Today we’re excited to announce 2 brand new materials and a significant update to our Tough Resin.
High Temp:
With an HDT @ 0.45 MPa of 289 ºC, the new High Temp resin has the greatest temperature resistance of any material on the market. Use it for thermoforming, mold making, and other applications where high thermal resistance is needed. Available now.
Durable:
The new durable resin is designed to simulate polypropylene (PP) with high impact resistance and low friction. Use it for prototyping new products and creating assemblies where low friction is needed. Available January 2017.
Tough V3:
This reformulation of our Tough Resin has significantly improved mechanical performance, simulating ABS more closely than previous formulations. With greater stiffness and smaller contact points for easy cleanup, Tough V3 is a great material for functional prototyping of assemblies, and enclosures with snap-fit or injection molding details. Available now.
First of all, a huge congratulations on this! This is great for us engineers, and I’m excited to see SLA break into the engineering market a bit more.
For the Durable resin, has cyclic use been tested; in other words, how well does it stand up to continuous use and testing? The Tough resin worked nicely for a little while, but embrittled and sheared after a fairly low number of uses. Is this an issue that has been solved with the Durable?
How much greater is the stiffness in the new Tough, relative to the V2? I ended up mixing V2 with clear or black standard resin quite often to get the desired stiffness for the final print, so I’m happy to hear the new Tough is more rigid. I’m assuming this increased rigidity means it is more brittle?
Thanks! We’re really excited to offer materials that will expand the capabilities of 3D printing for engineers and allow them to more accurately simulate end consumer products.
We’re still finalizing the datasheet for durable but the material is optimized to have a low frictional coefficient and stand up to continuous use.
We use Young’s modulus to measure stiffness of a material. Higher Young’s Modulus correlates with higher stiffness. Tough V2 had a modulus of 317ksi and Tough V3 has a modulus of 387ksi (postcured). For reference, our standard resins have a modulus of 402 ksi so Tough V3 will be very comparable to our standard resins in terms of stiffness.
Tough V3 and High Temp will both be available for Form 1 and Form 1+. Durable does require a level of control over the print process that we unfortunately can’t achieve on the Form 1 and 1+.
That’s great to hear - Durable is definitely what I am looking forward to using the most of the three and can’t wait for it to be available.
It’s nice to have some numbers attached to the V3. That is much stiffer which I am extremely happy to hear! I suppose I’ll have to pick some of that up now! Is curing the same as V2, in terms of time?
Sure, here’s the Datasheet for High Temp. Solvent compatibility is listed towards the bottom. For reference, < 1% weight gain is considered good resistance and the most aggressive solvent for High Temp only achieved 0.08% weight gain.
If users have modded their F1/+ with a heated tank (I know they are out there) would durable work on F1/+ printers or is there more to it than just control over resin temp and exposure settings?
It’s great news to hear that 2 of the 3 new items will be available for the Form 1+! Are the laser exposure and timing issues with the Durable something that can be worked with through OpenFL and a willingness to “experiment” a bit on my part?
PreForm 2.7.1 included some changes to Castable settings that improve platform adhesion. I’d encourage you to make sure you’re running the most up-to-date PreForm and firmware. If you’re still running into trouble, you should get in touch with our support team as something like z fine tuning might help to improve adhesion.
You’re absolutely free to try and it would be neat to see your results. Much of the reason Durable isn’t being shipped with the new Tough and High Temp is because we want to continue to dial in the print process as it’s a bit more involved than other materials.
I’m not having an adhesion problem. I am having a problem where the resin that sits in the build tank after prints will leave a white coating on the tank and needs to be mixed into the resin again. its a HUGE pain and definitely not something i am happy with.
As your team continues to work on the process for the durable, do you think they will either finalize a possible release for the Form 1+ or offer a resin profile for OpenFL use? I guess it’s a bit early to tell, since it’s not being released yet anyhow, but it sounds like a great option if it will work with the Form1+!
I’ve had this issue with all the castable resins I’ve used, not just Formlabs.
CastSolid, MakerJuice and the Castable (V1 and V2) all seem to leave some residue in the tank when they are used. Not really sure what causes it, but I just clean it out with a bit of IPA whenever I change resins.