I recently got delivery of the Form1+ (upgraded) and a bottle of black resin and decided to put it to test.
I’m blown away by the results. The form1+ is a different beast that’s for sure. My form1 was nice, but the prints I’m getting right now using the form1+ are incredible. I showed it to a few customers of mine and they thought it was done on an envisiontec machine.
The form1+ is now MUCH better than the b9 in my opinion (and way cheaper). The surface quality is amazing, and there are barely any stepping lines (and I have yet to print on the 25 micron setting). The surface quality is 10 times better than it shows in the images, because of the sharpness of my lens, and the lighting setup.
The formlabs team did an incredible job with this machine, and I hope they never stop improving it. Now all we need is a castable resin and this machine will become a jeweler’s best friend. Forget the rest and stick with the form1+!
If anyone has reservations about upgrading their machines to the form1+, don’t wait and do it now. You won’t be sorry.
Thank you so much for this post. My printer is about to go in for repair/upgrade. This make the expense of the shipping a lot less painful. Nice photos, well done.
You’re welcome LucasRay. I think once more people start getting the form1+ upgrades, there will be more pictures posted of successful high quality prints.
I have been printing for a few clients these few days, and they are actually blown away with the quality. Of course I can’t share those prints on the forums
Awesome stuff Monger, and I agree. Since getting the Form1+ the prints have been much more reliable and so good. We are printing in clear and they have been great even on out 100 micron prints. Your prints have me excited for some black and for some 50 micron prints.
Q: have you put a caliper on these to test dimensional accuracy yet? Having an awesome surface is of course great, but I don’t hear a lot about how well the Form1+ holds tolerances. I’m still waiting for mine to arrive, so literally all I know about it comes from this forum.
Considering how the laser light must shine through the tray bottom at an ever-steeper angle the further it moves away from the tray center (e.g. away from the vertical), I’ve been wondering if accuracy can suffer based on this angle of impingement. Seems like a refraction angle from the tray itself might also come into play here as well. With the laser passing into the resin at an angle, it seems like it would be cooking a more and more elliptical crosssection as the angle increases. My guess is that sizes increase non-linerarly as you move away from the tray center. Can any Formlabs folks (or users) comment on that?
While I don’t print any engineering type of pieces that need to be very accurate, I can tell you that the form1 is very accurate if it’s calibrated correctly. Some people had issue with bad galvos in the past that were doing all sorts of weird things, but I never had a problem with that. With the previous form1, I did notice that if I put the print right smack in the middle of the build platform, then I will get the most accurate print. With the form1+ though, I printed the cross in two locations, one in the middle and one at the edge and they both came out perfect. I measured one of the ring prongs that is supposed to be 0.5mm and it turned out 0.475 by 0.465. So there is a little shrinkage that I would say has to do with the resin, and that can be adjusted in PreForm by scaling a little.
I print things that depend on dimensional consistency. The brand new printer I waited 6 months for was pretty good. I could print a doughnut shape and a tight-tolerance center piece that rotated. When that printer died, I was given a refurbished printer. The same print could not even be assembled unless they were printed in the correct orientation for assembly, but then would not rotate because of the ellipse shape. I’m sure it less that perfect galvo calibration that caused it. On average things always seem to be a little larger than they should be, in PreForm it appears the center of the laser travels along the perimeter of the layer, which you would think would add a half-laser width to everything. That seemed true for me, but apparently not Monger Designs.
Can you recall the orientation of the prong relative to the tray X-Y origin while printing? For instance, say the prong was located @ 50mm in X, and 0mm in Y, my assumption would be the X dimension of the prong itself would be .475mm, and the Y dimension of the prong would be .465mm (which would support my hypothesis). I’m not understanding the case for an asymetrical shrink factor.
@JoshK
Granted, but assume they are perfect for this thought experiment. My question is, does this elliptical distortion occur due to the angle of the light, irrespective of the accuracy of the galvanometers.
It was a small print and both times it was in the center, so my issue was not the angle of the light. Maybe it’s just because my stuff is small, but the galvo error is the only real issue I have had. I have not blamed the angle of the light for problems, but I have wondered too. It just doesn’t seem to get blamed.
I haven’t printed on 25 microns yet. The surface quality is so good on 50 that I doubt 25 will be a huge improvement, but I will give it a try in a few days and post the results.
