Thanks - it’s hard to beat 99 pounds ($129US) each! I have wasted at least that much and more in my time. I’ll send them a note and see if they can do this kind of thing. Thanks for the link. -J
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Thanks for the input. We half-tried the alcohol but the job wasn’t monitored and the alcohol dried up while it was soaking (bad but maybe not catastrophic). We re-hydrated with more alcohol, reinstalled the heads and I’ve been doing head cleaning and pattern checks. I haven’t run a weight test (aka load cell calibration) yet but it’s on my list of things to do. I just found a video on line for it; thank you YouTube! -J
I’ve been running an Alaris30 since 2010, and only had to replace one head this calendar year. Since I only run VeroWhitePlus, I can’t speak to the Durus materials, but my practice has been to more blot with a denatured ethanol dampened cloth, with about a 30 second soak against the heads.
When the one head failed abruptly following a crash, I tried to resuscitate it by flushing it with alcohol, after removing it from the machine. This was not successful, and actually demonstrated a negative result. Consider trying the the ‘solvent’ they sell for long term storage. It’s actually a base like the support, without the curing agents.
Good luck!
Hard to make out from the images exactly, but I was told the print head will need replacing if:
Up to 5-7 nozzles blocked in one place MAX.
Up to 12 nozzles blocked in total across one head.
You can fit the print head yourself.
The printer overlaps the print pattern to compensate for some blocked nozzles, but if more are blocked than detailed above this will have an effect on the parts.
Thanks for these good ideas. Our heads were swapped about a year ago so I think I might have some Durus model material gunk in either head so I have to do the heavy-duty cleaning on either/both. We half-tried the alcohol but the job wasn’t monitored and the alcohol dried up while it was soaking (bad but maybe not catastrophic). We re-hydrated with more alcohol, reinstalled the heads and I’ve been doing head cleaning and pattern checks since then (about 2 weeks). Unfortunately, they’re printing worse than ever now. I have some NaOH here from when we had a Stratasys 1600 SST system (soluble support meant we kept a bath of NaOH for dissolving it). Hopefully it can burn away any of the old gunk and new gunk. It is tempting, however, to pack them up and send them off to the print head recovery company… For $129 (99pounds) each, it seems like they know what they’re doing and I’m just fiddling around. Thanks for your input. So, you don’t expect the NaOH to burn up anything on the inside of the head? I could try using a syringe to push it through the ports… or, we could pay those nice people to do it. Hm. Decisions decisions. -J
Hi Julianna,
I have limited experience with the objet, so I can only speak from observation. First question/comment is that im surprised you dont have it on a service plan. If you’re getting such a low use out of the heads, maybe you should contact stratasys?
how are you identifying that the heads are failing? aka what led you to believe that thats the issue
thanks
Thanks for writing this note, Pavel - you are making good points/ asking good questions.
OK, so we do have a service contract - BUT it doesn’t cover “consumables” and the heads are considered consumables. A tech came out a year ago and swapped heads (model-support) and that bought us more time. Thing is, they didn’t really give us great detailed instructions about how to clean the heads. We/ I thought I was following the directions but without proper training, the interpretation is wide. Plus, starting 6-mo after we got this printer, we used Durus material and it appears that Durus is harder on the heads (aka it gunks up faster) compared with Vero. The service contract NOW contains a once-per-year training and maintenance visit. That would have been great to have gotten last year.
The two main reasons why I think the heads are the problem are: (1) the July-service contract tech says so and (2) because the prints are bad (even on things that used to print fine). From knowing what the stl and solidworks model looked like, I can see where the support was meant to print and instead the model material above it has sunken down in the spot above it. I used to be able to print a whole bed of these small knobs and then a few months ago, I saw them “sinking” - the support not showing up most of the time and the model material blobbing down as if it were deposited but fell to the lower height since the support wasn’t there. One time this spring, I printed a whole bed and the parts were basically glued-down - no support, just model material straight on the print bed. I chipped them off and I’m very impressed that I didn’t scratch the print bed (which I believe is only aluminum) with my steel scraping tool! The tech that was here did a load cell calibration in July and said that the heads are bad but that he’s tried to get as much as he can out of them - I take that to mean he’s increased the voltage to the drivers/actuators that push the material thru and he said if we keep doing this, it will become erratic. I haven’t done a load cell cal yet myself - it’s been a month and we did a soak in alcohol since the last one. It’s on my list of things to do but I’m not looking forward to “erratic” behavior.
I took some photos and I’m due to post another note with “before” and “after” for the model/stl and then the real thing. It’s bad - you might want to get some tissues ready!
-Juliana
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2 months later
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Ok. Here is the UK head cleaning company which recover my objet30 print head.
Kevin Spiers is the one you need to talk to.
Thanks.