Toggle to ignore resin low warnings

Please, Formlabs, give this one some love. If you could prompt about empty cartridges earlier in the process (e.g. immediately after pressing the button to start the print) that would be helpful. Since there’s no sensor involved for that one, presumably you should already know at that point the cartridge is running low. No need to wait until 5 minutes later once I’ve already walked away.

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@Frew any news on that front since February ?

As pointed in this thread and by @rkagerer there are “simple” actions that could be taken and would still help the situation.

Grey V3 and Grey V4 are comparable so can be mixed. This is the Formlabs announcement: Upcoming Resin Re-formulations

Please Formlabs give us a work around for this. What PITA, to be at work miles from the home workshop to see a print error on the dashboard. I would love use the dashboard to say, “Ignore this error”; I don’t have time to drive home to restart this machine, button. Is there a way to fill the tank in a manual mode? I quite often could build my entire print on what is in a full resin tray.

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I am starting to be pretty @&## about the low-level resin warnings. I know there is enough resin for tiny print. I started to print, it asked me Warning! I confirm I am fine with that. 2 hours later it still trying dissolve resin from the tank. After 3 hours finally reasked me again, I confirm for the second time and went home from work. And surprise in morning there is again a warning message and no single level printed! PLEASE if I answer once, start the print !!!

Will this ever be rethought by Formlabs?

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@Formlabs any news regarding this issue ?

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Totally agree with your frustration on this. This happens to me way too often. I’ll start a print before heading to my day job, and after my commute into the office I see the warning on the dash board. My option is to head home at lunch or wait until the end of the day. At least give me the option to confirm and continue remotely. That would solve my problems. If the part failed well that would be on me wouldn’t it? I could live with that.

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@Formlabs … any thoughts? I lost a print job that was just 1 hour from being done because the cartridge ran of of resin and would not continue even through there was plenty of resin in the tray to finish the job. Very annoying to lose an entire print job for no reason. Why is there no way to completely override the low resin so that we answer it once and then it completes the job?

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I have the same frustration. At the price of Formlabs resin I want to use it until the last job. My prints are small and I can get a lot done with that last tray. I thought I was doing something wrong and that’s why it keeps asking me if I want to continue (with what feels like infinity between these warnings) but now I see it happens to others also.

The easiest way of preventing these warning is to replace the empty cartridge by a full one.

Sometimes one wants to finish an old batch of resin before using a new one, or will simply not use the resin since the version changed and there’s no retro-compatibility. Maybe you’re also in a hurry and can’t wait to the new resin cartridge to arrive, so you’re printing with what’s left on the tank.

Also replacing the old cartridge with a new one still leaves quite a bit of resin in the cartridge, which will take a long time to manually pour into the tank if you want to save it.

There’s a slew of situations where the multiple warnings are completely unnecessary, and there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for Formlabs to keep things the way they are.

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Do not see that as an option. At how difficult it is to transfer the resin left in a tank to the tray or a new tank … much would rather be able to print as much as possible from an existing tank that I know has enough resin left than deal with having a swap with a lot of extra resin left.

I don’t understand this. The warning says. in effect, that there is no resin left in the cartridge. Swapping the empty cartridge for a full one don’t affect the resin in the tank.

Yes, sure, everyone can think of reasons why someone would want to use up that last bit of resin in the tank. But if you are printing more or less continuously, as I am, then you want the most effective workflow you can manage. Recognising that the resin low warning means that the cartridge is empty and always having a full one on hand is part of that workflow. Farting about waiting for the printer to decide whether it is going to use up the last drop of resin in the tank is not and is best avoided.

There are more than enough frustrations using a Form2 in a production setting without inventing new ones.

That’s just it. Its not empty. It’s not a “cartridge empty” warning its a “cartridge almost empty, may not be able to finish the print” one… and it’s being thrown at us while launching a 20ml print when there’s still at least 5% left in the cartridge and 230ml in the tank.
So, there’s still quite a bit of resin left, and it’s throwing the warning every time you start a new print and sometimes in the middle of it, which interrupts the workflow unless you replace the still not empty cartridge with a full one.

This is just about giving us the option to say “yes, I know my cartridge is almost empty, please don’t bother me with that while I’m using this cartridge” (or at least during this print). It’s obviously am oversight on Formlab’s side regarding the workflow around small prints and almost empty cartridges, not need to get vulgar about it :wink: if it doesn’t bother you there are quite bit of other discussions going on.

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Wrong. The Form2 is nowhere near that sophisticated. This warning is triggered by a single sensor which checks the level of the resin in the tank. There is no sensor to give the amount of resin in either the tank or the cartridge. So the logic of the warning is; “This cartridge cannot fill this tank in the designated time, therefore the cartridge is effectively empty.”

While the warning can be overridden at the moment, I suspect that Formlabs are reluctant to install a toggle because they believe that the cost of supporting people who repeatedly use the toggle to try and print from a dry tank will outweigh the usefulness of its provision.

If anyone is worried about the resin left in the empty cartridges then the is nothing to stop them printing a gismo that allows one cartridge to be drained into another, though I suspect that only people who have significant resin usage will be ale to recover useful amounts.

PS. 20ml resin left in the tank represents 2% of a full tank not 5%

It’s not, see below

That’s absolutely right. The printer logs for how long the valve has been open and gestimates the level of resin in the cartridge with that information. This is what allows it to throw a warning when it estimates that the leftover resin in the cartridge is reaching a very low level., and this information is indeed useful one but not every time you start a print or even sometimes mid-print.

The act of pouring the leftover resin from one cartridge into the next is only making things worse : you’ll get the warning just as soon (because as you said the printer doesn’t have a capacitive sensor so it doesn’t know you added some resin) but there will be even more resin left into the cartridge and after a few cartridge you’d be adding deciliters of resin from the old cartridge to the new.

There is no smart solution to this because the cartridge level detection is an open-loop system rather than a closed-loop one like with the tank. The easy way out of this is to simply allow us to override the warning “until I change the cartridge” thus allowing us to continue to print with the few ml. left in the cartridge and the ml already in the tank, This is what is being proposed and has been discussed in this thread, I do not understand why this is such an issue for us to ask for this simple fix, it will not change your experience at all.

PS. 20ml resin left in the tank represents 2% of a full tank not 5%

Damnnnn I guess this makes all of what I just said just as wrong.

I am done with this discussion, I think Formlabs is informed of the request and it’s no use further arguing with other users.

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But please add me to the crowd wanting a low/empty resin sense bypass.

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Me, too, pretty please. I had a mid-print 8-hour-long pause just this night, which resulted in a line throughout the printed part showing me the exact position of pausing.

This is bad for printing, not in any way or shape helpful. Please add a feature to ignore low-resin warnings right away.

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Hey @Formlabs, we’ve had 38 replies to this topic, and 1.6k views, yet no comments from the makers of the machine. This topic is a glaring sore point with your users. What are your plans to help us?

Patiently waiting Formlabs reply,

Peter

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