I’m wonder what’s going on here. I’m using the Formlabs Color V1 resin and I put in a full new cartridge and printed two small objects which according to the dashboard used up 54mL and 36mL. But now it says “Resin Used 535mL”.
Why does the printer (or the dashboard) think that my cartridge is more than half empty now, when in reality I have barely started to use it?
Is there a way to fix this?
Both printer and PreForm are the newest versions.
Is this the first time you have used this resin? Because if it is then ~450ml will have been used to fill the tank.
Thanks for providing a number. I read somewhere else that filling the tank would be 200ml, but if it is indeed 450ml then the resin amounts would sum up to match 
I think 450ml would overflow it! In my experience it’s around 240-260ml to fill the Form 2 tank. I always fill the tank with around 230g of resin before placing it in the machine. The printer has to do a bit of topping up but it’s minimal and it saves quite a lot of filling time, particularly in the winter.
Hi @fxtentacle!
I’m so sorry that you ran into this issue! As @billb mentioned, the printer will have to fill the tank the first time you use the resin. On the Form 2, this uses approximately 260ml of resin. Although I realize that this leaves ≅185ml of resin unaccounted for, this may demonstrate where some of the discrepancies may have arisen.
That being said, resin metrics are something that we’re always looking to improve and that we will continue to work on. If you feel that the estimates are wildly inaccurate or unusable, I would recommend reaching out to our support team. They’ll be happy to investigate your specific issue further!
Thanks @Jackson for providing an official tank fill number. And yes, there is still a lot of resin unaccounted for. It almost seems as if the printer will deduct a generic amount of mL for every print start, no matter how small the part.
My cartridge “4c-0000001f8475” is now down to 36% = 369 mL according to the dashboard. The prints I’ve done are listed with:
Adding 260 mL for initially filling up the tank, that sums up to = 407 mL. The dashboard says 631 mL have been used, which leaves 224 mL of resin unaccounted for.
Two prints ago, it was 535 mL used, meaning then 185 mL of resin were unaccounted for. In other words, when I used 57 mL of additional resin for printing, the discrepancy grew by 39 mL.
It seems the printer is counting roughly 160% for “Resin Used” when I compare it with the PreForm “Material Used” values.
Thanks for this information, @fxtentacle! I’ve passed it along to our team. We’re always looking to improve both PreForm and printer firmware, so any feedback you can provide is greatly appreciated!
I printed another two small objects with
and now it claims I’m down to 227 mL left. But summing up 260 mL for filling the tank plus my prints I get 455 mL of resin used, meaning there’s now 318 mL unaccounted for.
So I printed two objects using 48 mL of resin but the printer’s “Resin Used” went up by a whopping 142 mL. That’s 295% 
BTW in case someone else is wondering how to get a better number: It appears that when I open the resin tank in the dashboard, it’ll show me the sum of mL values for all prints done using that tank, so that’s how much my objects should have used if there was no loss at all (and excluding the initial tank filling).
Ugh. Now cartridge 4c-0000001f8475 says “Resin Used 1.0 L” while tank 2d-000023bf5c4a says “Resin Used 248 mL”. But since I’ve only ever used both of them together, the numbers should be identical…
Oh wow. By now, it shows “Resin Used: 2.1L”. It’s still the same old 1L cartridge, though, and if I shake it, it also sounds like it’s still reasonably filled. Looking at the tank instead, it shows that I only used 580mL so far, which seems realistic to me.
If you are the only one having these problems then there is something wrong with your machine or something you are doing.
I suggest:
1/ You read this page https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Form-2-Error-Messages?language=en_US
2/ Your resin is well out of date.
3/ Colour resin has a high filler content which will settle. This means that the cartridge needs to be shaken well before each print. The longer the cartridge has stood unused, the more difficult it is to get the resin properly mixed.
4/ Ditch this cartridge and buy a new one, your problems will likely go away. But check that the new cartridge is less than a year old before you start using it.
The bug saga continues.
I started with a fresh new resin cartridge and then did a little experiment: I started a print and then cancelled it during the heat-up phase. Obviously, no resin was used, because the print never started. Still, both of my tests were fully counted for resin usage:
@billb For this test I used a freshly produced otherwise pristine Color resin cartridge. That said, the old resin was working well and I didn’t see any unexpected errors on the printer and the prints came out well after I ignored both warnings. And yes, I did check your link (1) before. All of my problems can be reduced to the fact that the printer thinks the cartridge was empty when in reality it wasn’t. So I’m pretty sure it’s a software error.
Sorry, but you have a hardware error, otherwise, everyone who uses the same software would be reporting similar errors.
Did you just stop the prints or abort them?
Is perhaps the motor that presses the bite valve open broken?
During heat up the tank will be filled. If the printer doesn’t sense any resin is added it will keep trying to dispense and it will count for the time the valve is pressed open. When the motor is broken, no or little resin will be added so it will keep trying.
The error is that none of the Form series* printers meter the resin filling the tank, so the volume displayed on the Dashboard is the volume calculated by Preform. This means that the figure on the Dashboard does not take into account the resin adhering to the models after printing, resin used by failed prints and the resin discarded when it is filtered. The total listed for cartridges can also be distorted by continuing to print after the cartridge is empty.
I´ve the same problem with Form 2 and color cartridges. After few prints, there is a message, that cardrige is running low, although cartridge still is filled about 50%. This problem is with several color cardriges. Dashbord reports 2,1 l and 2,3 l printed with the cardriges. I use original resin only. Maximum should be about 0,9 l.
Hi Jens,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention - that is peculiar. I would flag this via a a support case with the team, specifically mentioning that this is with the Form 2 for further investigation. They will be able to reach out to the teams for additional insight as necessary to see what is going on there.
Hi Phil, thank you for suggestion. Support told me that there is a known divergence of volume calculation printing small parts. The size of the printed parts is 2-3 ml. However they are not able to fix this issue. Quality of the prints was ok. Are there perhaps other users here who have a similar problem with the Form 2 or Form3 ?
Hi Jens,
Thank you for the update - I checked with the team myself as well and from my understanding and what I was told, this is an issue under investigation and the team is working on a solution - no updates on this so far.
