How do you find the right material

General Discussion
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Hi all – I work on our product marketing team at Formlabs.

I’ve been looking into how we display and organize our materials at Formlabs and I wanted to ask a few questions about how you as a user think about materials.

  1. Do you use the Formlabs Materials Catalog? If so which filters and features do you like / dislike?

  2. Do you use the Materials Compare Page? Do you find it helpful in finding the right material?

  3. What other Formlabs content do you use (if any) to help find the right material?

  4. What content outside of Formlabs do you use to help select a material? Are there content creators or video content that help you better understand properties and material performance?

  5. Are there properties or tests that are outside of the standard ASTM tests that you would like to see for our materials? (Think of things like torque-out stregnth of a fastener, drop testing, a loaded hook, etc.)

  6. Any other feedback you want to give on the topic?

Thanks in advance for any input!

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Yes. Love filtering by printer (I have Form 4) and “Engineering” application. Really helps me sort quickly to a shortlist.

Yes. I was drawn to Formlabs SLA by the engineering properties of the materials, having used FDM for a decade and “hobbyist” resin for three years. Recently, I wanted to draft parts in a cheaper resin prior to verifying in one of the tough resins. I had a minor preference for the Black V5 but overlaid the black and grey, and saw that grey just beat the black mechanically. As I was drafting a snap-fit part, this was important to me and overrode the visual preference I had for the black.

I also like comparing the different tough and durable resins. on that tool. However, now I have settled on a couple of materials, it might be a little while before I come back to that tool.

Not YT Shorts. Please invest in longer form, more technical content. One about support strategies for silicone resin really helped understand how challenging or easy it might be for an application I have. Your videos don’t have to be about finished use, they are just as compelling if you show us how to get high yield, high quality (minimal support marks and elephants foot etc) for a given material or part geometry. How about DFM for Formlabs SLA resin? Like building in channels to prevent suction cups, creating faces especially for printing straight onto the build plate and making post processing tidier, while saving us resin and time?

@leonhart88

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Aw thanks :folded_hands:

@efisher I’m happy to collab in a more official way if you guys are interested in sponsoring some useful things I’ve been wanting to document and create long form video for.

I know FL has sponsored a lot of hobby level creators in the recent year but there aren’t many people doing industrial work + content.

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Glad this question got asked.

  1. Do you use the Formlabs Materials Catalog?...yes, I use it. Having it linked inside Preform is definitely good, but it would be nice to have it stand out better (I tend to completely forget it’s under the user dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the application.)

  2. Do you use the Materials Compare Page? Absolutely, yes, I use this. Generally speaking, I’d like to see any remaining gaps / missing values in the material data addressed.

  3. What other Formlabs content do you use (if any) to help find the right material? The material’s linked information under “Learn More” via the Material Catalog.

  4. What content outside of Formlabs do you use to help select a material? Are there content creators or video content that help you better understand properties and material performance? I’ve compiled an Excel sheet with mech props for FL resins, Loctite resins and various filaments as an internal resorce for matching AM materials and processes with customer requirments. It’s incomplete, labor-intensive and just not very efficient to use/maintain..

  5. Are there properties or tests that are outside of the standard ASTM tests that you would like to see for our materials? (Think of things like torque-out stregnth of a fastener, drop testing, a loaded hook, etc.) Drop testing, yes.

  6. Any other feedback you want to give on the topic? I have 2 Bambu Lab P1S’s and an H2D; Bambu has generously complied a handy PDF on their Filament Guide page. For grins, I fed it to ChatGPT to get it to make a good/ better/ best material recommendation by explaining customer requirements/application details, etc. I feel like a FormbotGPT inside Preform that can accomplish this kind of thing is a pretty obvious enhancement. So, TL;DR: ChatGPT material recommender in Preform. (oh, and it should definitely know about $/ml to make cost effective recommendations. Just saying.)

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Hey,

  1. yes I’m using it, it’s helpful, (especially the price filter :wink: )

  2. I’m also using the compare page and have found it useful.

  3. I mostly read your papers about design.

  4. I watch YouTube channels (including the Formlabs channel) and read blogs.

  5. Nothing specific stands out. Tests are helpful, but I think real use cases are better.

  6. I created my own material list to compare properties versus price, not only for Formlabs resins

    obraz
    obraz2834×918 435 KB

If you don’t count price, your resins are really good.

For example, in a direct comparison between prints from Anycubic ABS-like Pro V2 (on the M7) and your Standard Black V4 (on the F3),

  • your black is a solid black, while Anycubic black (both ABS-like and Tough) is translucent up to 2-3 mm thick only then does it appear black.
  • Your black resin has a better surface texture and feels nicer to the touch. However, that might be due to the different print technologies (SLA vs. mSLA).
  • Your resin is a bit more brittle, but it’s a standard type.

I can not make compare resins on similar level (like Tough 1500/2000 vs any other vendor) because I don’t have T1500.

I’m thinking about writing blog/article about my subjective opinion about. Topic is quite interesting. Properties of your resins are visible and stand out from others.
From other vendors on my list I see that JAMGHE and Rigid 100 stand out. I have it but not opened it.

I have plan to test your resins on Anycubic M7 it could give more accurate comparison, but currently I’m limited on $$$ so it must wait. It could be beneficial to test other resins on your printer but open mode is beyond my financial reach

So I’m prosumer, who create and print functional stuff for myself. No money from this.

Best Regards,

Sebastian

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Hi Evan,

I’m currently researching the right resins for my products (motorcycle accessories). I have absolutely no experience in engineering, so a lot of the numbers in the catalogue pretty much go over my head, even though I’ve been doing this for about 4 years now. I’ve watched just about all of FormLabs videos on the YouTube channel, which is super helpful for product demonstration on the printers and hardware, but I feel resin demonstration is severely lacking. The typical resin/fdm demonstration (Izod, elongation, etc) - I literally have no idea how to apply any of that in my designs. One thing that does help me understand resin performance is real world or common examples of what the resins can do - relatable things. There was a video in the spring of this year announcing Tough1500 v2 - where the CEO throws a steel ball at a panel. I don’t understand modulus’ or elongation at breaks - but I get a heavy ball being thrown at a panel. The numbers are important, but maybe these types of ‘everyday’ demonstrations should be put at the top of the ‘funnel’ to draw more understanding in what the resins can actually do. Just like Seth Godin says, “people don’t want a 1/4 inch drill bit, they want a 1/4 inch hole”. Show me the real world applications and then let me dive in deeper to see the techno-mumbo-jumbo engineering stuff

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Thank you all! The input this was super helpful.

I was suprised to hear that several of you are pulling together big spreadsheets to cross compare materials from a bunch of places. Would be helpful to have a csv or spreadsheet so that you can copy and paste these more easily? I’m thinking something like this sheet that you could just download from the materials comparison page. There are some more recently tested properties in this sheet that haven’t made it onto our official TDS’s just yet, but we are working on updating those as well.

I also totally hear the need for some relatable tests like the ball and panel test from the last keynote as a more relatable alternative to ASTM tests to help ground how our material perform. I tried to make a somewhat scientific drop test to try with 3 of our tougher materials – let me know if you would want to see more materials compared in this way, or if you have any suggestions for imrovements or other materails tests.

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Those kinds of videos! Holy crap, the Tough1500 drop!!! Incredible.

I was thinking about why there aren’t many videos of form resins out on Youtube, and I considered that most users likely have proprietary parts that can’t be shown publicly. I think showing where some resins fail, and others succeed or where one resin might be overkill and another is good enough are the types of videos that show what the resins can do.

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