Tough 2000 resin

My resin cartrige just arrived and the printer needs a new tray for it. I can’t reprogram a V2 tray to use. Is it normal? Why?
If I gave a new tray, can I use for other resins as well?

@Nowlab it depends on what resin you used in the tank beforehand. A tank cannot be reprogrammed between regular resins and the more chemically aggressive resins (Tough 2000, Elastic, Rigid, and Grey Pro), though you can reprogram tanks within those two families to other resins within those families. The reason for this is that those resins wear out the tanks at very different rates (see https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Maintaining-the-Resin-Tank-Form3?language=en_US#lifetime for tank lifetimes), so switching between them would mess up the calculated lifetime recommendations.

Hey @gtl thanks for providing that very useful info! You guys might want to consider including it in your documentation somewhere, if it’s not already.

It’s kind of annoying you can’t switch from an “aggressive” resin to a “normal” one, and just let the software stick with the worst case prediction.

@rkagerer you know, that’s a good point. We figured it would be the most clear to keep it as simple as possible and just not allow switching tanks between those two families all together, so we didn’t have to deal with changing a tank’s lifetime. Thinking about it more, in the case you mention your tank would just be keeping it’s original lifetime numbers, so wouldn’t be too confusing (whereas in the opposite scenario you could reprogram your tank only to find out it is already far past the lifetime of the aggressive resin you are programming it to, which would suck).

I’ll check in with our firmware team, although unfortunately I think this change may not be possible (the little eeprom chips on a tank may not have enough memory to keep track of their reprogramming history, they may only be able to know what resin they are currently).

@gtl Thanks for considering the tweak.

Here’s an even simpler idea… display a warning when trying to change between families, but allow the user to override. I for one would be OK accounting for the accrued wear on my own when I make that choice. That would also cover edge cases like where a tank only had an aggressive resin in it for 1 day and you want to switch back to a normal resin.

It would only require, at most, a 1-bit flag in the tank eeprom. It would be set when I perform an override like this, and would allow Formlabs to disavow warranty claims on the tank or whatnot as a result of an advanced user straying off the beaten path.

The experience would parallel how you allow users to override tank lifetime warnings but (presumably) hold them more accountable if they suffer a spill as a result.

@rkagerer that’s a good idea for how to solve it. I’ll add that note to the ticket for our firmware team.

It’s June 2022. This is still an issue. I tried to switch from Gray V4 to Tough 2000 with 1 tank. I have used up all my Gray V4. I am now dead in the water and can’t print a thing until a new tank arrives. Formlabs - Please resolve this issue to allow users at least a way to bypass for a period of time or indefinitely.

Hello @hiwayman ,

Thank you for reaching out and for your feedback regarding the Tank Reprogramming process. Although many of our resins can indeed be switched over to on a used tank, there are some restrictions that apply due to the chemical composition of our Biocompatible and Engineering resins. This article will tell you both the process by which you can reprogram a tank, as well as what restrictions may apply. Although I cannot guarantee that this will ever be an option with Engineering resins (in the case of Biocompatibility, I believe that this will never be possible), I will be sure to pass your feedback along to the appropriate channels.