Will it be possible to purchase premade colours in the future? I can see there being issues between batches colour matching if I carry out the colouring myself
Will it print at 25Ī¼m?
Yes it says it will work at 25Ī¼m, 50Ī¼m and 100Ī¼m
Weāre not planning on offering pre-made colors beyond the White, Grey, and Black Standard Resins available currently. The syringes are fairly easy to use and you shouldnāt have much issue color matching materials.
@kristian 25 micron layer heights will be available 
Will it work with the Form 1+?
Color Kit will only be available for the Form 2.
Couldnāt you just mix the dye and pour it in the vat?
Yep but weād need a profile for the Form 1+ to send it to the printer (or just pick whatever laser power is closest, e.g. āWhiteā, and cross your fingersā¦ that cowboy approach has worked surprisingly well in the past)
1 Like
I started with Form 2 so I guess I didnāt realize Preform would only allow you specific resin selections. I kind of assumed it was like running in open mode.
Recently used the color kit for the first time and the color comes out looking great. The problem I have is that this is mainly a prototyping machine and the kit isnāt exactly set up for color prototyping. Having to mix the full liter is a large expense. Instead, we mixed around 150 mL and printed in open mode. I strongly prefer not to print in open mode, so we are now emptying the color base into a secondary container for storage and putting the empty cartridge in the printer. It will attempt to dispense, not be able to (waste 20 minutes ugh) and then go on printing per usual.
Basically, I would want a way to print with smaller batches of mixed colors not in open mode and without my workaround, or at least without waiting an extra 20 minutes for the machine to give up on the empty cartridge (see other forum threads for that conversation).
4 Likes
Iām in the same boat as you in regards to having to use the entire cartridge. Ideally being sold an empty resin cartridge that can be configured to the color mixed would be great. Also, maybe the ability to clean out and re-configure used cartridges for the same purpose.
Technically this is possible, but coming up with a more streamlined workflow has proven challenging. If you were to empty the cartridge entirely and mix small segments then pour them back into the cartridge, that would work. Cleaning the cartridge when switching colors could prove challenging, and color accuracy may be limited with that technique.
One thing that would help the people with creating small batches would be the actual amount of resin in a new cartridge. We need that in order to properly scale down the color recipe. Iām assuming that itās not 1L and the colorants are what gets the total back to 1L total.
You need a multiple sectioned off cartridge that can hold multiple colors like a color printer. But then you would need a multiple sectioned off resin tray. And a movable x/y motion plarform as well.
FORM3ā¦
1 Like
Sure, the color base cartridges have 800mL in them, and if you want to math things out the resin runs about 1.1kg/L (this value isnāt exact so you might want to run your own tests).
This would make for a fun hackathon project and there was a kickstarter SLA recently that did something along these lines. Cross-contamination would be an issue with this though some sort of mechanical resin removal system like a blower might mitigate most of that.
Well if you guys allow us to āignore resin cartridge levelsā before a print starts, I would be perfectly happy with my current workaround
Then why not sell us empty cartridges that come pre-configured for the color we choose from the color guide? Say have an empty resin cartridge in the store with a drop down choosing the color from the color guide we intend to use? We appreciate the new tools provided, but require some refining to make practical.
1 Like
You wonāt get empty cartridges from Formlabs because people would use them with third party resins.
I would mix 200mL up and do a test in manual. Once you get it tuned in with manual mode and a small part you can mix the rest of the cartridge and print full scale.
The cartridge resin delivery sqeegy system is really old school. So over time the sqeegy loses its ability to hold in the resin. So it cannot slowly deliver resin at the proper amounts.
A much better system would be to use flow sensors.
So that is why the cartridges can only be used so long before the message comes up and the printer rejects the cartridge.
The cartridge is key to Formlabs vertical monopoly forcing us to use their resins Only.