Well I have had my Form 1+ a lot longer than my Form 2. After only three weeks I had to return my form 2 for a refurbished Form 2 that I have not received yet and have no clue when I am supposed to get it. I have had my Form 1+ for well over a year without too many issues and it still prints like a champ. I my opinion the Form 2 has to many “bells and whistles” that make you use their products and causes many possible points of failure. If a resin tank is sitting in the resin tank chamber then the machine should be able to recognize that. But no I had to continually lift the cartridge out and reinsert it, wait for the printer to verify the resin, which produces curing lines in the print because it pauses. At this point having clients that want their prints done, I need something else.
I would like to see Formlabs bring back the Form1+ as their low end unit and just seal up the optics. Would be a great base machine.
I’ve been using a Form 1 + at work for about 3 years. It worked great out of the box, though after a while had so many issues and at the end I could never get a nice clean print as there would always be misaligned peel lines and distortions. I really hated the peeling system.
Upgraded to a Form 2 only recently and it works great. Nice clean prints due to much better peeling system. I think it’s definitly worth the upgrade. Otherwise you could use 3d hubs and get other people to do your prints on their Form 2. Though I like having my own as so many mistakes can be made in the setup as well as noticing errors in my models and being able to reprint immediately.
I still use shapeways from time to time, though the problem I have with EFD or UFD is one side is smooth and the other extremely rough. I also get step lines on some parts of the prints…
I wrote this back a number of months ago before I purchased the Form 2. Best move I’ve made. It’s been running at 99.999% success. Only print issues have been self generated. I did have a couple of machine issues but that’s all in the past. I do scale items for my products which are scale model railroading buildings and accessories.
Here’s a photo of a recent print of a jumping bass fish. For size comparison it’s only .5" long and used in HO scale. Notice the detail in this print.
Actually this is the larger of two prints. The other is smaller by about 20%.
I can now answer this myself as we purchased a Form 2 last week and it arrived on Tuesday.
I’ve done 4 print runs now, 100% successful and lovely detail… this is a dream compared to the 1+ we had… an absolute dream.