To me it would just make sense to let us add your own settings and to make your own library of resins and settings ?
Unfortunately, even with openmode being present, form 2 is not an open printer. It just lets you experiment with third party resins having very limited functionality. The biggest limit being IMHO that you can use only material presets for its own library of resins, even in open mode, so no tweaking for new/different resins. Third party resins have to be formulated for this printer in the first place to let you “experiment.”. If trying other resins that are not “formlabs compatible” is an absolute need for you, probably you should look into a form1+ where open mode is really open.
To give a better answer to your question, It looks like the company has switched away from the open model of the past printers with no plans to release OpenFL for the Form2 in the future.
this dose not make me happy… tut tut tut formlabs
Enabling the heater and wiper in Open Mode increases the risk of print failure and can present risks for the user. It’s difficult to account for all of the 3rd party materials available and differences in parameters like material viscosity can lead to print failures. We develop each of our materials to remain safe at temperatures above 30C but for some 3rd party materials, heating can lead to off-gassing of harmful compounds.
@shake128 OpenFL is being considered for the Form 2 and we’ll continue working on solutions to improve compatibility with a wide range of materials.
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in my case i am using form lab resins I just dont always want to get a low resin error when i know i can finish the job with whats in the tray so the risk of 3rd party materials is not really my problem. but i am glad to hear you are working on it.
you can definitely use what is left in the tray by just waiting (about 30 minutes) for the printer trying to fill. then it tells you that its failing to fill, and it prompts you with an option to continue printing. This doesn’t disable wiper and heater. so you should be good to go (minus the 30 minutes wait). Once you printed the first time after cartridge depletion, you still have to wait those 30 minutes every time you start a new print, until the tray is unusably empty. I very much wish that after let’s say 5 attempts at squeezing the valve with no level change in the sensor, the printer just gave up already and prompted you, instead of dumbly squeezing an empty cartridge for 30 minutes before acknowledging that its actually empty indeed and going back to being usable.
I had this situation before where I wanted to start a large print (300+ml) on Friday and I knew there was enough resin in the tray and the cartridge to finish and for the print to be ready the next Monday.
However, the cartridge was empty before the part was done and the printer stopped, waiting for my override regarding the level of resin and here I was on Monday with an unfinished print, several hours left to go and a line in the middle of my finished part.
In that case it would have been nice to be able to just override the resin level in advance, or simply go in open mode… except that without the heater and wiper there was no guarantee that the part would have printed successfully.
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couldn’t agree more.
Most senseful feature ever, missing.
I have been in that situation many times and it is incredibly frustrating.
I’ve encountered this as well and I’ve forwarded your suggestion to our software team so that we can look into this. The implementation of this might get a bit tricky. We try to err away from features that increase the risk of print failures for users.
Another possible integration might be to be less conservative with the cartridge empty error such that the print only pauses when both the cartridge is empty and the resin level in the tank is critically low.
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I’d like to have the option of enabling the wiper in Open Mode. Since last fall, I’ve had a resin sensor error, and use Open Mode to bypass it (I’m still using Formlabs resin). I’d still like to have the rest of the printer’s functionality available to me while bypassing the sensor.
This is their “legal” response to the question. The reality is that they want you to buy their resin. Just like paper printers, the big money in this industry is in the resin. There’s no legitimate reason for them to not allow you to choose a temperature or enable/disable the wiper on the printer other than that they saw no point in spending a week or two programming a feature that would add more appeal in spending less money. It’s just business.
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