Working great; now all prints failing

[awhill]

Greetings all!

Elegoo Mars printer has been working great for 400+ hours, but now every print is failing in similar fashion. I've adjusted supports & angles many times. 

Can the spots of dead space on my LCD exposure test be the reason for these failed prints? 
Sorry if this is a basic question, but I'm new to the printing scene & have had zero problems until now. 

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[fromFDMtoSLA]

i think, 400+ hours is a lot of time for the LCD. may be, it's "end of life". you should change it.

[golalo]

Greetings all!

Elegoo Mars printer has been working great for 400+ hours, but now every print is failing in similar fashion. I've adjusted supports & angles many times. 

Can the spots of dead space on my LCD exposure test be the reason for these failed prints? 
Sorry if this is a basic question, but I'm new to the printing scene & have had zero problems until now. 

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Yes man, any whole in the LCD will produce print failures as they are dead pixels. You have to replace it ASAP.

[VonStrom]

Is this true of the LCD if it does not have dead spots?
I had a replacement screen already because of dead spots. Had a good month of printing now I get fails every time no matter my setting or what resin I am using.

[cliffyk]

The dead pixels are almost certainly the cause of your failed prints; at 400 hours your LCD is shot, guaranteed. 200 to 250 is the best I have ever gotten.

Remove the resin tank and platen, and do a dry run "print" using this .stl file.



It is a 68 x 120 x 2 mm block, that unlike the built-in "exposure test" will reveal problems across the entire screen, not just a narrow frame around the perimeter--your perimeter looks bad, you will be stunned by what the whole thing looks like. See my posts in this thread.

[k.i.a.]

i think, 400+ hours is a lot of time for the LCD. may be, it's "end of life". you should change it.

I'm new so this is just my 2 cents but.....if a print is 6...10 hours... I would expect a screen to last at least 4000 hrs... 400 is really a few prints... probably it was faulty?

[cliffyk]

i think, 400+ hours is a lot of time for the LCD. may be, it's "end of life". you should change it.

I'm new so this is just my 2 cents but.....if a print is 6...10 hours... I would expect a screen to last at least 4000 hrs... 400 is really a few prints... probably it was faulty?

That may well be what you expect, however the reality is the LCDs last 250 to 400 hours--50 to 80 "5 hour" print jobs. For me that has worked out to 2-1/2 to 3 months--3 months is the length of Elegoo's warranty on the LCD--that's 270 to 8 hour prints.

This is from the owner's manual:



Though Elegoo has been pretty good about replacing them.

UV light, even "not really UV" light¹ like the 405 nm light used in our printers is a death-ray for the liquid crystals, it hardens them and renders them incapable of "twisting" and realigning the polarity of the light source--which is what they do in an LCD display.

So, like it or not 250 to 400 hours useful life is what we've got--increasing the power of the light source as some have done further decreases the LCD's lifespan.

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¹ - the 405 nm light used by our printers is not technically UV, it is visible light at the very end of our eyes ability to see, at that end of the spectrum. True UV begins at 395 nm wavelength.