Toggle to ignore resin low warnings

Additionally, the number of dispense retries appears to be fixed (or at least it was, i haven’t updated the firmware in a while now), whereas different resins at different ambient temperatures have very different viscosities.

So, in order to accomodate very viscous resins, at edge-case temperatures, it always does an extremely high number of retries before giving up, which can sometimes take almost up to an hour (or at least it did).

Optimizing this on a per-resin-type basis (and ambient temp basis, assuming ambient temp can be guesstimated - no idea if there’s a sensor somewhere on board) would probably help a great deal.

After all, you can always prompt the user to retry dispensing.

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Couldn’t agree more, the way it works now is a tragic design flaw.

Thanks @DKirch for the long and detailed answer! Using up the resin is really an issue for many of us, as regardless of the way you try, there’ll always be issues:
-If you just use the resin cartridge till the last drop is dispensed, you have to baby-sit the printer, much print time is lost with resin dispensing tries, and you could end up with an ugly line through the print if the resin does run out overnight.
-If you put the remaining resin into the tank manually, you’ll very easily overfill your tank and then have to deal with the messy business of getting the resin out again
-If you put the remaining resin into another cartridge, the metering will be off, making print times vastly longer, and much worse, you run the very real risk of getting the “cartridge worn” error and being stuck with a locked-out cartridge still containing resin.

Why can’t those bite valves be attached to the cartridge properly? Just a ring on the bite valve, and a groove on the cartridge (or the other way round) would change quite a lot, I think…

Try draining the last of the cartridge and put the resin into a separate container. Only add the resin in this container to the tray when you know the resin in the tray is low, eg after filtering the resin or before you use a new cartridge, but only fill the tray to the line (LT trays have better markings than the orange ones)

…and make the tanks deep enough to catch an entire cartridges-worth of resin, so if the bite valve fails, or falls out, the machine can still safely contain the extra resin. The potential for resin floods are by far the worse thing about these machines. I can easily top up a cartridge with extra resin to make sure a build will complete without interruptions. Trouble is, if I do that, all the resin quantity systems on the machine are completely upset.

Or put a weight sensor on the cartridge floor, so the machine can KNOW EXACTLY how much resin is in the cartridge, rather then three levels of second-guessing… This is how our StrataSys machines work, and we then take out 3.6kg cartridges when they are down to less than 40gms of resin. EVERY SINGLE TIME…

Ditto mostly. My printer is downstairs in the garage. I had a stroke in 2010 (left side) so navigating stairs is awkward. I get it done, but it’s a PITA,so I’d like to keep the trips to a minimum. I have determined that my resin math is better than my Form 2, so when I know there is enough resin remaining to finish the print, it would be nice if I could force a ‘resume’ from my computer.

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Can confirm this is still an issue.

Cartridge is empty, which i know.
There’s enough resin in the tank for the print, which i know.

The way i know is because i emptied it out into a jar, per new support recommendation not to keep resin in the tank for longer than… month? two weeks? week? Who knows what the number is these days - apparently, the regular resin tanks are now made of paper, and cannot stay in contact with the resin for longer than an hour or so, or the PDMS falls apart, and no, that’s not a QA issue, that’s perfectly normal, yup.

So, since i emptied out the resin into a jar, i’m perfectly aware of how much resin there is in the vat when i pour it back in. I’m also perfectly aware there’s nothing in the cartridge.

But i’m, nevertheless, forced to:

  • wait for something like 15 minutes while the printer keeps trying and trying and trying to dispense resin from an empty cartridge
  • wait for the first warning (might not be enough resin in the cartridge, yes, i know, thanks), miss it because i can’t babysit the printer in the other room non-stop, lose 10 more minutes at least
  • wait for the print to start for some more minutes
  • starts printing, but a few layers in, prompts again (cannot dispense resin from cartridge, yes thank you, yes, continue), which i miss again, and lose more time

So, the print i was supposed to finish before going to bed, will now finish some time during the night instead, for absolutely no good reason.

The current low resin / cartridge empty error system needs some serious reworking.

And as if the almost 1 hour delay isn’t enough, it is now doing a ”sensing resin” pause after each damned layer extending the print time needlessly by a further two hours, and degrading the print quality.

It’s almost as if you’ve designed the whole process so we have actively fight the printer to use up the last 150-200 ml of resin from a cartridge, isn’t it?

This is hopeless.

A 6 hour print has turned into a 9 hour one.
I’m cancelling it, dumping the leftover resin, and calling it a night.

Sounds like a lot of self-made problems there…

What firmware are you using? the latest ones have cut down the wait time for the error messages to a couple of minutes.

Setting up notification on your phone means that you don’t have to be at the printer waiting for the error messages.

Is there a particular reason why you need to take the print out of the machine as soon as it finishes? Finished prints can be left over night ,or even over a weekend, without any problems.

The latest one.

No.

No. Text messages arrive late or don’t arrive at all 90% of the time. It’s been like that for years.

Yes. Printing the next print, as they all need to be finished in a weekend.

I see you’ve conveniently decided to ignore the resin-check every layer as an actual issue.

But please, do continue implying all the issues are my own, that’s not condescending at all.

“Couple of minutes”

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Sounds like if a lot of people are complaining about having issues with the machine, there’s probably grounds for complaint.

Your usage of the machine seems to allow you to ignore the Form 2’s shortcomings, that’s all good. I guess a lot of people are in the same situation. However this is a pretty small community, with few active members, and having so many people put their word in and agree on the same issues should definitely raise some flags :wink:

Formlabs also has acknowledged the issue :

I’m only wondering… you have been very active on this topic, mostly trying to dismiss the issue. What’s your agenda ?

@Ante_Vukorepa : your last post is interesting. @DKirch wrote that this had been adressed but there’s obviously still some issues :

30min is a LOT especially on a short print, of if you don’t know when the warning will come… i certainly can’t stay behind the printer for 30min. I still think this is not enough though, we should be able to say to the printer in advance to ignore the resin level in the cartridge, either because we know the print will work or because we topped it off with a new cartridge (which is not something that is practical to do today due to the current workflow).

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Agreed, ideally, there should be some kind of a “ignore all resin level errors / disable resin sensing” mode. Almost like open mode, but with heating and wiper still on if possible. In fact, i’ve started considering using open mode when i get to the last 100-150ml of resin…

Has anyone tried that?

Edit: note also it’s not just 30 minutes, it’s 30 minutes for the first error, then another 30 for the second one. So hour wasted in total, minimum, not counting the response time to get to the printer and do something about it.

And then, on top of that, you get a huge increase in print time from all the overzealous resin sensing.

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I can confirm this is still happening. This was supposed to be a 9 hours Job…

I can attest to F2’s near-sentient attempts to thwart the wringing of every last drop of resin from a cartridge. But other than a personal sense of thriftiness or other victory, what positives do you get from doing it? Maybe this is a “choose your battle” situation.

F2 tells you when the resin is low before the bad behavior sets in. You KNOW you’ll have to buy more resin sooner or later, so simply why not sooner rather than later? I get if you don’t want to pay the extortionate prices until absolutely necessary, but when is that? After you pull your hair out fighting the uphill battle of forcing the F2 to act clearly contrary to its capitalist programming? And then you STILL have to buy new resin, at the same high price, but now with an extra helping of resentment and lost time/hair added on.

Trust me, just buy the damn resin when you know you’ll need it. That’s the system, they call the shots, you can’t game it, you can’t rig it. Buying Formlabs resin always hurts. Don’t Sisyphus yourself into making it hurt even more. As objectionable a system as it is, we all agreed to it when we clicked “Buy Printer”.

That’s not the issue. Even if I have some resin in stock, I still want to finish the cartridge.

If I have 50ml left in the cartridge and I’m in the process of fine-tuning the design of a 5ml parts, printing one or two at a time,… then design loops can be twice as long because of this behaviour. In this case, the printer will warn me despite the fact that I have more resin in the cartridge than the volume of the print, because at such a low resin level the warning appears anyway.

It would also be that I have a VAT or resin that I want to empty, and either don’t use this resin or this version. To do that without using Open Mode, I’ll have to put in an empty cartridge of the same type and thus you’ll get the warning every time for the next 100 to 150ml of print (given there’s 200-250ml in a full tank and we can’t use all of it). For this situation alone we should have the option requested in this thread.

Yes resin management is an issue for some, for various reason, but solving that alone doesn’t solve the actual problem. Also Formlabs can’t really say “to solve your issue but more resin”…

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Well, all I can offer is for you to objectively estimate what percent of Form2 users share your needs, which will help determine what priority FL should place on addressing them. I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of users are content, or at least resigned, to using the F2 the way FL says to.

This type of problem could appear only if even one unimportant issue is missed.

Wow. 2.5 years later and it’s still not fixed. My printer mis-estimated the amount of resin left in the cartridge, so now I have the exact same issue.

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