Big sample parts on website = bigger printer forthcoming?

General Discussion
1

Hi folks,

Today I noticed Formlabs is featuring prints on their website that seem significantly larger than before. Specifically the mister (yellow durable shaped like a bottle of Windex) and squeeze bottle (black flexible, looks like a drinking bottle).

I don’t see seams in the middle of the models. Were they somehow shoehorned to fit the Form 2 build volume, or are they hints that Formlabs has a bigger printer under wraps?

2

Those were all printed on a Form 2, but they’re both multi-part models

I’m not sure about the mister, but the squeeze bottle is a model of three parts:

  • Lid (flexible)
  • Screw-on ring (tough)
  • Main bottle volume (flexible)

The build volume is surprising large if you put your parts along its diagonal!

3

I’ll take the liberty of hijacking this thread to show off our latest final product which went through many iterations of prototyping on the Form 2, to now full fledged product which we are injection molding 10,000 count for our first run! It is also related to this thread as there are several parts that are right at the platform size or larger.

prototype1.jpg1027×626 289 KB

These are all of the parts which makeup the counter-top water filter. Red Arrows show where I conjoined two pieces with a combination of a tiny bit of super glue, and resin. There were many hurdles to overcome, I will highlight a few here.

  • The larger white filter is 6.9" tall with the supports. I had to minimize support/base heights and ended up being able to print at a 3% angle so it would not be flat against the PDMS.
  • The tall black piece is almost 11 inches tall, it is two pieces conjoined in the middle with a few dabs of super glue, resin, lots of UV light and tons of sanding! (I need to get a UV pen light)
  • smaller black piece (spout) was a challenge because of its hollow interior and it needing to be injection molded. We decided to split it horizontally so that piece consists of a lid and a base with threads. The two were conjoined the same as above.

prototype2.jpg1134×1549 926 KB

Altogether it looks pretty good and is completely leak proof (obviously we did not drink the water)

  • Kevin
5 Likes
4

Thanks. Cool shots, @kevinduhe!

5

(image borrowed from cheese.egg)

I respectfully bow at 45° for the prototypes!

A question conderning 3°: that works well? As all of us have painfully learnt a 0° planar surface looks grotty and is a no-go.

1 Like
6

@mdrm, LOVE IT.

@kevinduhe, nice work, and congratulations!!!

7

I apologize for the delay @mdrm, I have been traveling for the last week. I didn’t want to do do 0° for obvious reasons. I tried as much of an angle as I could, however any more than 3° with the supports added and it threw the overall height out of bounds. So it was either 3° or split the item which I didn’t want to do either. So I tried 3° and it worked…thankfully!