I haven’t tried any of them yet but 3DResyns do a lot of functional resins, some of which might have the properties you’re looking for. Here’s their website: www.3dresyns.com. They’ve got just a few videos on YouTube & Vimeo demonstrating their impact strength etc. which might be of interest.
I looked at the 3dresyns website a few times and (apart from the price) it looked almost too good to be true. On face value their resins have all the qualities I want. I’ll first see how far I get with a 1:4 mixture of tough and rigid, and if that doesn’t work I’ll give them a try. I’m a bit wary of open mode which I haven’t used before.
Yes I totally agree with all of that! I’m quite excited to give some of them a try but as you say: it is costly stuff. The website is a bit lacking in technical info and I also can’t find a properties matrix for their resins to make choosing the right one a bit easier. I’ve just emailed them to see whether they have a matrix that they can send me.
It’ll be interesting to see how you get on with the mix of tough and rigid.
1 Like
The guys at 3D resyns are really proactive and respond well to email.
Their resins still have some trade off’s but are worth trying. They can recommend the best option for your application.
@mrwakefield please share any tech info that you get from 3dresyns.
@FredB thanks for the reassurance. I’ll contact them to hear what they suggest for my application.
Please let us know how you make out with 1:4 mixture of tough and rigid!
@Patronus how did your 1:4 mixture of Tough and Rigid turn out? Very curious to know if it gave a ratio of properties or had adverse effects.
Thanks!
@digby @Rob_Steinberg I haven’t tried tough and rigid yet. So far I mixed 1:4 tough and black and the result was really beautiful parts but not much stronger than black on its own. At least not in terms of drop test. A few days ago I did 1:3 tough and grey pro, which actually prints more reliably than grey pro on its own and the parts came out beautiful! However, again, my test part shattered when dropped.
At this point it’s worth explaining my very scientific drop test ;-). I print the Form Labs rook and drop it on a tile floor from 1.5 metre. It’s ideal for that purpose because there are so many bits that can break off at different impact levels. I yet have to print one which didn’t lose some bits on every drop and split on half after three or four drops.
Maybe my expectations of tough are too high, or perhaps it loses its magic when mixed with a brittle product.
I’ll make a point of trying tough and rigid together and let you guys know.
That was my thinking when reading your last post in this thread. From my experience, well-cured Tough is still brittle enough to fracture when dropped on hard floors from a desk height let alone 1.5m (I’ve had parts break off when faling off from my desk on vinyl floors, albeit those parts were much heavier than the rook.)…
How are you post-curing ? Experiementing with lower cure-time and/or lower temperature may help with the brittleness of Tough, some members here have been “under” curing Tough systematically… I think @Sculptingman is one person who spoke about that in the past ?
@JohnHue that’s not what I want to hear but it confirms my suspicion. I use Form Wash and Form Cure after printing. I have noticed that, despite what Formlabs say in their instructions about parts getting stronger the longer they are cured, parts appear to be more pliable and less brittle when under cured or completely uncured. I don’t think they get stronger when cured, depending on the definition of strong. They just get more rigid and therefore more brittle when cured, which is not what I want.
The other option is open mode with 3rd party resins but being in South Africa, after shipping & import duties it costs a fortune to get the stuff here. And I try to stay away from open mode at this point…
@Patronus You have to differentiate between ultimate (tensile/flexural) strength and impact resistance. In “everyday terms”, strength is kind of a mixture between the two, but in technical/scientific terms, those are two very different concepts. A material can have a very high tensile strength, but quite low impact resistance. Rubber-like materials, on the other hand, have a very high impact resistance, but may have low tensile strength. So parts DO get stronger on curing (more tensile/flexural strength), but the impact resistance lessens somewhat, because the parts are less flexible than when uncured.
Regarding the original question: I think lots of people would wish for some material that is temp-resistant to at least 80°C while still being strong, rigid and impact-resistant enough for end-use parts - me included. As I am not an expert on UV curing resins, I can’t tell how hard or easy this is to achieve, but I do hope Formlabs will work on something like this.
Until then, your best bet may be using either FDM or SLS printing, both will need quite a big amount of post-processing unfortunately.
While writing this I also remember people having very good experience with nickel-plating their SLA prints - it seems that the metal “shell” that gets deposited onto the part enhances the mechanical properties quite significantly.
2 Likes
properties are always going to be delimited to the chemsitry of the materials.
For example, Urethane elastomers. The lower the durometer of Urethane elastomers ( the stretchier they get ) the lower their tear strength.
There is nothing you can do about this relationship. You can never get a urethane elastomer that has a 22 durometer and a 100lb tear strength, like you can with silicone, simply because of the nature of the chemical bonds in urethane.
By the same token, you can never get a silicone that is quiet as sticky as an adhesive as you can attain in urethanes.
UV cured acrylics are limited by the nature of the material itself- and the limitations of spot curing with UV as opposed to mass polymerization of thermoplastic or thermoset applications.
its always gonna be trade off. They can try alloying the acrylic with other materials, fillers and binders… but then its not a homogenous material.
we can wish- but formlabs can’t change physics.
1 Like
3DResyns claims they have a resin that does this.
It’s called “3Dresyn HTR “High Temperature Resistance” UHT “Ultra Hard and Tough”” and they say it’s much less brittle than the formlabs high temp resin.
Tensile strength >40MPa
Young modulus > 2500 MPa
Just ordered a bottle for testing myself (note: I’m in no means affiliated with this company). Spec sounds a bit vague cause >40MPa could mean 100MPa as well. But if it’s around 40 or 60 it’s between tough and clear formlabs resin.
I’d be interested to hear your feedback on this resin, 3DResyns has been very agressive on these forums and elswhere in attacking Formlabs and pretending they had much more experience and made much better resins. They do seem to have extensive experience in UV-cured methacrylates but the agressive marketing tactics make me doubt their specsheets.
Can’t agree more, but I had a good chat with them and they seem to be pretty knowledgeable about the subject and promised me I would be surprised so I took the gamble. 
I saw pictures as well so that does prove they have working resins.
Will let you know once tested!
1 Like
In my experience so far tough is only slightly less brittle than the standard black resin based on drop testing.
We recently started using durable and we have yet to be able to break a part by dropping.
Did you receive the resin yet?
Hello i need some help finding someone who uses fuse2 because i have a prototype i need made , i think the flexible material is perfect but no manufacturer seem to have it so can you please help me find someone i can hire for the job.my name is joe cacho and my email is cubscubs2017@outlook.com thank you