Form 1 / 1+ / 2 3rd Party Resin Settings Master List

Well, if that’s the case then I’d stay away from photocentric and develop a working process for the F2 with another brand. I can’t believe it that they would change the resin formula without informing customers or making an announcement.

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That cracking is pretty bad! Honestly surprised they are selling it with so much development still to do.

Photocentric used to have a low-shrinkage epoxy-based resin for the Daylight series (sent me a sample and they were selling it, but can’t find it on the site anymore). Talking to them at the TCT I understood that they were planning to release something similar fro the UV too. I don’t really like cleaning with water and this epoxy-based one cleans in IPA.
I think also they are on the second iteration of resins for UV. In fact, at first they just called it UV resin, now they make a difference for DLP and Laser printers. On the US shop there is not this distinction as yet, but there is on the UK one.

Other brands? seems like anything available gives mixed feelings :frowning:

Well I’m very happy with the results I get from photocentric resin, I’ve been using it for over a year with no issues.

I can recall they indeed had a very low shrinkage resin, can’t find it on the webstore anymore. I received an order one week ago and the packaging seems to be changed recently.

Isn’t the firm resin also shrinking much less than the hard resin? I have not done statistical tests on it yet. Will try that soon. They had shrinkage numbers on the website. Somewhere close to 0.5% for the hard resin or the low shrinkage one but not sure.

Already sent them a message and asked about the possible formula change. Not expecting a response, but you never know! :slight_smile:

FunToDo is the other brand, similar pricing. Have not tested it yet.

I’ve run with the Fun 2 Do resins and they over cure a lot.

I even ran a couple of tests with filter material in the optical path to reduce the exposure. This got the exterior shapes in check but a;; interior shapes were still over cured (holes/slots small or completely closed).

The PDMS wears quickly with F2D resins.

Fun 2 Do resin is known to be very fast (read: a lot of catalyst). I suppose you are talking about the F1+ blend, not the usual DLP blends, right?

There is a post about it here
Don’t know if the review is genuine or biased, but within its limitations it seems alright.

I wonder how expensive it would be to buy 5 liter of methacrylated monomers that work with these resins to dilute the photoinitiators. So far I only found some nailstudios selling the stuff(why?!)

Did some experiment with F2 resin bare in the tank today on a large piece… It ripped the PDMS off the tank. And every layer resulted in a loud sound. So it’s not very optimal to use it without added measures.

I’ve been working a little in my spare time to figure out what the profiles should look like for Formlabs clear 2 resin. With a resin profile for each thickness we can start to dial things down and figure out the third party resins.

The good news is that I think I’m pretty close for Formlabs clear 2 at all three standard layer heights. Bad news is I don’t have a working Form 1 anymore to test on. Is anyone interested in verifying my 25 and 50 micron material files for Clear 02 ?

Once we prove out the first material I think I can generate curves for all of the standard resins along with some suggestions for third party resins. Hopefully we can get to the point where a single person can calculate the power required for any layer height based on the power required for 100 microns.

What I’ve started is a spreadsheet that will give you a starting point for all three (or custom) layer heights based on the power required at 100 microns. If my simple LOG curve fit works it could save a bunch of work on each layer height.

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PM sent.

Are you beta testing the new formula?

I am in contact with photocentric and they indeed told me it is being beta tested right now and they will make a decision in about two weeks.

Can you measure some parts printed with this new formula? Maybe share some pictures?

I am, I’ll try to print some measurement tests over the weekend.

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Thanks! :slight_smile:

OK, so with photocentric hard resin, a part that should be 11.7mm by 52.23mm x 2mm actually measures 11.81mm x 52.55mm x 2.14mm. The object was printed at 50 micron along its longitudinal axis at a 20 degree angle from horizontal. Which is good enough for my purposes! Sorry no pic, it’s a piece for a client and I don’t have permission to share.

Does the part have any holes? With most of the third party resins I’ve tested there are small or even closed holes that go along with the large outer dimensions. This makes these resins impossible to use for a lot of what I do.

Thanks for testing!

Did you allow it to cure and rest? The original formula shrinks quite a bit after 24hrs.

Dimensions are still not that good, little bit disappointing because I have had a conversation with Sally from photocentric and she told me that the new formula is pretty good.

For whoever is interested: I got a message yesterday that the new formula is now for sale on the website.

For now I guess I still have to modify their resin manually.

It has had a couple of days sitting around before I measured and it was post cured in a UV box, as I say, for my purposes those tolerances are not an issue.

If you use open FL there are settings for the perimeter power (currently way above the fill power x 1.5 or so). If you turn these down it may correct some of the size issues and the filled holes we’re seeing.

I can share a spreadsheet that can more easily track the values and generate a copy/paste tab to create the new INI file if anyone’s interested.

In a perfect world the third party resin manufacturers would dial it back a bit more so that the 02 resin settings work. The old 01 clear, grey, black settings aren’t available on the Form 2. The overly sensitive resins just don’t work well on the 2 without hacking things.

That’s the fun fact… According to photocentric, they had beta testers with the new formula to make a laser UV resin that works on the form 2. They got positive feedback from these testers, but as JasonSpiller is already saying: most don’t care about dimensions as they only use the resin for figurines. So in the end, the resin might still be sub-optimal for the Form 2.

I already informed photocentric how we improved the resin to make it correct dimension and appearance wise for the Form 2 so hopefully they will use that info.

Anyone got any update from Photocentric?

Yes, talked to them and they say they have the new formula in the store now. According to them it’s really good but the measurements from Jason say otherwise.

I’m running out of resin soon so I will have to order a new batch anyways.