can the resin used in your printer be used for direct casting for jewellery?
Hey Joan,
Right now, we have not yet tested our neutral grey resin for burnout or casting. We have received a lot of inquiries about this, and we will be sure to post an update when we have more information.
- The Form Team
This will be the deciding factor if I buy the Form 1 or not.
Hey Formlabs crew!
If you received a lot of inquiries (I’m sure you do!), and for many like the guy above me this is a deciding factor,
why aren’t you testing it?
Surely this is one of the most common professional application intended for your printer, I don’t know people who would spend over $3000 to print themselves toys or gyrocubes…
Start experimenting please!
Hi,
I asked to the support team if they can send me a piece of resin to make some proves in my workshop to see if I can get direct casting with that, but get no response.
It will be great for the jewellers that are searching for this technology to come to know the results with this particular resin.
so , please, Formlabs crew, let me make the test or give it to other to do it, but tell us if we can use it for casting !! PLEASE
atg Troupkos
Hello
I need to know if the resin used in your printer can be used for direct casting for jewellery?
Wich is the size of the Formlab? Is it noisy? I could not figure out from your videos!!!
@atg Troupkos All the answer to your questions are already here.
@Joan: I think they mush have tested it a lot because they know how important it is, and therefore reason they don’t say is because they hadn’t made it work, if it was possible they would have published it immediately.
I guess they are trying to develop a special resin just for that purpose.
I’m sure the Form team will have a range of resins available down the road that will address all sorts of needs relating to the material properties of the final print. In the meantime you can always have a silicon mould made of your piece which usually runs around $30 at most casting companies which will allow you to make how ever many wax duplicates you need. Of course your design has to take into consideration the limits imposed by the mould, but if you’re at all considering making multiple pieces of a design, you’re most likely going to be using this process to produce your work anyway. The only reason you would need to go directly to casting with your print is if the design is too complex to be moulded or if you only want to produce one piece.
Best / Travis
As A jeweler it would be nice to cast directly, but it would be fine with have to make molds off the printed parts. And as Jewelers you should all know that you are going to have to make molds anyways to clean up any defects in the printed part, I for one expect there to be some porosity in any printed part made from a $3,000 printer
I don’t know about the rest of the jewelers on this form but I am not making a mold of ever thing I print! I will be doing a casting test in the next couple of days to see if resin will cast. I will post the results when I get them.
@Bob Krug. - please post your findings when you can Bob. I am also interested to learn if the current material can be burned out without leaving a ton of debris behind. I’m still waiting for my printer to arrive and I’m anxious see what’s possible. I’m sure the Form team will develop something in the future but that could take some time.
just use the goddam B9Creator’s red resin if this won’t burn out for jewelry casting… someone already tested printing it and it works real well, is much cheaper, you can give business to B9C when you buy their resin and put it out of stock for B9C users 
Derek L, do you work or B9 or something? You seem to enjoy suggesting that machine and resin on the forums here.
I saw on another post (http://support.formlabs.com/entries/23880813-Show-your-Form-Space) that John Morewood is using the B9 Red Resin but I don’t know what kind of success he’s been having. Apparently the B9 resin can be used for casting but I have no idea how well that resin would work on the Form 1.
I have no affiliation to B9C whatsoever… just a frustrated Form1 support still waiting for my printer but decided to buy a b9c also and got it within 2 months of ordering it
I think this resin might not suitable for jewelry, so the burnout property is the least of our problems. We need a resin with a high pigment content to get sharp small details and be able to print at 0.025 layer thickness. (Something similar to b9c cherry red that they are testing now) I did some prints of rings with detail on both sides of the ring, but only one side prints with sharp detail, the other side prints with detail smoothed out, like the resin was stuck on and was somehow cured. I tried orienting at different positions, but no luck getting all around detail. I will post some pics soon.
Looks like orienting the rings vertically with minimum number of supports, thin supports (1.5) and thin touch points (0.3), yields the best results. Although the software does give you warnings, it prints just fine so far. I think custom support points and moving the supports around is a must feature that Form Labs should give us in the next update, along with a resin specially formulated for jewelry.
You can for sure use the clear resin to do lost-wax casting.
Would love to see how the special resin would compare.
This is important to me also, I have been shipped to defective printers already and in a month when my third finally arrives I will be testing this in posting the results. I will also be testing the B9 resin in the form 1 and let everyone know how it works I also have some maker juice ordered
Hey Kevin,
We are already testing the b9 resin. Looks promising.
Check it out https://formlabs.zendesk.com/entries/27234527-Some-test-jewelry-prints-rings
Oh and don’t bother with the makerjuice. It’s not castable.