I’ve been currently playing the back n fourth email game, with multiple “rotating” support reps for the past few weeks trying to get my “bulge” issue figured out on two of my three chambers.
I tossed a lot of the bulge parts so of course now they want me to show plenty of pics from all angles of this bulge “as they never heard of this before”… been trying to get them to just look at this forum thread and see that you already been down this road but…it’s obvious no support reps utilize or partake on this forum.
Most of my complaints with this system has been the “weeks” it takes to try and “prove and convince” Formlabs that there is in fact an issue…while being passed to multiple different support reps week to week and having to start over with the explaining…
unfortunately, we also had this negative characteristic with the support team. several people at the other end of the line, multiple changes so that several tickets were created.
i strongly suspect that after formlabs has responded to tickets, they are ticked off as “answered”, even if the support team actually wants to get back to us.
that’s why we always replied to the last message on our last ticket, so it was always a regular question and answer game.
otherwise, there were two occasions when we received a “we’ll get back to you with more information” message and the ticket was automatically closed after approx. 2 weeks because we didn’t send another message.
i would blame this on a questionable ticket system, not on the performance of the support itself.
for us, the source of this bulge was clearly due to the print bed. any maintenance was not the cause, as we have tested various things here. the error looked exactly the same in both of our build chambers, and occurred at the same height in both chambers. you would strongly suspect another cause of the error here, Z-spindle perhaps or something on the printer, as it looked exactly the same in two build chambers, but this was not the case.
so that we could still use the building chambers, we constructed our own stl, which kept the corresponding height of the building chambers free. we pushed it all the way down in preform, locked the position and packed all the other components around it as normal. finally, we removed this special stl, as it did not have to be printed. so we could continue to use the building chambers until the maintenance, just with a free gap in the region where the defect formed. for us, this was always between layers 250-270.
Yea that did not work this time… I responded to that last support email from the actual “on-site” yearly maintenance that was done. While I did get reference to that support rep, I have since had 2-3 different support reps responding to each back and forth email. It’s like every email you send or respond, a different rep will answer back every single time.
Interesting on the layers it is happening as it is the same for me.
My “Guess” on what is going on…is that this looks to be happening around the same layer level as that black metal ring inside the chamber. And this metal strap is not perfectly flat to the chamber wall all the way around.
I was wandering if this new feature they recently added, where after every layer the bed does a down and up movement…if this had something to do with it and catching the edge or bulging out at that black metal strap area in the chamber.
Because just eyeballing it, the bulge appears to be happening for both of us on multiple chambers at that level?
So did swapping the beds finally fix those chambers or are you still using this STL?
The fact that the print bed moves down and up once after each layer is not a new feature. As far as I know, the printer has always done this.
It would be interesting to know why exactly there is this movement instead of a simple downward movement according to the layer height. But I think there will be reasons for this. In our experience with several devices, Formlabs always tries to optimize them as much as possible.
Replacing the print beds has solved the problem for us in both build chambers. We have now been printing with both build chambers for almost four months without any problems.
I referenced your issue and they are now telling me what you had was “layer shifting”… however I’ve had layer shifts before and this doesn’t look like that. More of a “bulge”.
On another note @LEADNAV. Have you noticed an increase in buildup of Laruolactam the last months?
I´ve seen a huge difference in build up of laurolactam, well basically since the beginning of 2024. But only on the Fuse 1. Not the Fuse 1+ wich is kind of strange. I know the chambereffect in the Fuse 1+ is miles improved from the Fuse 1 since the filters rarely dirty on the Fuse 1+ as to compared to the Fuse 1 wich is completely thick with dirt.
The buildup of L should be even higher as the result of “the more power on the laser = more release of laurolactam”
Anyways, it made me think that they have changed the formula of the powder.
Also the parts are harder to tear apart in the sift. We always run 50% refreshrate and from time to time empty out the sift as it would overflow and to get the recycled powder out as it dies after some time.
If i would use only new powder the parts come apart extremly easy, but now they are harder and harder to tear apart, even tho im trying to keep a constant of 50% refreshrate.
I´ve asked support but they say they haven´t changed anything.
The amount should be proportional to how old-used the powder is. If it is new, there is a lot of it on the filter, if it is very burnt with old, there is almost none on the filter.
I have not honestly been running the system 24/7…with all the issues and the cost of powder being extremely high for production parts… so I cannot truly tell. However, I do notice a alot of Laruolactam build up on my filters for the little I use it and I was just thinking the other day that they should be replaced.
I imagine if you run this system 24/7 you would be replacing filters at least once a month or maybe even more.
I run Nylon 12 GF at 70% refresh…because you have too… otherwise your failure rate would be too high and the parts would be brittle.
I am on the fence about switching to Nylon 12… all these issues seem to be outside of the core Nylon 12. Formlab reps themselves have been pretty open about the issues with Nylon 12 GF and ALL the updates for improvement and speed increases, if you noticed, are only for Nylon 12.
I need the extra heat resistance and rigitity of the GF for our application…but at the moment it is not very sustainable for production running parts.
Formlabs should be honest and say…they are a “one” material printer with Nylon 12 for possible production parts. Because, all their “production materials” (Nylon 12 GF and CF) do not print dependable enough and/or are not cost efficient enough to ever be a “production level material”.
Everything outside of Nylon 12 is just a cool material that you “could” occasionally print with…in my opinion.
The one fix Formlabs could do… is try to lower powder prices greatly. This would make it possible for production parts and eliminate all the support needs. If a print fails or if I had to troubleshoot… we would not be out over $700 each chamber to dial things in on our own. I wouldn’t be hitting up Support and I would be more prone to “tinkering” on my own.
Unlike an FDM or Resin printer that you can stop the print if you see things going bad… here you are tossing hundreds of dollars in the trash per failure with additional post processing labor on top of that, to discover some of these issues.
It seems like they are trying to be a HP ink printer company but instead of charging way cheap for the printer…and getting you on the “ink” costs… they are trying to have it both ways.
do you have maintenance instructions for doing this? I’d be VERY interested in having those as I’m not paying for the service contracts since FormLabs made it clear that it was up to us customers to troubleshoot and resolve any of our issues.
Interested in the details of your battery backup, we are currently looking into one to hopefully mitigate any power blips that we have lost prints to previously. Would love to have a backup runtime of 15-20 minutes if possible.
However… I would not suggest ordering this from B&H as this thing is HEAVY (think like 3 car batterie’s heavy…
The first one showed up in just a destroyed cardboard box with no protection so half torn open and the unit was completed destroyed as well. Had to deal with a return on something that is over 100 pounds dead weight and had to re package it.
Second one showed up ok but I would highly suggest finding one from somebody who actually deals with these.