After a year, with both the Fuse 1 and Fuse 1+ running Nylon 12 GF here was our final conclusion posted last week.
https://forum.formlabs.com/t/fuse-1-down-shes-dead-updated/35428/11
70+ refresh rates required for Nylon 12 GF and as you experienced plan to replace a lot of heat bulbs and optical cassettes regularly. Keep the bulbs clean and scrub them regularly with the recommended cleaner n pads same as you would the optical cassette.
Also, once you get it running consistently DON’T EVER UPDATE FIRMWARE unless absolutely needed. As you can find in another of our threads, this all started when a firmware release killed our original Fuse 1 by “overcooking it” when they finally made the offset chamber temp setting “work”.
Right now we are running the BETA they developed for us and put in the new PreForm for Nylon 12 GF. All seems to be working at a 70% refresh with that beta.
We also only run half chambers to be easier on the heater bulbs and optical cassette and the chamber itself and to cut down on our loses when a chamber does fail.
Big take away is that Formlabs seems to be trying to be competitive in their refresh rate advertisements…which are no where near possible or at least consistent in production running parts. Try 70% refresh rates but no idea outside of Nylon 12 GF.
Also after all this we have no desire to try Carbon Fiber or try to use Nitrogen as we have heard that adds another variable in consistency and issues from folks who are attempting it.
Like you said Support has been great sending us free powder and replacement parts but this company needs to start fixing the issues. Like you said it’s our “time” in trying to run this system we have lost the most on and the majority of our discoveries in making this system work has been from constant hounding on this forum to finally get someone at Formlabs to acknowledge the issue and offer a beta to fix it. Not to mention the hundred emails back and fourth to different reps to “prove/convince” there was in fact an issue with their system. It got old hearing back that “plenty of people are running this system for production in Nylon 12 GF successfully”…but them never telling us who these people were and/or hearing from a single person running Nylon 12 GF in the real world while finally hearing from dozens of folks instead having similar issues.
For over a year I’m confident that no one at Formlabs actually did consistent testing with their own systems and materials. They say that changed though shortly after the release of the Fuse 1+ with a new testing facility/operation so we will see… but they need a team running machines 24/7 with each material type to discover all these issues on their own as we have now heard from dozens of folks reaching out to us privately about similar experiences.
I will end with…this system and capability is GREAT. The parts we do produce are absolutely amazing. The machine and the Sift are all well thought out so congrats to the team who designed it.
However, I’m assuming Formlabs is having trouble scaling and putting it all together…with consistent testing and updates. In my experiences in things like this, I assume they have a hardware team doing great at the design, a software team and a material team…but they are lacking in the team of operators putting that all together and consistently running all three together to discover these issues. Instead I feel that “we the consumers” are mainly filling that role and not getting paid to do so other in free material and parts when they fail.
Regardless the cost of materials would have to come down greatly to make up for the falsely advertised refresh rates and the now anticipated failures to make this a mainstream production capability otherwise price per part is way too high. This unfortunately won’t be enough to bring that down and the cost of material could stay the same, if the production running of this machine is made more stable as the bigger lose is in the cost of labor to discover these failed prints/jobs and to reset the machine for the next attempt.
This system is almost there….n hoping they can eventually get it together.