Is anyone using the Stratasys Objet30 Pro? We have one here and the heads are failing. Our support people told us to buy new ones ($1,400 each & we need 2 = $2,800) but we wanted to try cleaning them (a lot) instead. Anyone have success removing the heads and soaking them in a liquid that can clean out the gunk? Kerosene?
I think Iām just wasting time wiping the heads with alcohol and running Print Head Wizard. The printer is 2 years old. We ran Vero White for about 6 months and then Durus White for the remainder. We have less than 800 hours of use on the print heads. They should get about 2,000 hrs.
(I thought) I was diligent in wiping the heads with alcohol after builds and running it at least every other day but just learned that with Durus, we should have been cleaning the heads Before And After. And, I learned that I ought to put some pressure on the heads when I wipe them with the special cloths ā and I learned that I should not scrub because little particles will get re-inserted; itās just one wipe and then get a new part of the cloth. Wish I had known!
Anyone with ideas on how to clean rather than replace? Anyone tried and succeeded? Anyone tried and not succeeded? Anyone out there with an Objet 30 Pro - take my advice and clean it constantly! This website is pretty quiet wrt Objet but I thought I would try.
Yeah, 90% of the time you hear about these machines is someone trying to sell one. In my opinion, if Stratasys gave them away for free they would still be a terrible value. Between the proprietary consumables, maintenance, replacement partsā¦ I donāt get it.
Gook luck!
-Jesse
that is how the pros do it. I believe this is a service you can send your heads in for professional cleaning. Otherwise it is required to have an ultrasonic cleaner and some chemicals. Iād try 100% isopropyl first, (maybe heat it up as well) and try that for a few days. If that doesnāt work, you may have to send it into the above linked place for cleaning
Take the heads off and Soak them in alcohol and then repetitive head cleanings & pattern checks. A weight test is very effective at showing blocked nozzles as well.
I own an Objet 30 prime and my reseller warned me about using Durus when I bought the printer.
For your support Print head, if it is clogged, you could try using a 5% NaOH solution (sodium hydroxide) to soak the head in and use a pressure washer to push water through the nozzles but make sure to soak the head in alcohol right after to eliminate the water residue.
For the model head, I donāt know which solvent can dilute the material but I suggest you do some tests on printed samples to see what you can find that could be strong enough and try the same process as above with this solvent replacing the sodium hydroxide.
Been running our Objet 24 for 5 years and no issues. We follow the maintenance schedule religiously, not lost a single nozzle. Know another couple of companies that use them without issue. Have it serviced annually, but considering going onto a maintenance contract now.
Wow you guys. I am blown away with getting so many good replies in less than a day! THANK YOU!! I love 3d printing for how it brings out the energy/ creative/ technical/ inventor in all of us - sorry to get sappy, but I am just so grateful. Yesterday, I thought I was just screaming into the wind and itās a relief to hear your replies. Iām going to go through and write actual replies now. I just wanted to say THANKS first. -J
I was voting for the Objet 24 over the 30Pro because it is a really good price. My boss liked the how the 30Pro has the ability to use different materials. Looking back, it might have been better to go with the 24 because Durus isnāt an option (but then again Rigur might prove to be a happy medium for usā¦). Plus, switching material costs/uses material so even though we Can run a clear or a blue or whatever, we never do because we donāt want to spend the $ on the switch-over.
Good luck keeping your machine working for many years to come! -Juliana
I hear ya. The thing is, when the machine is working it makes Really Nice Parts. The manager/ person with the money buys it and then tasks the next person down the line with keeping it up. Itās a DIVA wrt time and effort and cleaning. I really thought I had been doing a good job of cleaning itā¦
Another part of the problem is that the system is so new that the support wasnāt there/ isnāt there. We should have had a once-per-year tune-up in our maintenance agreement (the company doing this for us has just implemented it). We also should have had more training on How exactly to clean it. There were very different interpretations of how to wipe the heads: with pressure, without; scrubbing vs single direction; before and after vs just every other run. Even what type of alcohol to use was unclear. We used 70% until just recently, the tech said it should be 90%.
Itās fun doing something that hasnāt been thoroughly figured-out yetā¦ mostly. -Juliana
We had the same decision to make. We were keen for multi materials but when we realised the price to purge materials on changeover we realised it wasnāt viable unless doing a sizeable batch of parts. As a design consultancy that doesnāt happen often for us, so in instances when we need a different material we just outsource.
If it helps I can give you a copy of our cleaning instruction guide and schedule, which is written up from our training. The engineer who trained us had used these machine in anger in industry and then joint the reseller in the UK servicing machines.
I just ran a pattern test at 1:40pmEST, did a heads cleaning wizard and ran another pattern test at 2pm. See images attached. I think the support (left) has two definite voids. The right head (model) many but theyāre spread out. There is definitely a difference between before and after the heads cleaning wizard. I think I ought to run that about 20 more timesā¦! What do you think? Thanks, Juliana
Thanks - itās hard to beat 99 pounds ($129US) each! I have wasted at least that much and more in my time. Iāll send them a note and see if they can do this kind of thing. Thanks for the link. -J
Thanks for the input. We half-tried the alcohol but the job wasnāt 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 Iāve been doing head cleaning and pattern checks. I havenāt run a weight test (aka load cell calibration) yet but itās on my list of things to do. I just found a video on line for it; thank you YouTube! -J
Iāve been running an Alaris30 since 2010, and only had to replace one head this calendar year. Since I only run VeroWhitePlus, I canāt 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 āsolventā they sell for long term storage. Itās actually a base like the support, without the curing agents.
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 wasnāt 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 Iāve been doing head cleaning and pattern checks since then (about 2 weeks). Unfortunately, theyāre 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 companyā¦ For $129 (99pounds) each, it seems like they know what theyāre doing and Iām just fiddling around. Thanks for your input. So, you donāt expect the NaOH to burn up anything on the inside of the head? I could try using a syringe to push it through the portsā¦ 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 youāre 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 for writing this note, Pavel - you are making good points/ asking good questions.
OK, so we do have a service contract - BUT it doesnāt cover āconsumablesā 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 didnāt 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 āsinkingā - 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 wasnāt 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 Iām very impressed that I didnāt 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 heās tried to get as much as he can out of them - I take that to mean heās 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 havenāt done a load cell cal yet myself - itās been a month and we did a soak in alcohol since the last one. Itās on my list of things to do but Iām not looking forward to āerraticā behavior.
I took some photos and Iām due to post another note with ābeforeā and āafterā for the model/stl and then the real thing. Itās bad - you might want to get some tissues ready!
Hi Pavel - I would be happy to get an email or a phone number to see how your tech figured it out. Maybe he saw it slipping. Hm. Well, just knowing that a z-axis motor (which is covered in our service agreement) could be the problem is helpful. Thanks for the PM and for your help! -Juliana
Hi, you can take the heads out, make sure not to loose the small seals on each side, than you can put the heads in isopropanol and also fill the inside with isopropanol, leave it overnight , make sure not to damage the electronics and cover the isopropanol bath so it does not get evaporated over night, than blast with compressed air, if it is not better than you have to go for new heads, I am running an Eden 260 for more than 6 years, good luck
Use pure IPA (isopropyl alcohol). Put it in a syringe (10 ml) and put a 1cm long rubber tubing instead of the needle. Remove the heads and clean them first with IPA (donāt forget to wear nitrile gloves, of course). Be sure to have pure IPA and clean (never used: no particles inside). Then, flush the head with the syringe through one of the holes on the head (where material refills the head usually), but donāt forget to close the other one with your finger (wear clean nitrile gloves for that) or youāll have IPA in your faceā¦ Do it as long as the nozzles are clogged (typically 2-3 times).
I took these photos almost a month ago and never posted them. I tried increasing the voltage to the piezoelectric controllers. (They are what control the opening and closing of the little doors that allow or restrict the flow of the uncured material.) The tech had the voltages pretty high and I just increased the model voltage to the max. Then I ran the weight cal test and it asks the printer to print 4 or 5 grams of material. What I got from the support head was close to what was requested. The model head just made a thin layer which I scraped off and weighed. It was just dust really and nowhere near the amount I want. The model head is BAD. Now, Iām just waiting for the $ to get a new one. Once we have a new one, I would like to try cleaning the old one with the methods described here but for now, Iām learning to live without a 3D printer. So sadā¦ sniff, sniff! Thanks for all your help, 3dHubs. -J
Hi, I am a new user here and I was wondering if you had success with any of the cleaning methods in this thread? We are having the exact same problem and are also waiting on the $ to buy a new one as well so I thought Iād ask. We are on our first set of heads still so we canāt take one out and send it out to try to get it cleaned or weād be leaving the printer idle too long.
Hi EB. Well, Iām not sure this is going to be the standard answer, butā¦ a few weeks after I posted this, my boss got on the phone with our 3D printer support/ reseller company - the people between Stratasys and us. I donāt recall the phone call being particularly loud or anything but a few weeks later, a new head arrived and we didnāt pay for itā¦! A few weeks after that, I was at a training event with our support people and I told them that I had wanted to say thank you but I didnāt want to get into a mess or overstep my station. They said that it didnāt come from them, and it would have come from Stratasys?!?! I donāt know that this will ever happen again but you could try. I think they (both groups) sold the Durus material without stressing that it needs an intense (and different than Vero) cleaning regime. When we got the new one, I wanted a proper tech to show me how to install it and when he did, he took the old one back! Too bad - we had plans for trying to clean it.
Unfortunately, as soon as it was clearly not working well, it just got worse and worse. I tried like crazy to clean it with alcohol and Print Head Wizard but it just kept getting more and more clogged. I did do the thing where you jack up the power to the piezo-electric gates. They were at their max and just about nothing was coming out. We sold our old Durus material on eBay and are promising ourselves not to buy/ use any more. Vero is not bad stuff. A little more brittle but at least it works!!
Good luck getting your heads clean! Let us all know if you figure out a way around replacing them. -Juliana
The brittleness of the Rigur (RGD450) is halfway between the Durus and the Vero white, black, grey and clear but if you use the Vero blue which is cheaper than the other Vero colors for some reason, itās brittleness is between the Rigur and the other Vero colors while slightly less rigid.
If you tune your UV lamp at the lowest intensity that will not give you a sticky top surface after printing, your parts will also be less brittle than if the intensity is higher.
