It looks like Formlabs might’ve finally made something between Grey Pro and Tough with Tough2000. Has anyone here tried it yet?
Curious as to how it withstands warping and how stable it seems to be over time. (Tough is notoriously bad in both those areas, not to mention heat deflection!)
Tough 2000 is listed as a material that uses up a tank in 10 weeks - so I absolutely don’t bother buying it.
Over all I am not happy with the 35 weeks lifespan of most of the material and replacing the blue Tough (35 weeks) with a material (Tough 2000) that kills a tank in 10 weeks is imho an absolute no-go. After half a year working with the Form3 we ordered the From3L a week ago. Thinking I have to pay 330 bucks for a new tank every 10 weeks would drive me insane.
Btw. I am the ‘head of additive manufacturing’ in a 500+ company and I have to justify my budget to my boss.
Where is that info listed of those 10 weeks?
If this policy continues (replacing 35 week material with 10 week material) I will be facing a very harsh (one-way)-conversation with my boss (where he does the talking) about my decision to switch to Formlabs as our main SLA-printer supplier.
Instead of creating new materials, Formlabs should rather dedicate the time and effords to make tanks and material really compatible to each other! And by that, I mean not “just” 35 weeks - not even talking about less…
I don’t like the 10 weeks thing either, since I don’t run a company or have my printer to profit with, but where are you getting that they REPLACED resins with a shorter time frame? Even on the Form 2, the engineering resins had a suggested max storage time of around 2 months in the tray.
Either way… it’s kind of off topic. I created this thread to get impressions of Tough 2000. (I just threw out some of my last remaining parts I had, printed with Tough over a year ago because they had warped horribly over time… parts I THOUGHT were stable because I printed them thick, but no…)
I’m in the middle of my first print with tough 2000.
I started the wash. It clearly likes clean wash IPA.
So one more cost is clean IPA more often.
If you have the time, please let us know how it turns out.
Heh… on a side note… I did a test today. I took some parts with detail errors and dropped them on a hard floor. The Grey Pro pieces seemed to hold up better than the old Tough ones, which simply shattered into many pieces before I threw them away!
I appreciate the offer of help, but things seem to be getting a bit confused here, so let me clarify this before it goes any further. : )
Here are a couple of the deformed parts in Tough V5.
In this image, you can see major warping in the 2-4mm thick walls. I managed to correct a little by baking the parts clamped onto a steel brace. Still not good.
Here you can see how the part widens a lot toward the bottom, which was closest to the build plate.
After that I switched to using only Grey Pro, and it has been pretty great, BUT even more durability would be good.
I’ve been hoping Formlabs would come out with something that’s a cross between Grey Pro and Tough- precision, better heat deflection, no warping and stability over time. Tough 2000 seems like it MIGHT fit the bill, but with the current crisis, it will take Formlabs a longer time to get a sample print out to me, so I figured I’d ask here if anyone was using it yet.
So… for those that have tried it, some reviews would be awesome!
@JoatrashFX
I had a telco with a Formlabs representative early this week and he told me on a side note, that Tough will only be produced until summer and then be sold off. They expect it to be available through the remainer of the year, but then … when it’s gone, it’s gone! Tough2000 will be the replacement for Tough. According to the Formlabs support article I linked above, a tank with Tough lasts 35 weeks and with Tough 2000 merely 10 weeks.
But you’re right, I was drifting off of your topic - sorry 'bout that.
@mknabner I’m in the same boat as you with being the ‘head of additive manufacturing’ at my company. That being said the new way they are doing these resins has other upsides. If Tough 2000 carries some of the same improvements as tough 1500 it should have a much faster print time. Better surface quality and consistency. The push seems to be more manufacturing focused where parts are made in larger batches.
As far as cost justification goes. Having custom things made in house, faster than amazon prime can get it to you is invaluable. That being said it is extremely hard to quantify the actual scope opportunity loss.
Received it early this week. Nice accuracy, slow printing, hard to clean. I have done few stress test, can’t broke it so far…
I was just checking the store page for Tough v5 and it says “Tough Resin is a legacy formulation of the strongest and stiffest material in our functional family of Tough and Durable Resins. Tough Resin will continue to be sold through at least December 2020, according to our sunsetting policy.”
Also checked the sunsetting policy. As long as there’s enough demand for this material, it’ll continue to be available, until it drops below production threshold for 3 months in a row. But I hear you on the “when it’s gone it’s gone.”
Can you elaborate on your hard to clean comment? Is it just sticky or does the resin not clean well from nooks and crannies?
Is it slower than Tough v5 on Form 2?
I recieved 2 Liters of tough 2000.
First is the printer upgrade. Tough 2000 requires the latest Preform (3.4.3) and Firmware.
Used a new V2 tank.
The tough 2000 is VERY slow to fill a new tank. I had to retry to complete the fill.
The best resolution is 0.5 .
The site says to wash 10+10 minutes. After 10 min the part was VERY tacky.
After 10 more minutes the part was great.
Removed the supports and cured 60 min at 70 deg.
The results were great. The detail is the best I have seen from my form 3.
Will send pictures later today.
We have started testing Tough 1500 and 2000. These are excellent resins, contrary to Tough, that was completely useless for industrial purposes ( reasons mentionned above by JoatrashFX and well known for several years ).
These resins are more to our eyes a declination of Durable than Tough.
Our preference goes to Tough 2000, which has a much higher Tg under load and can be used in real life environement. Tg of Durable and Tough 1500 make them more suitable for lab/ demo/ proto products at room temperature.
So far, we have not seen warping of the new resins with time ( only a few week though ) and this is promising.
Washing is pretty straightforward with our ultra sonic cleaners. 3 rinses of 3 min in IPA are enough, dirty/ medium/ clean baths. Ultra sonic density required is on hight though.
Drying in cold air is absolutely required, like Durable. The resins change slighlty their aspect once all IPA has evaporated from material surface layer. This is the indication that the part is ready to post cure.
Post-curing is fast and makes the part matt finish. Tackiness disappears during post curing.
Our custom post-curing chamber have 2 times the UV density of Formcure ( 80 W LED strips/ 20 W radiant ).
We post cure 20 min @ 70c for Tough 1500 and 30 min @ 80c for Tough 2000.
Note that we use Form 2 printers exclusively, mostly at 100 microns.
Well done Formlabs. We are glad you listened to our suggestions a couple of years ago, sent out a survey to your industrial customers and came up with the corresponding product. This is the way to go!
Thanks for the input! Sound good enough that I might be able to risk an order to try it out!
Any further/recent experiences with T2000? I still haven’t tried it. Kind of afraid to lose a whole cartridge to experimentation with money being a bit tight at the moment.
The annoying part is they put a meter on the tank side so you have to replace the tank when the time is up even you don’t even use the tank for one print. I miss the old days I can recoat the tank and keep using it for a long time.