I was so put off by some of the negative comments regarding the Form3 that I refused to pick up one. We currently have 6 Form 2’s and were pretty happy. Finally I broke down and had one shipped out. The Form3 is an absolute game changer. And I’ll tell you why:
In the past it was nearly impossible to get straight geometric parts. The peel forces were so great on the Form2 that as the part was built it slowly twisted ( mildly of course ) and deformed the piece of geometry such that you were really limited to what prototypes you could do. Little figurines weren’t such a problem because you would never notice very mild deformation on an organic shape like that. But our new project 1/4 scale engines was a disaster on the Form2’s. Straight or round cylinder heads etc never came out right.
Then comes the Form3. Because the Peel forces have been lessened so greatly all of the prints attempted have been spot on! We are so pleased. So instead of having to outsource to labs with polyjet machines ( no way on FDM for these parts ) for thousands of dollars we can do it all on the Form3.
You just have to hand it to the company, its such an evolution this new machine. I have had NONE of the problems folks have espoused on other threads. Have they been fixed somehow on the recent shipments? I have no idea. I know I sound like an ad but I’ve beat on the company when I thought it was due, fair is fair time to let folks know what a great job has been done with this new printer.
I fully agree with oberst3221 - the prints come flawless, if we exclude the first few attempts where I had to learn the technology for orienting object in PreForm, placing supports, washing and curing. The quality of details of my Form3 is just beyond other SLA printers.
My point is - Form3 is great, really my best purchase for last year
Basically a poor mans polyjet printer. Keeping in mind polyjet machines are about 20-150k. Prior to the Form3 that was the only way to get dimensionally accurate parts. Not any more!
Hey you got to call it as you see it: Formlabs hit a home run with the Form3 lets face it.
Thanks for the heads up.
We are constantly monitoring this forum to see when the F3 will be out of what we consider beta phase and evaluate the opportunity of purchasinng a first unit to test.
This is encouraging.
Hi, Fully agree to oberst3221. We have actually moved away from industrial jetting machine to Formlabs and loving it so far. The part quality is almost similar and in some respect better. Part accuracy is down but still good enough for us. Just have to rethink things that need to fit together. The projet could basically snap fit 0mm tolerance parts together where as with the Form3 I need about 0.2-0.3mm for things to slide together. The way it was launched is definitely questionable but regular firmware updates have solved most of the small issues we where having. Our Form 3 printed straight out the box and has been running almost 24/7 since November. No major issues. Still on the first tray. Looking forward to our 3L now which was our main reason for making the switch away from unreliable and $$$ industrial machines. We are located in the Netherlands and next to our main business we run a a print service. Form3 is a great machine and loved the LFS idea from the beginning.
Not so convinced - sometimes the Form 3 is better for a Job, sometimes the Form 2. Pity that FormLabs prematurely decided to cut the Form 2 production…
Ah, now I’m going to hope that I spot one of these on eBay used someday in the next few years.
I love my Form 2, but, I’ve had multiple problems where there’s loud thumping during the early layers when it goes to move the tray and peel. Eventually things calm down later in the print, but, it can be rather disturbing to hear it knocking
Since I’m not making engineering parts, just models and jewelry, I haven’t yet had issues with it causing easily visible deformities… but at least now I know why a few parts didn’t seem to line up quite the way I’d expected. At the time I had chalked up the problem to some issue with the original 3D file, but, perhaps it’s a bit more complex than that…
I think Formlabs sell a product with not really finished printing parameters.
That`s why they get negative feedback from the first user.
Till today some complicated parameters missing (White) to get good print.
Yes, the quality is very good and i like the F3 too.
So we have to wait and keep Formlabs engineer doing there work to finish all open task.
Than everone will be happy.
Yep. We’ve been monitoring the forum and threads regarding the F3 artifacts.
Clearly, this printer is not for us at this stage of its development as we print a lot of commercial parts with very thin details.
Too bad, because we have projects coming up requiring something like the build volume of a F3L.
