Objet Connex 500 Resin Expiration?

We have an Objet Connex 500 at work and various resins that we use. The resins are pretty expensive and have an "expiration" programmed into them so that the machine will not print with them if they are past the expiration date.

Personally, it seems like a racket to me to get you to buy more resin.

I am wondering if anyone knows the answers to a few questions I have about that:

1. How critical is the expiration date? Is it possible that the resin is still actually good for quite a while after the programmed expiration date?

2. Is there a definitive way of determining if the resin has actually gone bad?

3. Assuming that the resin actually lasts longer than the expiration, and there is a way to determine when it's really gone bad or not, is there a known way to hack the "expiration" programmed into the cartridge?

Thanks for any help.

My first question would be, how does your Objet Connex 500 know the date? If you know that, and you're able to change it, then change it back a few months when you need to use that resin...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ssayer

My first question would be, how does your Objet Connex 500 know the date? If you know that, and you're able to change it, then change it back a few months when you need to use that resin...

---

There is a tag on the side that says the date and there is a bar code as well. However, when the service guys were here they also pointed to what looks like a copper washer that is inside the clear plastic cartridge case and they said it was a chip that contained info about the media type and expiration. The implication I got out of that was that the machine could read that chip (RFID maybe?) and tell if the media was "expired" or not. If it was expired, they said the machine will not print.

My hope was that someone out there might have a hack for it, so we could continue to use media if it's just slightly out of date.

Mjol and I had discussion on how chip cartridge from ES 1200 and his SST model were hacked through raspberri PI. If you can hook up a picture of the chip and send them to us.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by richardphat

Mjol and I had discussion on how chip cartridge from ES 1200 and his SST model were hacked through raspberri PI. If you can hook up a picture of the chip and send them to us.

---

The copper washer looking thing on the front of the cartridge is what the service guys pointed to when they said that the printer read the expiration date. So, I'm assuming that's it. You can also see a bar code and expiration date on the side, just under the black "X" in the yellow box. I'm not sure if the printer reads that bar code or not, but the service guys didn't indicate so.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t.../ResinChip.jpg

The printer reads info embedded in the part containing the copper ring. We had a cartridge a year or so ago that wouldn't work and found that part was missing. We open one that was empty, took that part and taped it to the face of the non-working cartridge and it worked just fine after that.
For expired resin, we will adjust the printers on-board computer to a date before the expiration date on the cartridge, provided it's not too much past the expiration date, say only a month or so. As long as you don't remove the cartridge, it will continue to work until empty, or the resin begins to gel. We've had that happen to cartridges that have sat around too long.

With a little due care, the expired cartridge can be opened (both the plastic shell and the interior bag) and then the resin can be transferred into a "good" container with a good expiration date. Another option might be to remove the copper chip from the expired container and replace it with a "good" chip from an empty container of the same resin.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ssayer

My first question would be, how does your Objet Connex 500 know the date? If you know that, and you're able to change it, then change it back a few months when you need to use that resin...

---

what the above is saying is that instead of hacking the cartridge, can you simply change the date on the printer, maybe through the control panel, so that it doesn't think the cartridge is out of date any longer :-)