Why are LT tanks required?

General Discussion
1

Are the new LT tanks ACTUALLY necessary for some of these resins? Neither I nor my colleagues are satisfied with them and have had nothing but issues and damage due to them. We have tried Clear, Gray, White, Flex, Rigid and 1 or 2 others across 5 machines and the LT tank was disappointing every time. What would it hurt to use a material spec’d as requiring LT in a standard tank?

2

Hey there @fuchss!

I’m so sorry to hear you’ve heard about some bad experiences with our LT Tanks. That’s definitely not the behavior we want to see and they shouldn’t hesitate to get in touch with us at the link below so our support team can investigate.

https://support.formlabs.com/s/contact-support?language=en_US

All that being, if a material says it requires a LT Tank, it absolutely requires an LT Tank. In these cases, the resin was formulated from the beginning with the increased durability of the LT Tanks in mind. Using a standard tank with these materials is likely to cause print failures or worse, damage to the tank or printer.

3

Hi Dkirch,
Is it a good idea to use the opposite, i mean LT tank with standard materials?

Thank you

4

Hey Andrea!

That’s a terrific question. It’s not inherently better or worse to use a LT Tank with standard materials, but you should see the benefits of a much longer lasting tank if you decide to use one for that purpose. :slight_smile:

5

We use LT tank to print Tough parts in batches. Have been printing the same file for months (among other prints), no wear or loss of quality, and the finished part is identical to the standard tank prints. I have not reached a higher number of cartridges (probably closer to 5 than 10l) as the parts are quite low volume.

We also have been printing more than 5 liters of Grey Pro on another LT tank, huge 650ml, 170mm prints, and a lot of smaller ones… so far, not loss in quality or visible change on the tank’s surface.

6

Would it be possible to share more details regarding the issues you are having ? I’ll be honest and say I probably won’t be able to help and you should sort this out for Formlabs as Dan proposed, but it’s always great for other users to be aware of the failure modes of these tanks (be it due to user error or manufacturing issue, or else), and we don’t have much info yet (which is a good sign !).