Hey, I’m leaning to pulling the trigger on a Form 4B. Seems like Form 4 is a major technological leap from Form 3/+. However, I am concerned that post processing may be more difficult on the Form 4 vs Form 3. It seems Form 4 might have higher peel forces and thus may require thicker supports. Anyone notice a difference? I’d be printing in the bio resins, most likely bio durable. Previously I used a Form 1 and Form 1+.
If your last printer is Form 1, Form 3 and 4 would feel like jumping from 2008 fliphone to 2020s smart phone…
That being said, if you are worried about post processing, I cannot recommend any Formlabs SLA product. Post-processing is way more work that messing with Preform supports then clicking print. Durable is especially bad at curing accurately and can warp in the wash and in the cure.
Many of my projects involves now 2 hours or clicking on preform, 2 hours washing and drying, 1-2 hours curing, then 1-2 hours sanding support marks; many hours of effort for just sometimes a couple hour print for a part in hand. I do think this process is mostly identicle for Form 4 and 3, the support marks are only different from an academic point of view, the post-processing cycle has mostly not changed.
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Also keep in mind that the Form 3 and Form 4 require an Open Materials License in order to use third-party resins. As Formlabs has bio-resins, it may not be a big deal. But if you are trying to use third-party resins, it is a $2,499 license fee to use them (down from $5,999 for the license only).
As a Form 2 owner, I did not know this was a thing.
Depending on what resin you are using, I think you will find the supports to be easier to deal with. While the peel forces are a bit higher, the increase in strength in a lot of the V5 resins more than makes up for it. I generally get away with about half the supports I use in a Form 3 print. It’s enough of a difference where I now have quite a few parts that need no finish work right off of the printer, as I can keep support markoff to non-critical or non-visible areas. It varies a lot by resin and part shape, but so far it mainly seems to be a noticeable restriction only on the flexible resins. My time in preform is a bit longer (generally 10-15 minutes for support placement) as we’ve switch to 100% manual supports. it’s well worth it though, because with manual supports we get away with A LOT less then the automatic placement. On the 3 it was only a tiny bit less and wasn’t worth it. Incidentally the cure cycles for the v5 resins also tend to be a lot shorter. This is the first printer we’ve been able to use for viable production work.
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@jamesp is the accurate response. Getting skilled with manual supports is beneficial. I’ve printed hundreds of parts with Durable and can confirm that fine features and dimensional tolerance is much better on the Form 4. The most important thing with Durable is ensuring you follow the wash/cure procedures to the letter. And make sure you’re using near-virgin 99% IPA in the wash. The latter is most critical.