if you lived close by I would be happy to sell you the F3 and then buy the F4 from youâŠbut I doubt we are in the same location (Vancouver, Canada)
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Hi @leonhart88 -
Not even close, couriers back and forth will most likely cost a fortune, I am in South Africa. Sounds like you know the secret to making Form4 prints looks good?
I am not writing It off just yet, but would have been nice if support would join the forum and maybe assist?
Regards
Friedl
I sent you a message in the hopes that it helps you out.
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Haha thatâs too bad.
I donât actually, but I have confidence the system will improve over time as it did with the F3.
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For $4500 the product should be ready to go, but instead the early customers unknowingly become beta testers for like the first year or so. Heck, look at the Fuse⊠that thing is STILL broken.
It should also perform better than those couple hundred dollar machines that the market is flooded with.
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Hi @Friedl_1977 weâre so sorry that the local team there hasnât been able to support you. I see my teammate @Shiden has also supported you on a parallel thread Printing Reliable functional parts with From4, truth to myth? - #8 by Friedl_1977, but if youâd still like to connect directly to our support team, the next best step is to get in touch with our centralized support team directly. Please email support@formlabs.com and that will open up a case with our agents, regardless of your location.
Orientation is definitely a case by case issue and by working with you directly can better understand what might be going wrong in your case. Thanks so much for your patience.
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Hi @verdugod
Thank you for reaching out.
I do not blame them as it is brand new machine for too right 
As long as Formlabs is willing to assist. @Shiden did reach out in another thread and offered to assist by, for a start, print one of my models and see how it goes.
As I mentioned before, the reason I bought Formlabs as apposed to something along the lines of Uniformation or Phrozen, is that I need to print functional parts of good enough quality that I feel comfortable selling it to clients. I am still hoping this can be achieved using the Form4 
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Hi @br4n_d0n
I was hoping that is the case. Have not given up all hope yet, letâs see how this turns out, hehe.
I almost bought one of these, but what drove to me to Formlabs was the fact that is just about the only one I could find showcasing actual functional parts printed as assessed to miniatures and dragons. Donât get me wrong those are amazing to say the least, but it is not what I would use this tool for. The irony is that so far the only thing I have been able to print with good results was a couple of Astronauts Phil figurines 
You can still do functional parts on most of these cheap printers. You just need to use the correct resin for the type of application. Also, most of them allow you the use of any resin so you could purchase from anyone.
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Hi -
I figured⊠as it was never showcased though I decided to go with Formlabs. That and the fact that it is really pretty machine
Thank you for all of this discussion and practical usage experiences. I was thinking the Form 4 would be able to print two part electronic enclosure assemblies, namely a box and lid, without issues; especially as I am returning after all these years after being a Form 1 early adopter. From what I have read here it makes me skeptical. As it is a new model and prints so fast, perhaps that itself is an issue with accuracy and warping of long straight edges? I did not see any replies to build my confidence here. So Iâll sit on the fence and wait to see if Formlabs can sort it out, perhaps with the materials + settings development work. Thank you very much for this thread.
Regards Martin
Hi @Martin_Hill
Ok, so here is my opinion based on my experience working with the machine:
Printing large flat surfaces with squared or perpendicular sides on all sides is very much impossible and trust me, I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong here. I have made some good progress which allows me to print âdecent enoughâ enclosures but this involves printing directly on to the buildplatform. Any other orientation for larger flat surfaces with squared corners and perpendicular sides is pretty much not going to happen.
Now, for printing directly onto the build platform, that seems to work to the point where I have clients that are happy with the result and prepared to pay for those. The question is, âam I satisfied?â and the answer to that is unfortunately âNoâ. That said, maybe my expectations of this machine and the process was simply too high.
It is worth noting that I have only been printing with standard resins as ANY other resin is just too expensive locally due to whatever reason. From what I have read in the forum though, if you are not able to get what you want from Standard Resin in terms of the âshapeâ, you will almost certainly not get it from any other material as they are more challenging to work with. Almost like Standard resins are the PLA of resin printers.
@DKirch Formlabs was going send me a liter of one or other engineering resin to test, but to date, I have not received anything.
I have attached some pictures of the print a did for a client. The part in BLUE is FDM print done on my Ultimaker printer (due to cost constraints). The grey part was printer with Standard V5 resin and the Early layer adhesion settings were adjust to reduce the âelephantâs footâ effect. The plus side of printing this way is ut uses A LOT less materials for support. The arrow indicates the side that was printed on the build platform.
These were printed vertically on the build platform so I can get ±10 in one print. So here is where it does shine⊠It took me 3 days to print, wash and cure the SLA parts for entire order on Formlabs, and 5 weeks to do the FDM parts. Also if you are using M3 or bigger screws, you will be able to print threads that actually work ok, not need for inserts.
If you do decide to pull the trigger and buy a Form4, buy the flexible build platform for sure. It will make your life a whole lot easier. Here they are simply too expensive, so I am using a scraper with a VERY thin blade to remove parts (not the one that comes with the printer, it will damages the corners).
One last thing⊠if you are printing large flat parts, DO NOT cure them using any heat. As tempting as the improve structural integrity might be when curing for 15 minutes it 65C, you will get parts that warp like hell. I made the mistake with these, so ended up curing for 10mins at 35C.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any further questions.
One very last thing: The hinges on the lid are nice, but mine failed about a month in. Be sure to report that that to Formlabs in case it happens. They offer the parts to repair this at no charge, unfortunately as with the resin, I have not received mine yet. So for the past couple of months, I had to prop mine up while inserting/removing the platform which a a pain in the butt.
Now to sum it all up:
I have made peace with the fact that I will use this mostly for prototyping and small batch prints of small parts. Small parts are easy and print really nice. For larger runs or when near-perfect quality is needed, I will most likely outsource to JLC mainly due to the fact that they finish the prints with media blasting (which I do not have) to remove any support marks and layer lines (yes you will see those on large flat surfaces). Also their printers are huge so they can print larger parts in one go. I did try to print the part attached in two prints on my Form4, but the result was disastrous and they all (20) broke VERY easily during shipping (standard resin).
The black one was done on my machine and then spray painted to hide the layer lines. The white one was form JLC (neater finish, single print and cheaper)
Regards, Friedl!!
Thatâs very valuable insight Fried, thank you again.
Iâll continue to use the services offered by 3rd parties, for my prints. I was going to make a plan for some new developments and justify a printer off the back of that. Then I found the thread. I have also set my expectations too high for Form 4, what with all the nice marketing messaging! Then as you suggest the other materials including FR really add cost and might not work so well either. Therefore, it does not make sense for me right now, but we live in hope.
To be honest, with a fourth-generation printer, they should have these problems solved and you are not the only one expecting a better outcome. I did some of the things you mentioned on Form 1!
You have saved me anguish and frustration, Fried, in particular, because of the same items we want to print.
Best regards,
Martin
Hi @Martin_Hill
Note that the mean the pricing for me locally is very high, but that might be due to the poor performance of our currency (about 20:1).
Look, it is a nice printer and seems to work. The only âfailed printsâ I had was when I was testing the early layer settings and the prints came loose. That did cost me a couple of resin tanks as they got damaged in the process.
If you are going to print things that are not square and perpendicular, then this printer is great. I printed a couple of thousand small parts for another client and it went without any issues.
But my opinion is that if you want to use this to print boxes, you will most likely not be very happy. That said, I have printed the following âboxesâ as well and they came out âacceptableâ
I see Fried, my designs would be rectangular/square but use a draft angle for the walls of the enclosures, as if they are intended for injection moulding. The idea is to make a small batch using the printer and then migrate to a production process later.
Well⊠It might just be helpful in that case
It is pretty much what I do, print to test form and function etc. Then print small batch but larger batches I still outsource due to the better surface finish on outsourced ones.
It normally takes me a couple of prints to get the design done, so in that case it is worth every cent as it will take me 2-3 weeks (and quite a bit of money as I am in South Africa) to get one iteration done should I not have the Form4.