Well, at 78 not sure how much longer I’ll be at this game. I’ve sold off 2/3rds of the company already and even closed the 3D printing down last October. I was only doing wholesale work for the fellow who bought the other 2/3rds of the company, the Kit and laser cut detailing parts. Got bored and reopened in July that resulted in a tidal wave of orders. Guess people like what I make.
Good to hear on the Form 3 resin but I don’t think, at least right now, I’ll replace the Form 2’s as they are running well.
ALW is $70 a liter vs FL $175 a liter. I can’t afford experimenting around. Tried that with the Digital Forge resin and lost money on it.
Looks like Digital Forge 3D material is the real deal. they had been down for a while reformulating for the Form 3. Very nice Formlabs like 3rd party material. Hard and strong. Their selling now value sets of three liters so I’ve been nabbing those. I can’t see using anything else.
I had been using them on my Form2 for a while but after buying the Form 3 picked up some more. I do alot of post painting and the surface adheres paint really well, better than other 3rd party resins I’ve used. Below is a track, the detail is amazing and at 0.1mm micron layer. They boast faster print speed? I don’t quite get that they explain it as a micron adhesion so the material links better on the surface at thicker layers. Anyone know about that?
The Form3 allows you to just refill the cartridge with say DF Grey resin, over and over again. No need to rebuy extra cartridges. The coolest thing is that the wiper works now and the heater. Better than open mode on the Form2 actually. So using 3rd party resins is actually easier than the Form2.
Has anyone tried using Siraya Tech Resins? I know they are for a slightly different SLA tech but I’ve heard reports they work with SLA as well and are same 405nm length.
I’ve given the Anycubic white resin a try on my Form 3.
It does not print very well. The Form 3 has trouble getting the cured resin to separate from the print tray. So you wind up getting lots of little broken bits in the print tray, and prints often fail.
Late reply but usually it indicate the exposure time/power is not enough for the resin you are using. The base raft gets extra laser time to ensure it sticks well to the plate and rest of the print is printed with the profile setting.
You can try a resin profile with darker color etc if you are using grey profile try black profile it usually have slightly longer exposure time for the model.
That might be what needs to be done. Another thing I noticed about the Anycubic white is that sometimes it was “delayering”, so I imagine that means the resin nearest the previous layers wasn’t fully cured.
I’m thinking of trying the Apply Lab Works grey resin, the product page recommend Grey V3 and V4 settings which doesn’t exist for Form 1, has anyone tried Grey V1 or V2 with that resin?
I’ve been running tests with Apply Lab Work’s “Champagne” resin for the past month or so. Despite the sales rep (via email only) telling me that I needed to reprogram the empty cartridge to Grey V4, my Form3 will not allow that. I used a new tray programmed to Clear, no problem. Based on FL’s spec sheets, Clear and Grey are identical except for color, so running Clear instead of Grey worked fine.
What I’ve noticed is that the 3rd or 4th test part (each printed separately), I hear a “sticking” sound between layers. Almost sounded like tearing. Results indicated this is exactly what was happening. Parts were bowed and pulled away from supports, even after increasing touchpoint diameter to compensate for what I thought was just a peculiarity with the resin.
After searching for Forum posts re: using alternate resins, I found this one (and another farther down) where a poster pointed out that Apply Lab Work’s “black” attacks the tray’s PDMS layer, drastically shortening its life if resin is left in it too long. That’s all I needed to determine that the little bit of Champagne resin remaining from tests will be poured back in the bottle along with what’s in the tray, which will then be thoroughly wiped clean and, hopefully reused with Grey V4. I also don’t like having to buy a universal cartridge or keep buying Clear or Grey resin just to get access to a cartridge for ALW’s resin. I’m sticking with FL’s resin because the apparent lower cost to using ALW’s resin is offset by shortened tray life and having to purchase another cartridge.
You really should use the grey resin profile. It has very different laser setting compared to clear and what you are describing is exactly what to expect when using the wrong profile settings…
Like others here, I’ve used the DigitalForge Grey on my Form 3 with good results.
I’ve also been using the ApplyLabWorks resins, specifically Expert Black, and Robust Champagne. I’ve purchased Spring Black but have not tried it, yet. ALW has instruction sheets, telling you how to set up your prints, washes and cures, and they work quite well. They recommend telling the Form 3 you are using Gray V4 when printing with Robust Champagne, but I’ve also used the clear, tough and elastic 50A settings. All have done well. The downside to using the elastic setting is the supports are thicker than they need to be.
Where are you getting the digital forge 3d grey? I tried google search and the digitalforge3d.com website and can’t find them. Are they still in business?
Hello fantasy 2. You mentioned that Peopoly resin works well with Formlabs. Did you tested it yourself or maby heared what the best settings to print this resin? Currently I use ApplylabWorks and print it as Formlabs GreyV4. Does Peopoly allso uses grey settings?
