Good morning all. I have owned my Form1+ for about 8 months, and have had a lot of success with it. Just last week I started to notice that the resolution on my prints are horrible. The vertical walls are extremely rough. It appears on all of my prints, and in all areas of the build platform. It is a brand new bottle of resin, and the resin tank has 1L through it, but there is minimal clouding. I use this machine for small business production, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
The print in the attached photo has been run over 30 times, and has always appeared very smooth. Again, this started suddenly last week (about 5 days ago), is it possible my latest bottle of resin is bad?
I have not opened a ticket yet, hoping someone else has figured this out.
Most likely cause of sudden deterioration and failure is dust.
Try cleaning your mirrors!
There are 4: the large one below the tank, a 45° internal mirror just in front of the galvos, and the two galvos.
Formlab insists on your getting instructions for cleaning the galvos directly from them to preserve your warrantee. But you can start by cleaning the large mirror.
It takes a while to get the residue from the recommended IPA fully cleared. Some folks report better results from acetone, available in any paint store.
Thank you Rob. I took a short break after posting to allow my frustration to lower a bit, then disassembled my 1+. The main mirror looked good, as I keep an eye on that one often. The small one buried in the back near the galvos was bad. I cleaned it with the IPA and the PED PRO pads. I did not touch the galvos, but they appeared clean. I am testing now and will report out. I didn’t think dust would of deteriorated the print quality so quickly, so I over looked it.
Curious to hear how the latest test turned out. If you continue to have any trouble, please get in touch. It’s most helpful if you can share the .form files and photos of the latest result.
Thank you Stephen, the printer is back to its original quality. While I was monitoring the large mirror, and regularly cleaning it, I neglected the rear mirror. Once that was cleaned, the prints instantly improved. I will try to post a picture later.
