I have transferred resin from a mostly full cartridge to an almost empty cartridge such that each cartridge contains roughly the same amount of resin. This was done so as to print a large number of parts on two printers in a shorter amount of time; however, the printer with the previously “almost empty” cartridge is displaying a “Cartridge Low” message even though it is approximately 40% full.
Will the printer stop printing part way through because it thinks it needs more resin, or will it continue dispensing until there is no more resin? How can I get my printer to correctly measure the amount of resin in the cartridge?
We generally don’t recommend re-filling cartridges. The bite-valve that dispenses resin wears over time and re-filling cartridges can cause the bite valve to eventually fail. This can cause resin to overflow which is a bit of a mess to clean up. Bite valves will reliably hold up for 1L of resin but shouldn’t be used much beyond that.
If the cartridge was refilled with the same type of resin, it should dispense normally. If re-filled with a different type of resin, it’s very risky to have auto-fill enabled as different material properties can cause overflows.
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, it was a bit of an emergency situation to deliver a large 3D Hubs order on time. This is the first and only refill, so it’ll be tossed after this.
The printer doesn’t have a sensor to be able to detect how much resin is left in the cartridge, it just checks the ID of the cartridge. It keeps track of how much volume you print using the cartridge to see how much should be left.
While printing it will pause for a moment from time to time and wait to check the resin level in the tray, if it needs more resin then it dispenses more and then checks the level again to make sure that resin was added. If it detects that it’s not filling anymore resin then it’ll pause printing and pop up a message but you can tell it to continue.