As someone considering buying a Form1, I’d like to get a sense of how the product is doing now that it’s been out awhile and folks have had a chance to use it. How are delivery times? How are the new resins? How has service been? I read about problems on the forums, but are these a fair representation of the average user’s experience with the Form1?
Forrest,
I am getting ready to post a large “first 3 weeks of ownership” post. But the consensus is, for me, an amazing product. Design is incredible, workflow is straightforward, and people are captivated by the quality. My prints haven’t been without error… but that is going to be true of any printer, and most all of it is due to setting up the actual print correctly to prevent known issues. AKA bridging, supports, etc.
I can tell you that it blows any plastic printer out of the water as far as quality and ease of use. If it is within your budget, I don’t know any other printer that can match it. Keep your eye out for other companies working to deliver similar products… and third party resin companies. They will help sway your decision.
Forrest - Ryan is right, the Form1 is an amazing machine - beautiful inside and out, and so far it’s pretty much unique, there are currently no other comparable Stereolithography machines for the price. There is the B9C - but that has a smaller build envelope, there’s also the Solidator, and the Pegasus from fslaser - but those have only just finished their kickstarter campaigns and it remains to be seen how well they work.
The Form1 does have a lot of issues, and I have posted here frequently about them. I’m also fundamentally at odds with the Formlabs strategy on dealing with those issues - I think they should be giving customers some agency in maintaining their machines, whereas they don’t document any useful maintenance/troubleshooting at all, and their standard response so far to anyone trying to fix issues themselves without having to go through the whole returns process is; “you will void your warranty”.
However - that said, their returns process is easy and fast, and free if you’re not international, in which case there is a small fee (I had to pay £41 in the UK). The official warranty is currently only a short 3 months, but they have indicated this is currently flexible, and one of the early backers has already posted about how they replaced his machine months after the warranty expired (his second replacement).
There simply isn’t any competition (so far).
Kevin.
Kevin,
I saw the Pegasus in person at the Burbank 3d printer expo. The print quality is inferior compared to the form1. It just looked bad. Still better than FDM printers, but I was not impressed.
MD - yes their pictures on Kickstarter looked poor in comparison to the parts from my machine, but then pictures are sometimes hard to judge. It’s very interesting to hear from someone who’s seen their parts in person.
Another thing that concerns me about the Pegasus is their apparent scheme to lock you to their resin, by requiring codes from resin bottles be applied before every print. I guess the machine does some sort of volume calculation and once a litre is used up it won’t print until a new code from a new bottle is entered. It just seems such an utterly ill-advised idea. Their last comment regarding this in the kickstarter comments section was 21st Jan and was basically “we neither confirm nor deny the existence of bottle codes”.
These comments are really helpful. How are they doing these days with delivery times?
That’s too bad about the bottles. I didn’t like the feel of their resin on the printed pieces. Little too rubbery maybe.
Hands down the best quality out of any of the SLA/DLP printers at the show were the Envisiontec printers though. They had some prints done of tiny (1cm x 1cm) cubes that were made up of a fine cage and it was beyond impressive. The level of detail was astounding. They also had some rings printed and those looked flawless. I’m really happy with my Form1, but seeing those prints made me want to pickup one of those machines. Maybe the prices will come down this year. They are already selling them for 10K on Amazon.