Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Make Workshop: First Prints With the Form3”.
Welcome to make workshop where we check out tools, toys and tech built for makers. Today we have a special treat. This is the form 3 by form labs. This is an sla 3d printer that delivers incredible quality in the world of 3d printers.
This thing has pretty much all the bells and whistles you could ask for to ensure that you actually get successful prints in terms of size, it’s 14.5 by 14.5 by 18.5 centimeters of print volume. The major selling point to a machine like this, of course, is the extreme detail that you can print. For example, the resolution on the x and y axis is going to be 25 microns.
The z axis is where you can actually control a little bit of the quality you can go from the lowest resolution. It’S 300 microns to the highest resolution. That’S 25 microns in the z as well. Sla machines in general are going to give you incredible quality over something like an fdm machine.
This print here is one that they recommended. I have not pulled the supports off yet because i just wanted to show what it looks like whenever it comes off the bed. It comes off like this, and then you have to remove all the supports by hand and there’s a whole process. They had some tips and tricks on cleaning these up quite nicely, but as you can see, the quality on these is just stunning. This one was printed at probably the lowest quality that this machine can print at and i’m still impressed with how it turned out. You can just barely make out some layer lines on surfaces that are almost um parallel to the print bed. That’S where they would be. The most evident i then bumped the quality setting up as high as it would go and printed this little squid attacking the nautilus, and i cannot find evidence of layer lines anywhere on this. I’Ve looked as close as i can with a macro lens and cannot see layer lines now for an example of how long things take to print this took about 10 hours to print. This also took about 10 hours, maybe nine or eight hours to print, so the quality settings aren’t changing drastically. What your print time will be on an sla printer.
The width of the model makes no difference on the print time. The height of the model is what changes the print and then, of course, how many layers you’re printing, so the higher the quality, the more layers, you’re printing, the models all came out, fantastic, although the material is maybe a little bit more brittle than what you might Be used to with an fdm machine, removing the supports can be a difficult task at times and can result in some broken models. Here i broke off the arm on this incredible sculpt.
You can find links to all of the model files down in the description below the process for printing with one of these machines. Is you start by downloading your file and throwing it into their software in their software? You can add, supports change your resolution and stuff like that. Just like normal, it is very intuitive software.
It also has, with the form 3 the added bonus of being able to see all the status of your machine. You can view how much resin you have left in your tank. What resin is currently in the tank and other status like that after you set it all up, you send it to the printer.
It can take a little bit longer to slice than you’re used to. If you’re used to something like cura or slicer, or something like that on an fdm machine, once it’s sent to the machine, the machine handles the rest mine’s connected through wi-fi, so i didn’t have to wire it. I configured the files shot it over the wi-fi to the machine, and then i was done with that part. After that you can see a status on the machine of what’s going on. It prepares the print bed wipes it cleans.
It gets the proper level of resin in there and starts printing gives you updates all the way through after your print is done. You have to clean it and cure it, and what i have here is the entire kit that includes the form 3, the wash station and the cure station. Now this whole setup is ideal if you’re going to be printing a whole bunch of parts, and you want the process to be automated and cleaner. You can just pull the parts off scrub them in alcohol and put them in front of the uv light or out in the sun theoretically, but you end up making a mess and it is a bit of a pain.
So if you’re going to be producing parts constantly, this setup is ideal. You take your part out. You drop it in here to wash the wash station agitates the alcohol so that it gets everything out of every little nook and cranny.
You can set up timing to adjust it to wash for as little or as long as you want, and then you put it in the cure station which actually rotates it lights it from all angles and is heated and of course you can adjust the heat to The optimal temperature for the resin you’re, using as well as the timing on that. So if you were like in production, making jewelry or something you could pull your print off, put it in the wash put a new print bed in and start a print and then just cycle through constantly and have very little mess to clean up. As far as cost goes the machine itself, if you just want the machine and then a basic container, to put alcohol in and wash your parts, it is three thousand five hundred dollars now, if you want the optional, washing and curing stations that are automated, which i Do have in this article it comes out to 4999.
That includes the machine, the service, the customer support and all of that in researching for this video i kept seeing the same conversations popping up over and over, and that would be people who look at these printers and they say why would i buy the form labs Which is several thousand dollars when there are these printers on the market that are under a thousand dollars? That also do sla, and i think that you can address that by comparing them to cars. You may want the cheaper one. That’S fine! In the world of cars, you could get the cheapest car possible that will have no frills, whereas the form 3 is more like the tesla of of the car industry, you’re going to pay a little more and you’re going to get some frills things that ensure that Your prints come out successful, more often higher quality on the build things like that, then there’s also things like service to consider.
Are you going to get customer support from the cheap one the same as you would get from the form labs one? Now again, i’m not recommending one over the other. You have to weigh what you want. Personally, i have a car that has a great warranty and i also have a car that i have to work on all the time. So i’m not saying one is better than the other.
I’M saying that you need to weigh what you need for your situation against what your budget is. For example, if you were running a business, you wouldn’t want to be living with failures or lower quality prints as much as you might be willing to pay to ensure that more often, you get high quality prints and successes, and that’s why you would go for something Like the form labs and then on top of that, there’s also customer service with the cheap one you may or may not get the same level of customer service that you would from something like a form labs. Now again, this isn’t a paid advertisement or anything like that. I’M not telling you that the form labs is the way to go, but if you’re going to be making these decisions, you need to know what you’re looking at and it’s not just, does it print the thing? Sometimes it comes out to you know how repeatable are the high quality prints um? What service? How quickly does the service respond? If i have an issue, can i rely on this machine to keep pumping these out over and over and over what tools are available to ensure that my prints are higher quality and things like that? Thank you for joining us on this episode of make workshop.
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