I’m not sure why they haven’t responded. I’m guessing they have heard about the issue before or just don’t have an answer that they feel people will understand. Very frustrating though.
Hi -
Apologies for reviving what’s seems to be an old topic. I am hoping someone can shed some light on a key point I seem to keep missing.
I am looking into investing in a Form4 ecosystem. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with closed systems, in fact, I often prefer this. I need tools to simply work and do not have time to fiddle and tinker with tools to make them work. Part of the reason I invested in Ultimaker when I bought FDM printers.
My concern is not with the capital investment, nor is it with the longer term running costs of Formlabs consumables eg. resin tanks, but what I simply am finding no solution to, is the cost of the Resin. Unfortunately as great is this printer seems to be, the resin cost will be the direct factor determining the cost of the parts printed. I have spent weeks looking at printers and consumables and the fact remains that printing the same part on Form4 will cost me 3x as much as printing it on something like Prusa SLS1 or HeyGears. Yes I chose Prusa and HeyGears for this comparison in a feeble attempt not to be crucified for comparing FL to other cheap brands 
The problem IMHO is the cost of the resin and I can find no way around it. It pushes up the price per part by too much and clients cannot care less about my ease of use and wonderful experience I had using the system, to them the bottom line is well… the bottom line. The cost of the part is what is deterring two of my larger clients from purchasing parts produced using this system.
I REALLY hope I am missing something as I would love to invest in this, but if the clients are not prepared to pay the price for the parts, I guess it is what it is.
Many thanks in advance!
Friedl.
There are 3rd party sellers of the resin tub that bypasses having to use the required Formlabs resin. They are of course not cheap, and I believe you have to pay the provider again after a certain amount of uses for them to reset the use count, but back when I had the Form 3, it was still much cheaper to buy that with 3rd party resin than to be handcuffed and extorted by Formlabs prices.
Hi @Antone80
I will look into it, thanks. As I mentioned I have no issue with buying (and paying a premium for) proprietary products in which a lot of R&D went into, but the problem it that even without taking other consumables into consideration, the cost per part is simply too high.
To make matters worse, this is the case even if I 100% trust the estimates provided by Preform and NOT factoring in any wastage. I have been offered some discount by the local agents, but 10% at 30L of resin is not helping much unfortunately. Our cost/L here is around $148 (for standard grey resin) including local tax… this is simply too high to be competitive.
Regards, Friedl.