Small part lost in Form 3 tank

[hartrob]

When my print finished today I noticed one small part was missing, the supports were still intact and attached to the platform. I don’t how far it got before it came off but I guess there’s an small lump of resin either floating around in the tank or stuck to the film. I fished around in the tank for a while but found nothing. Would should I do now?

[rybu]

What I do in these cases is filter the resin.

I take the build platform, resin cartridge and resin tank out of the printer. I put the resin cartridge on a table with the top cap off, and use a chemistry stand to hold the resin tank above the cartridge. I put a funnel + 100 micron filter in the top opening of the resin cartridge and let the resin drain out of the resin tank, into the filter.

That catches all the small parts. Often there is a little bit of additional small cured bits of resin.

If you don’t have the 100-micron filters, they are available for cheap on sites like Amazon. I recommend filtering whenever you have a print failure of any kind, as it will help keep the future consequences of failures to a minimum. Having cured resin in your tank can lead to early tank failure.

Here is the formlabs guide:

https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Resin-Filtration?language=en_US

[hartrob]

Thanks for your suggestions @rybu, it sounds like a messy job I’m not looking forward to this one

[rybu]

Once you have something like a chemistry stand to hold the resin tank up, it’s a much more pleasant process.

I used to do it by hand, and I’d invariably make little mistakes. Letting the tank drain for a few hours on its own is far more pleasant.

Another plus of this process is it lets you inspect the bottom of the resin tank, to check on its health. Any discoloration is a sign of a small leak.

If you are concerned you’ve got any resin on the bottom of the resin tank, a good thing to do just before you reinstall the tank is to wet a PECPAD down in some IPA and give the bottom of the resin tank a wipe. You want to avoid having any contamination on the bottom of the resin tank before you put it back into use.