Form 3: owners questions and concerns

Sorry for the delay in reply, I wanted to make sure that I was giving the Form 3 a reasonable shot at things, and so have printed off several parts with varying amounts of support and in different orientations. Good news is that I have managed to solve many of my problems through adding additional supports. For the form 2 I found that it was possible to remove some of the auto suggested supports, and add thicker supports in locations that didn’t matter on the piece, these instincts did not serve me well on the form 3, where I have found that if pre-form suggests a support, you had better go with it, even if you could have removed that support on the form 2. So far it is not my experience that the form 3 requires fewer supports, of small support attachment sites than the form 2, if anything it needs more supports to deliver best quality, I have no idea why this is, and I am sure that like with the form 2 learning what supports you need where will make a significant difference to final quality.

So with proper support, the outcomes for the form 3 are much improved compared with my initial prints. however, there are still some issues. I have tried to show these in the photographs below, but its difficult (my skills with the camera are not great). The piece on the left is from the form 3, and the piece on the right (with grey / white patches) is from the form 2. The form 3 produces a smoother print, z lines are still visible, but less pronounced, and with almost no dodgy alignment issues. But there blurring where it should not be. This is best seen on the surface detail on the shield, which on the form 3 is curved in profile rather than flat. On the form 3 the central ring of the shield blurs into the detailing and the spherical centre. It reminds me of the difference between printing a part in grey resin rather than black on the form 2.

I am pretty sure that this is an issue that can be sorted when Form releases updated settings for each of the resins, at least I hope it will, and I hope they will add an off switch also :slight_smile:

So far I have found that the form 3 takes about 50% longer to print a part than the form 2 did, based on printing small loads at 25microns in black.

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