Well I have not tried to print since the last weekend of complete failure, which was also my first time using it. I was convinced there was cured resin in the center of the tank. I made the executive decision to discard the resin in the tank. Hey - it’s only money! Formlabs will sell me more! It was likely a good decision as it seemed there was other cured lumps in the resin as I was dumping it out.
Luckily the piece in the bottom of the tank came off really easily, giving me a quick 2nd thoughts about dumping the tank. Too late now!
Maybe someone can give me some ideas on searching for and removing cured materiel that is not stuck in the tank without damaging it, or worse, just dumping it all out.
I just have to get used to wearing the gloves at all times. For good or probably for bad I use model paints all he time and use auto lacquer thinner to clean up - without gloves.
I am now relegated to weekends only for this now that I got a new job. UGH! Getting qualified on this machine is going to take a while now! Just getting a few good parts made would be me a world of good.
Whenever I have a print stuck to the bottom I filter through a 125 micron paint filter. Have had far fewer failures since doing this. The filters are also useful for filters the crap out of the IPA tanks and refreshing those.
I just put a regular strainer in a funnel and pour it back in the bottle thru that,
but if there is just a clump of failed part stuck on the bottom of the tray I scrape that out with the resin still in it.
Posted this link elsewhere, but this seems appropriate too:
I printed this in ABS and it’s good for (slowly, be patient) running along the PDMS to find and dislodge shrapnel. It tends to do a nice job of extracting the shrapnel as well.
I’d strongly suggest not printing ANYTHING you’re going to be putting in contact with acrylate resins out of ABS. The resin dissolves (worst case) or degrades (best case) ABS.
If you’re going to be printing any resin-handling accessories, print them out of PLA.
No idea, never tried using PET on anything that came in contact with the resin.
My “hunch” tells me it should hold up fine, though (no idea about the actual chemistry, but from experience, PET is more similar to PLA as far as sensitivity to solvents is concerned).