You’re right, but you’re thinking from a hobbyist perspective. From an engineering perspective we don’t want material properties to fluctuate constantly because it was cloudy that day or not. We want uniform curing and we want to know exactly how long it will take.
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As it turns out I’m also a registered professional engineer.
I still built my own chamber, and don’t plan on buying this one anytime soon. It’s small, underpowered, and looks flashy, but is not even close to optimal in terms of utilizing reflection of the UV lights.
My chamber easily accommodates a volume of 4 full buildplates worth of prints, which is the most important to me. I can’t have 50 prints in Tough that need to be cured, and need to wait around all day for batch curing to finish due to a small cure chamber volume. The Form Cure doesn’t address this issue at all, and that’s really a deal-breaker for me.
I say it’s underpowered because it’s listed as having “13 multidirectional UV LEDs” for the unit, but my chamber has 4 LED arrays, each with 13 LEDs per array (which inclines me to think I have the same LED lights in my chamber). I don’t need a turntable, as my arrays are spaced radially about the center point of my chamber, and I have successfully cured the engineering resins and castable resins fairly quickly (~45 minutes). I know it’s evenly curing as well, because that cure produced the cleanest Castable burnout to date and testing of the engineering resins produced results that were within the spec’d data from Formlabs. I feel this particular design sacrificed a decent chunk of functionality in exchange for something that looks sleek, and the lack of lighting power (as well as lack of reflective surfaces in the design) indicate that.
It’s a lot for something that could have been better, and I’m just not blown away by it. I would love to be impressed with this and happily would spend money on a cure chamber, but this just isn’t doing it for me.
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We’ve seen this a few times - certainly not a silly question. The full cost is paid upon pre-ordering Form Wash / Cure and we’re planning to ship in September.
Armstrong
Sounds like you don’t need them and know more than the FL engineers.
Thanks for your opinion but I’ll go with them.
Hmmm… the enthusiasm seems to have run out. Perhaps this is the reason
I could see if this was another Kickstarter campaign, but once a company is established, they’re expected to do business like everybody else. Charging a customer’s credit card before the product ships, is a big faux pas.
Why are the users funding the production of this product. I would think Formlabs has enough money to put this in production without pre-funding.
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There is no law against taking money upfront before you ship.
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While that is true, a large majority of credit card issuers, will not allow merchants to charge a credit card until the product is ready to ship. PayPal is such a issuer, they will put a pending status on the transaction, but the actual money is not taken out until the merchant ships.
I know this because I recently ordered a part for my car, and the part was back-ordered for over a week. Once it was ready to ship, the payment went through.
On the other hand, not every credit card does this, so they may well allow the sale.
My issues is not with legality so much as it is with the way it’s done. Basically, the buyers are financing the costs of production, which in general should be borne by the the manufacturer, not the customer. Since I don’t plan on buying one, it doesn’t affect me, I just though I’d bring it up, especially since Frew’s post on it seems to have put a damper on the enthusiasm on this topic.
I don’t understand your post. If there are credit cards that hold back payment until shipping that is their choice and the seller’s choice. PAYPAL doesn’t hold back payment to the seller until shipping. You are misinformed. The just don’t charge the buyers account for 10 days assuming shipping takes place in that time.
So FL like most sellers is paid when you order not on shipping.
The only thing I’m going to say is that you should look into this a little more. Here is a link on the Federal Trade Commission - Consumer Information. I deals mostly with what to do if you paid for something you never got, but the excerpt below should be enough to back up what I said.
Many credit card issuers have policies against sellers charging a credit card account before shipment. If you think a seller charged your account too soon, report it to the credit card issuer.
As for PayPal, on May 2 I bough an upper coolant hose for my car, and paid with PayPal. The next day, the order status went to “parts on order”. Later that day, I got an email from PayPal regarding the charge, and showing “pending”. When I clicked on it, it said that payment was pending and will be completed when the vendor ships the item. On May 9, I received an email from the vendor telling me the part shipped. At the same time, the pending status on PayPal changed to Completed and it even gave an option to track the shipment.
So yes, PayPal, does have such policies in place, at least with the vendors that accept PayPal as a form of payment.
I just found this company that makes a cure chamber, very industrial/lab looking though, and available in 3 weeks:
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I have one, Shipped earlier then expected, works great.
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How long does it take to cure the resin you are using?
(What kind of resin do you use?)
The reason I might get one is for overnight part curing. Normally I just put the parts in a translucent container filled with water and leave it in the sun for 15 minutes.
I mostly print in Durable and set the curebox to the recommended cure: 60 Celsius and 120 minutes.
I print tabletop miniatures with small thin features and after curing the durable properly I can throw them hard against the floor and they don’t break.
I’ll probably buy either or both once it ships in September, you guys do make great products. Not sure why one should preorder though?
I agree thaty it is a nicer pair of product.s but will not order until September, or maybe August. I also think it is a bad idea for an established company that is not making custom products to charge full price at order and have a 90+ day leadtime. Since anyone who owns a form is already washing, and many of us have OEM, homemade, or Sun based cure systems, I am not desparate to get this unlike getting in line for a printer like the Form (or Fuse?).
IMHO and based on my experience in the PC industry, it would be better customer relations to not charge at all until shipment, or charge a non-refundable deposit of $100 or so per unit and would provide them useful demand information.
Someone is less likely to order something on a whim if they stand to lose $100 for cancelling but the customer is not hit for the full cost which causes many of us to hold off and prevents Formlabs from getting needed information on likely demand.
By charging the full price up front, they will not get information which can help them plan their supply chain for these products. If they just charged a small but not pain free deposit, many more would order and Formlabs would have better insight into demand.
Something to think about for the folks in MA.
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For something like a printer, yes, but for this, it is not that big of a difference for a business use to pay $100 or $500.
Except they’re not really $500, together these add up to $1200.
I’m in the PC manufacturing industry, and we manufacture and sell PCs to the healthcare industry, which makes billions of dollars. Periodically we also show prototypes of at various trade shows, which many customers show interest in and place evaluation requests for, but none of them would stand for us pre-charging them even for those, if the delivery time frame would be more than 30 days.
Formlabs has been, quite frankly, horrible when it comes to dealing with business customers, so I’m not really surprised. During our initial order, ~$4k worth of stuff, they wouldn’t do a PO and would only take a check or CC. Apparently $5k is their minimum order to do POs. Because of this we don’t do business with Formlabs directly anymore and now deal exclusively for all supplies with a third part distributor.
@armstrongc93 Thanks for describing your cure box setup. Some time ago Formlabs did a bunch of testing to zero in on the ideal parameters for curing and released a whitepaper.
Any idea what the mW/cm² is in your chamber, and care to hazard a guess if yours or theirs comes closer to the 1.25mW/cm² ideal they mentioned?