After some research, I decided to run a another project to allow Form2 to run 3rd party resin in a formlabs resin cartridge.
The main reason for me to start the project is that I don’t like @fantasy2 's approach of close source (like formlabs) My project will be fully open source.
I don’t know what @fantasy2 is doing but here is my research:
The formlabs resign cartridge pretty much has no encryption. It uses a one wire Maxim DS2431 EPPROM as a place to store information about the cartridge (type, ml used, etc). The data itself is encrypted and there seeems to be a checksum against the chip’s registration number so you can’t just write data from one chip to another.
However… one wire protocol is simple and easy to emulate, there is actually a arduino library out there to emulate one wire devices: https://github.com/orgua/OneWireHub and DS2431 is already fully implemented and tested. The emulation library emulates everything a chip does, including the chip id.
So here is my simple approach:
Write a software to pull chip content from existing Maxim chips, chip content and chip id.
Develop a method and documentation for an average person to connect to the two pins on a cartridge to a microcontroller and pull data using the software.
Write a data bank for the community to share chip content and chip id.
Write a software to run on the microcontroller to emulate the chip.
Develop a method and documentation on how to modify the cartridge to remove the Maxim chip and connects to a microcontroller. Also on how to use the software and swap out the content of the emiulated chip.
The microcontroller in question should be arduino so it is easy to get.
If the modification method involves 3d printed parts and I will share the stl and source.
Arduino costs about $15 each, and that’s all you need to modify the cartridge.
I think I will start another thread just for this, I will also make a github repository for all the files.
Will update my progress periodically, but I do have a day job so don’t expect it come very fast
Happy to see some competition in the space. I’ll probably end up with several devices before I get to where I’m satisfied. Best of luck to both of you!
Documenting the whole process on here hasn’t ended well in the past. Formlabs does watch this thread and will make changes to “protect” their hardware process.
I think the idea of being closed source so formlabs can’t do anything is just a excuse. Even the most mediocre engineer would figure out what we are doing here.
I think @fantasy2 is using the same idea anyway. This approach is so simple, you don’t need someone to write a documentation to figure out what we are doing.
There is really little formlabs can do to prevent us from doing this.
They could update the firmware and told us that all current produced resin cartridge are deprecated. (which they won’t do because it will make all their customers mad).
They could start recording the chip id in the machine. (Then you can just switch to a different chip in the chip bank)
They could start recording the chip in the cloud. (Then just unplug the machine from internet or block the machine’s access to internet from your router).
Or simply, you could just not update the firmware.
I don’t see any other way formlabs could prevent us from doing this that won’t cost them a significant amount of money/resource.
“security features” are implemented by engineers and engineers are human, electronics are not magic.
There is little formlabs could do to update “security features” to prevent my approach because they did a terrible job in the beginning to secure their product. (Or they might not intended to secure their product at all, checksum are probably just for data integrity check)
I thought out some “updates” they can do as listed above and our ways to defeat their update.
When they finish implementing their security update, we should have enough resource to do a proper decipher of their chip.
Yes, I think this is a get rich quick scam thing. Welcome on the forum.
There used to be a perfectly working approach. Why are people not using it anymore? Because there were updates stopping it. So why didn’t they just stick with old firmware? Because then they couldn’t use the full feature set of the machine that came with software improvements and they couldn’t use new released V3+ resins.
This is what’s going to happen and happened before. It’s a cat and mouse game. They just change something so you’d have to start over.
There are multiple of ways to work around this system. It’s probably too much effort for them to work them all out and fix them directly. But handing one of the approaches on a plate just makes it a lot less effort to implement in a new firmware release.
Do whatever you want. I have a complete package available for a fair price right now that has been tested throughly on multiple machines and is safe for the machine. No DIY hacking required and it would be way more expensive for non-hobbyists to do the DIY hack themselves anyway.
After this post
I slowly starting to believe that you are actually trying to defend your business of selling your own hack now…
I don’t want to judge people’s way of doing developments… But man… You don’t have to be too defensive…
formlabs know what you are doing, even when you are trying to hide it. They are proper engineers. I think your rest device is probably just a 1 wire protocol writer right? And you figured out formlabs’ way to encrypted(or probably even the unencrypted)way of writing the ml used in to maxim chip. formlabs figured it out and updated their encryption method. I took me just 15 minutes to figure out, how long would it take formlabs to figure it out?
It only cost $15 to buy a arduino for a non-hobbyist to do my hack, I don’t know why it would cost more.
Only thing you need to do is connect 2 wires to do my hack… I don’t understand the difficulty…
A simple firmware update cannot fix my hack.
Formlabs could:
Discard all currently produced cartridges and develop their own 1 wire chip: it would take years.
Record Chip ID in machine: does not work since you can just switch to a different chip data in the chip bank.
Record Chip ID in the cloud: unplug the machine from internet.
Other ways that I am not seeing, you can come up with one and we will figure out how, since we are open source, we can share information and figure out a solution for EVERYONE.
By the time formlabs have a proper fix for this hack, we would have enough resource to do a full decipher on their chip data. Why? Because we are open sourced.
Never underestimate Formlabs engineering. They are not stupid.
I don’t think we’re saying that you shouldn’t work on a solution. We’re saying that documenting the process on the manufacturer website can make it much easier to identify methods to eliminate your solution.
It would be like Volkswagen documenting emissions “strategy” on the EPA website here in the US.
I am sorry to say this… But you don’t really understand what I am talking about… I don’t think you really understand electronics.
We are discussing a 1 wire EPROM here… Not a car… There is only a certain amount of things can be done on a 1 wire EPROM.
My reasoning is that, no matter how we hide our way to hack a 1 wire EPROM, it would take 30 minutes max for formlabs to figure out how we hacked it. We need to figure out a way to hack the 1 wire EPROM in way that even formlabs know how we hacked it, it is close to impossible or every expensive to fix.
Instead of comparing this to a Car, you should compare it more to the NES or PS2 hack. The reason you see those 100 games in a cartridge hack in NES is that Nintendo decided to connect the cartridge directly to the BUS without any protection(not like they care about security back in the days). There is no way to fix it without modify the hardware. They know the hack and how the hack hacked it. They can’t fix it.
Same thing goes with all those 3rd party 2D printer cartridges. and etc…
Had a short discussion with a colleague and reviewed my way of hacking.
We don’t see any significant legal problems with my hack itself. There is also no reasonable way for formlabs to update their firmware to “fix” the hack.
Even if they decided to upload the cartridge id to the cloud when empty, we can still sniff and spoof the network traffic.
The content of the chip is however, formlabs’ copyrighted stuff so we can’t really host anything. The chip content bank will just be links to user provided stuff, or a github repository to keep it legal.
Uploading the chip content to the internet however, might be illegal.
So here is courtesy warning to @fantasy2 that you might be infringing formlabs’ copyright if you are providing their chip content to your customer. If you are using a different approach, you have nothing to worry about.
There is nothing wrong with @fantasy2 charging for his work as development and parts are a business expense. We need to maintain a more civil tone here than making subtle jabs at one another.
I think someone on here is way more full of themselves when it comes to understanding device security and DRM models than they should be.
How about this hypothetical… FormLabs could just decide to encrypt the entire contents of the chip and store a copy of the chip ID and checksum pair inside the printer as soon as you insert it. When a cartridge is loaded, the contents of the EEPROM is read and decrypted in the printer and the chip/internal table updated periodically. When a cartridge is first loaded that uses the old data spec, the printer converts it to the new spec and immediately writes the updated data back to eeprom then verifies it with an immediate read.
Failed write - fail the cartridge
Failed checksum comparison against internal - Fail the cartridge
Cartridge with old format that was previously converted - Fail the cartridge
No internet or cloud needed to lock you out and any attempt to manipulate the process results in a blacklisted cartridge that reports a fail. Oh, and since the new cartridges manufactured from that point forward utilize the fully encrypted spec, you are basically on a countdown timer until your “unstoppable” hack gets scrapped, perhaps at something like the resin shelf life cycle + 25% or so for good measure, thus killing your hack even if you do decide to go the route of spoofing the device IDs.
My point here is that the hubris of going on a manufacturer forum and telling folks that you have a plan for an unblockable hack while bashing someone for playing it (wisely) close to the vest is uncalled for and arrogant. All it serves to do is further motivate Formlabs to squash such efforts. The comparison of this to an old game console is about useless. Those platforms had no way to WRITE to the cartridges. The onewire device here is nothing more than a storage medium, so its not about the device at all in this case, its about managing the data format that is stored on it, and that is something Formlabs can most certainly change on the fly, so long as they maintain backwards compatibility for just long enough to allow previous generation cartridges to phase out.
There are still people using the ‘old’ device I made. They simply are not updating their form 2 anymore. There is no need really as all these 3rd party resins work perfectly on standard clear or grey V2 and V3 settings and the engineering resin which are mainly driving the updates are not really needed. After 2(I think?) year the form 2 is pretty bug free and runs fine.
Regarding the latest solution:
I wanted to let you all know that after a few months of work and testing by several people on the forum(thank you!), the modules are ready and I have them available for shipping right now.
They work great. I tested them with Photocentric 3D resin and others with ALW resins. Printing quality is much better and more accurate than in open mode.
Did anyone do any more testing with 3rd party resins? There seem to be a lot of new resin manufacturers popping up the recent months. I’m still looking for a high temp resin that can withstand about 160 C and isn’t a brittle as formlabs’s resin but more close to a material like PBT, PPA, etc.
Wow. I’ve been way out of the loop here for quite a while. Just binge-consumed this entire thread! Some really amazing work by everyone here. My hat is off to everyone but the hubristic douche that @David_Persuhn so eloquently pointed out
Hehe yeah, I think this is the longest thread so far.
If someone has the time, it would be interesting to update the list with the new resin manufacturers and improved resins for anyone new joining the party. A lot changed since this thread started!
It’s funny now that since I have a few bottles of cheaper resin, I print every custom small knob and whistle I need for private use without having to think about cost. Some resins are not as smooth or perfect as formlabs resin but you don’t always need that for hobby parts.
Hi all
Just to let you know that we have reformulated all our standard 3Dresyns, including our basic, special and custom RAL and NCS colors, to print directly in open mode with the settings for Formlabs Clear version 2.
We have fine tuned our 3Dresyns to work well with both, the first produced Form 2 printers as well as with last generation ones. We have done the tests with several Form 2 printers bought at different times.
The reformulation has been done because we observed that the optimum dosage of our Fine Tuners FT1 and LB1 varied a bit from one Form 2 printer to another, depending probably on the printer´s manufacturing date and software version. This printability variation with the Form 2 printers and software has been already discussed in the forums.
We have launched several interesting materials, including 3Dresyns with excellent temperature and chemical resistance without brittleness, some ultra safe monomer free resins, engineering functional materials, flexible and elastic materials foldable without breaking, etc,… Our new high deflection temperature resin is rigid and non brittle and resist temperature up to 290C.
