while I usually only need 0.3mm. Their statement is probably based on the red areas highlighted in the software. In the tutorials there is a warning that red areas might not print correctly. So based on that, I agree with them, you have too many red areas and I would’ve placed more supports. Did you get the same red areas before the update?
If printing fails and the software shows you where, you’ll need more supports. Things might or might not print correctly when things are borderline. I’ve seen many similar problems with other resins. It just means that a slight variation in any variable may cause problems.
If you don’t want to change orientation and add supports and still think that it is caused by a software update, then you need to clearly link the issues to an update(did they change settings for example?). It could very well be that they updated print settings to increase accuracy or mechanical properties, which could impact support placement.
