Hi,
I checked this forum multiple times while waiting the few months before my printer arrived, looking for threads like this.
I just wanted to say my Form 2 has been incredible. It has never failed me yet, has won me clients, and sent me down a new money making path in the month that I have had it.
Thank You,
Carl
Carl,
Thanks for the kind words. It’s great for everyone at Formlabs to hear that feedback.
If you can, share some of your successful applications/prints on the forum so we can learn about what you are doing with it.
Thanks,
Max
I received my form 2 several weeks ago and have printed in clear and white. So far, 100% success also. I am very pleased and waiting for other resins and tanks to arrive.
.
I am tracking with a modified version of a spreadsheet created by another user on the forum.
Richard,
That spreadsheet looks interesting. Why do you track prints like that? Have you tried Dashboard? Does it/could it serve the same purpose?
I use Dashboard mainly for notifying me when prints are done. I also use this spreadsheet to track cost of my prints in terms of resin, reservoir consumption, amortization of the printer cost. I can apply an overhead rate and a profit markup. This gives me info to no what my pure cost is and how much room I have on pricing for customers. The original version of this was created by another owner and posted elsewhere on this site. I downloaded his an modified it to fit my needs.
The biggest unknown is how many hours of printing life I should expect to get from the Form 2. Have you done any accelerated life testing on the printers to project their functional life?
With a one year warranty, 24 hours per day would be 8760 hours. My costing is based on 3,000 hours of printing before the machine gives up the ghost. I don’t know if this is high or low, it works out to $1.17 per hour. I forget whether I had sales tax in the printer price.
This spreadsheet accounts for trays lasting for two liters on average and the various costs of the resins. I am not accounting for print platform consumption at this point as they are pretty durable.
Does your spreadsheet take profit margin into account?
Get pro service and the life of the machine is limitless for 495 annually.
Yes it does, It has the option for an overhead rate% and markup%, both can be 0% to whatever you want for your business.
When I was in the computer business we applied overhead against labor hours, the rate was often several hundred percent. Since the machines are fairly automatic I apply it to the cost of the print. My cost includes amortizing the printer (machine $) over an estimate of useful hours, resin consumed, platform consumption. Whatever that number works out to be gets marked up by the overhead % to cover other costs and then is marked up by profit %. Depending on how badly I want the job, the overhead % and margin % can be adjusted.
The thing I am not accounting for yet, is how involved the post processing is. Some parts are very easy to remove supports without risking damage, others are much more time consuming.
