Today, we’re excited to announce the next generation of our resin 3D printer - Form 4 and Form 4B!
Turn your ideas into reality faster than ever. Form 4 highlights include:
Blazing fast print speeds: Prints two to five times faster than Form 3+ depending on the material, enabling same-hour iteration or batch production with masked stereolithography (MSLA) technology.
Complete most prints in under two hours and small parts in minutes of cycle time.
Achieve maximum vertical print speeds of 100 mm per hour.
Low Force Display™ (LFD) print engine: A departure from laser and galvanometer technology, Form 4 features an ultra-high power backlight (16 mW/cm2), proprietary release texture, Light Processing Unit 4 (LPU 4), and dual-layer, flexible film resin tank.
Unmatched reliability: Industry-leading print success thanks to validated print settings, precision heating, force sensing, and debris detection.
Stunning parts that always fit: With 50-micron pixels, highly collimated light, advanced pixel smoothing, and light touch supports, Form 4’s print quality is unmatched.
Intuitive to use: Anyone can learn to print in 15 minutes – featuring automatic resin handling, instant material changes, automated post-processing, and quick release build platform technology.
40% lower cost per part: Delivering affordability with long-lasting resin tanks (75,000+ layers) and Light Processing Unit (1M+ layers), lower resin pricing, 30% larger print volume, and 3.5 times higher throughput.
The usual responses. I recall the same when the FL3 was released.
If you dont need it and are happy with the FL3+ then dont buy it.
I too, really dont need the speed, as I print overnight.
There will be an onslaught of FL3s on sale on eBay very soon. Good time to get a 2nd machine at a low price. If you do, then you can run two or three FL3s and beat out the FL4. printing more even at a slower speed but better throughput.
In time, I know I will buy an FL4 to replace my FL3+ like I replaced my FL2.
The only issues I have with buying a FL3+ on eBay is the warranty.
I have had several of these fail within a year. Warranty replaced the failed machine with another.
Without the warranty it would be costly to replace.
The warranty for mine expired in January I believe - it has a very low print count. I only got to use it for like six prints. - unfortunately, the place that I live makes it difficult to do 3-D printing, especially with the fumes and dealing with IPA and such so otherwise I love the printer and it’s worked flawless every time so far
My Elegoo Jupiter resin stinks so I have it vented.
The only FL resin that used to stink was the old elastic resin.
Otherwise, no problem with Gray 4, clear, white and tough 1500.
Just because you cannot smell the fumes doesn’t mean they are not there; get one of those devices that tells you the air quality and see what it says when using the printer.
Wear PPE such as gloves and a respirator if you value your health.
So we’re moving from a laser to an LED array, so there’s a tonne more competition now and Formlabs are a coming in cold. I was looking to move from the F3 to an F4 but I’ll be holding off to see if the Formlabs premium is worth the investment still. It’s probably a good move, but as it’s a whole different beast now I worry us users will be doing all the troubleshooting and testing again while they find their feet, I can’t afford to do all that again. Might wait for the F4+
I print organic models so surface finish and crisp details are everything. The 50 micron XY resolution is a concern, there are so many high-res machines out there now that this isn’t an impressive figure. Hopefully the F4 will still sit above the other printers in terms of print quality and reliability, if I see this then I’ll likely got for the F4 (or F4+ later on) as the materials are still superior IMO. Will the array be upgradable later? It says it can be replaced easily, suggesting we may be able to upgrade it when a higher-res array is produced.
I like the steel trays - any info on sustainability? Do we replace the tray or the film? Prices? Bit of missing info here that I’d need before buying.
Does it say anywhere what the wavelength for the LEDs is? Just thinking, LED machines out there now are open for us to use resins from any manufacturer, does the F4 being LED mean we can now use other resins (highly doubt it but worth the ask)? If it’s different then can these new resins be used in the Form3, if the same then can we use compatible resins? I feel like one of these answers should be yes.
There is a lot more to achieving great surface finish and fine features than the pixel size. With an excellent backlight and well tuned settings, there is very little improvement from going to smaller pixels, but the smaller pixels come with a trade off in print speed.
Yeah my first thought was to try to get a sample part, but they are there to illustrate the material properties. They don’t specify the printer or settings used to produce them which currently makes that a moot point in this case.
I am optimistic Formlabs have done the R&D needed to make the Form4 worth the premium and I do hope they’ve found the best of both worlds (speed of LED, quality of laser - I do understand it’s not all about pixel size), I’m just sceptical and nervous based on how the previous printer releases have gone and my own experiences with Formlabs - eg I’m on my third Form3 printer (it was 3 over 18 months, my refurb im left with is the best of all of them) and lost a tonne of time to troubleshooting with them over it, which as a small business I can’t afford to lose and which is a common story. The whole point of premium machines is simplicity of use, quality of output and reliability, so a complete change of the tech used has me reasonably nervous about reinvesting.
I too hope that more testing has been done this launch around as the early adopters for the F3 and 3L not only had to spend a lot of frustration but also paid a higher price to be an early adopter than those who would get into it after the price drop, which is usually the other way around.
I have high hopes for the F4 though - there seems to be some pretty strong design decisions that tackle some of the pitfalls of the F3 design.
Also the wavelength is still 405nm AFAIK, which is necessary to have compatibility with their other resins anyway.
