Silicon clouds map in Preform

Feature Requests & Ideas
1

I heard that the idea of tracking the areas which were most often stricken by the laser was in the air.
This morning, I cleaned my resin tank and it got me thinking…
Why not place a camera and a LED flash under the tank arranged in such a way that the cloudy areas would be easy to see and then map that image on the construction base in the Preform software ?

Of course, I’d prefer Formlabs to find a better alternative to the optical silicon, but in the mean time, this could help extend the longevity / practical usage of a resin tank…

By the way, this is the resulting wear of less than 500ml of printed resin :

Cloudy day.jpg2000×1125 372 KB

1 Like
2

Not for nothing, but that is a splendid shot in terms of showing the clouding phenomenon.

3

I noticed that there was indeed a “calculated” cloud map in the dashboard :

Form 2 Cloud Mapping-Dashboard.jpg558×541 25.5 KB

It’s a shame that it can not be applied as a mapping on the build surface in Preform where it would be most useful.
Or can it ?

Cheers,

4

This was requested as a feature a long time ago but I think someone from Formlabs said it would be too much work, at least, at that time.

Maybe we’ll have it as a feature in the future.

5

Too much work to apply a mapping on a surface ?
They already did the hard part, which is creating the map.
It’s kind of cool to see on the dashboard, but that’s not where it is most useful.

6

I believe ultimately the question of cloud vs local (dashboard vs preform) is what the debate boiled down to. The heatmaps currently live in your dashboard (AWS iirc) and preform is obviously a local app on your computer.

My suggestion was to have a login within Preform and it could pull the maps from your dashboard. That would probably be the most optimal solution, however not a simple few lines of code.

They could also offer the option of saving a heatmap from your dashboard, presumably in a PNG format, then importing into Preform.

Those are the options as I currently see them. But what if Formlabs was planning on phasing out a local installed application? What if Preform for the Form 3 (or 2+) is currently being developed as a browser based cloud app. That would make any extra work in the current Preform, and our current arguments, moot.

EDIT: @Olivier_Suire I agree with you however that seeing your heatmap projected onto the platform in Preform would be very usefull…and cool :slight_smile: