Hello,
we have a Form 4 printer which worked absolutely amazing so far. One of the parts we produce with the printer are these straight cylindrical supports (picture attached). It’s a very easy part, no complex geometry, Black resin V5. We printed this exact job a dozen of times without any issue. Now, every time we run it, after about 50-80% of print height, the part starts to deteriorate in the XY direction. The part just continues to be printed in a tilted direction at this point. Please see the pictures attached.
All of the 24 parts on the platform have the exact same deterioration, so there seems to be a general offset somehow. For some reason it only occurs with this job, other jobs run totally fine.
The resin tank we use is not the freshest anymore, with >100000 layers printed. Can this issue be related to the old tank? I’m just surprised that other jobs run without issue. If the tank had gone bad, wouldn’t all jobs have this issue?
Any input would be highly appreciated, thanks!
Best regards,
Lukas
If you print one part does this happen? You said other jobs run fine, are they the same height or higher? Maybe try one know good part (of similar height) with the one that is causing the issue to see if it happens to both?
When I only print a single of these, it seems to be fine.
Other jobs ran fine at first, but now it also happens with those, for example this one:
We printed dozens of these jobs over the last months without issue.
Here are the printed parts. Right part was printed 2 weeks ago and is totally straight and accurate. Left part printed yesterday, you see how strong it is bent/dented.
Thanks for sharing these details, @echolot,
We’re sorry you’re having these issues. It is likely attributed to the resin tank, as the lifetime is about 75,000 (more info here: (Resign Tank Lifetime Monitoring), but our team is looking into it and will get back to you as soon as we have more answers.
thanks,
Diana
I guess I found the issue. It seems that the mechanism to lock the build platform is not working properly. Even in the locked position you can pull out the platform. This probably leads to the platform shifting during printing.
The mechanism looks a bit crooked in general:
Anyone know how to solve this?
Hi @echolot
this is Jakob of the customer service team in the EMEA region.
Good catch on the locking mechanism of your Form 4 build platform.
This would have been the next point for the investigation amd yes, this is very likely where the offset is coming from.
The whole dovetail assembly can be replaced and doing this should solve the issue.
I’m opening a case through our support system so I can document this and for you to forward me your shipping address for a new dovetail assembly.
Kind regards
Jakob
Hi Jakob, thanks for your reply. I was already in contact with the support team in parallel and they will send me the replacement now. In the meantime I fastened the screw underneath the locking mechanism, which (at least temporarily) has fixed the issue. The printer is running fine again.
3 Likes
