My experience with the Form 4(B) so far/ Semi-Review from a Semi-Industrial User Perspective

[ImperialPrints]

Good Afternoon! I am currently looking to buy a first printer and have been wondering over the Formlabs Form 4 often. I am glad I found this forum. There are a few things that I would love to clear up after reading through a few forums. All the parts I will be producing will be under continuous wear and tear and mechanical strain. As well as be subject to daily washing with soaps and ambient+ heat generated by friction.

1. I plan to be producing large quantities of smaller parts, some parts that even have dimensions of less than a mm length, 40mm width and 110mm height.
2. I was going by the impression by a sales rep that no post processing is required except for a 10 minute wash and 15 minute cure. This was the same information I found after watching a number of reviews and reading a 10s of articles. In reality will be be leaving parts out for 24h after washing and having 30 minutes to 2 hours of cold curing? As such would it not be more efficient to get an FDM printer such as Bambulab X-1 Carbon, even considering the FDM post processing times?
3. As others have mentioned, More cost efficient resins have been found and I Confirmed with a number of resellers that as long as the frequency and exposure time are set to match the resin it can be used, what is it that I am reading about a license being required for external resins?
4. Is it worthwhile getting the Form 4 when the reason for choosing it was its short post processing time, reliability and accuracy??

Additionally I have a few thoughts myself, when looking at the warping, is there not a consistent warping that occurs depending on weight, exposure and lift time, dimensions of the part. If there is a consistency, can you not substitute for it by warping the model in the opposite direction during the modelling process or have a code that uses a calculation to do it?

[dan_d]

If your primary concern is limited post processing time, I think you will find that no one selects resin printers for their fast post processing times (this has nothing to do with Formlabs printers whatsoever). You are going to spend much more time in post. Between support removal, washing, curing, and sanding, it is definitely a lot of time spent and can easily become longer than your print time. Our Stratasys f370 requires very little in the way of post processing even if we need to throw parts into the ultrasonic cleaner for support removal. Many times we can simply break away the supports and have a fully functional piece minutes after it is done printing.

[ImperialPrints]

Good Evening, Dan_d

I am just speaking in comparison with FDM printers.

With FDM printers you experience layer gaps, where bacteria growth can occur if I am not mistaken, as such either annealing or coating must take place in post processing but that would remove finer details which is rather important in the parts I require. sanding and polishing each part will take impossibly long.

SLA printers don’t seem to have the problem of layer gaps, as such I am not so concerned about the sanding or coating in this case, I would just like a realistic opinion of someone who has used the printer and specifically the Tough 2000, Tough 1500 and High temp resin on the warping of smaller parts and the washing and curing times, understandably the times may take longer than the print time but the ability to do batches instead of individuals parts is what I am looking for.

Edit: from a general point of view, say we print 10 parts on a single print bed, the print time for the form 4 will remain the same as it would with a single of that part, whereas with and FDM the more parts on a print the print time is multiplied by the number of parts and the time a single part would take.

[eaglechen]

Alright, @ImperialPrints I will try to answer your questions as simple as possible.

You mention daily washing with soaps and ambient heat, which sounds suspiciously like a dishwasher. You mentioned also worry about bacteria forming, which sounds suspiciously like a food-related application. I obviously don’t know what you actually want to do but I will mention that printing something out of SLA is does NOT eliminate the problem of bacteria, mold, and other nasty things from building up in the layer lines if parts are exposed to waste and food particles. This is because SLA is still an additive process containing layers (actually at 50 micron layers vs like a 200 micro layer like FDM, you’ll have 4 time many layers), where each photopolymers layer fused generate a microscopic ridge that can hide nasty things; just because the layers are not visible to the naked eye does not means they are not there. No Formlabs materials, not even the biocompatible ones are immune from this problem and Formlabs discloses this: customer_v2
The only way around this is for SLA is to do a food safe coating like you mentioned for FDM, but even then you may have trouble. The issue is if you are hoping to truly use this product safely or sell it, you need like ISO food-safety certified materials. The printers I know of that can print food-safe materials costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have been down this road before.

You also state the parts are under constant strain, and you want to use Tough 1500, 2000, and high temp. I have worked with all of these materials; I would not count on any of them surviving very long with any soap washing or especially heat. Tough 1500 and 2000 have very low heat deflection temperatures of only 40-50C, meaning they will deform and basically turn into jelly in anything beyond room temperature. High temp is very brittle like acrylic and has poor functional properties.

Now to answer some of your questions:

1. You will not achieve a good result with parts under 1mm for tough 1500 and 2000, they are guaranteed to warp during washing or curing process. Those two materials are not designed to print thin walls or detailed features. High temp may be okay for this. However, keep in mind 1mm is like the width of a credit card.
2. First thing fist, 10 minute wash and 15 minute cure is only for the general purpose materials. The exact time of wash and cure depends on the material. Tough 1500 and 2000 require a 20 minute wash and 1 hour cure. High temp required a 6 minute wash and 2 hour cure, followed up a 3 hour oven annealing if you want the full heat deflection temperature. Read about exact how this works here:customer_v2
   customer_v2
   These are the OFFICIAL Formlabs guidelines on getting full material properties for washing and curing. Ignore what we said about drying for very long or curing for many hours, those are not official guidelines. The point I am trying to prove is that the official guidelines are inconsistence and does not work well and will lead to part warping during the cure process anyways.
   Keep in mind, washing and curing is a very small part of post processing. You have to dry the parts for at least 30mins to 1 hour, then take the part off supports. Then you have to sand the support marks down and polish the part for the best visual results, which can take 30 minutes to an hour PER PART. This means adding 1-2 hours at least per part in post processing in addition to washing and curing. This is VERY far and VERY involved and requires a learning curve beyond desktop FDM printing. Usually post-processing models takes longer than printing the part for me.
3. For your intents are purposes, if you are already thinking of using other resins, you probably would not be happy with this system. Keep in mind, Tough 1500 and 2000 and high temp are all $200 per cartridge. Formlabs printers and the entire printing ecosystem is fully proprietary. Even if you can find 405nm resins, you are unable to adjust print settings such as exposures to tune outside materials because the printer software does not allow you to do this. To unlock the ability to make your material profiles and tune settings requires an open material license, this is not available for the Form 4 yet. If it ever becomes available, it will be many thousands of dollars. The open material license for the Form 3 just came out at beyond $3K I think. Even if you had 3rd party materials perfectly matching Formlabs profiles the printer has ways to lock you out, every consumable on this machine such as resin and resin tanks are chipped.
4. The above arguments seems to illustrate you would not be happy with this kind of post processing, the parts you want to make cannot be made reliably nor accurately for your application, and you can’t use other materials like you want. What purchase decision would you then make?

Couple more things:

• The warping I documented is caused by a complex interaction between material science, the printer print process, and print profile settings and how that all interacts with how internal forces inside a part anneal during printing. It is way beyond a simple fix of tuning exposure or several settings; this is something certainly way beyond my abilities to solve. The “code” you are thinking of to pre-warp a part to create a good final result is a complex machine learning algorithm beyond the paygrade of even large multi-billion dollar 3D printer companies. I have seen companies making $500K printers attempt to make algorithms to correct for inaccuracies for metal and polymer printing, and so far most of them have given up or are still failing 8+ years and millions of dollars in. Again, I will happily wait for the smart print settings engineers to fix this problem.
• The print time of 10 vs 1 part on Form 4 is only on principal. In reality, printing 10 parts will create a larger cross section and therefore larger peel forces and it seems to me the printer slows down and account for this by lifting slower (like it should). Obviously, this causes longer print times; it still is much faster than 1 vs 10 in the FDM world, but the bigger problem is you still have to post-process, remove supports, and sand/ polish 10 parts.

Hope that clears some things up. If I were in your position I would order some sample parts and tread carefully.

[ImperialPrints]

Thank you, eaglechen

Firstly I apologize if the way I phrased things seem disrespectful, as well as thank you for clearing up some concerns. a few things before I thrown more questions out there.

1. The parts wont be in a dishwasher but rather washed with a sprayer and soap at ambient room temperature, say 10-30C depending on the season.
2. The parts will not be in contact with food but rather the fact that the part will be working in conditions optimal for bacteria growth, my concern is over time will the bacteria damage the structure of the part causing it to lose structural integrity.
3. As everyone on this forum may have used FDM printers or are using them in conjunction with resin printers, is the overall post processing time shorter than FDM printers?
4. The High Temp resin will be the part that will have a mm thick wall at one stage, when you say it is brittle, I understand, as I have a sample part, would there be another material that is rigid when it is more than 3-4mm thick, as well as when 1 mm thick, but flexible enough not to be as brittle as the High Temp?
5. I also have samples on the Tough 2000 and Tough 1500, they fit the mechanical properties I am looking for, I would just like to know how wear resistant they are (on their data sheets they say wear resistant)

As for my Questions, I have seen the samples provided to me by the resellers, The sanding does not seem to be an issue to me except in the FDM prints, I understand all prints FDM or SLA you will have to clean up supports, all the parts I have have flat surfaces and will only require 1 or 2 supports for specific parts.
The Part that would have Originally been printed with High Temp willhave the wall thickness of ±1mm and will only need to flex about 10-20 degrees maximum, any more than that and it wont fit the working criteria I will need. WOuld you still suggest the High Temp or is there another resin with more fitting properties?

[eaglechen]

No need to apologize, no disrespect taken, it’s hard to tell tone from the internet. Just trying to be honest and answer efficiently here. I will say the below suggestions are based on if the printer and whole workflow actually does what Formlabs says it can do. It currently cannot and prints will warp. The sample parts are all printed directly on platform and are geometries without supports and all mostly hide the current problems with the printer. I will highly recommend you order the part you want to make and see. Given this is your first printer, you will face a significant learning curve and potentially very expensive mistakes and failed prints, just telling you what is realistic.

1. If its truly just 10-30C and ambient, any Formlabs material will be ok including tough. If its truly just normal soap, that would be no problem either.
2. This won’t be a problem. I have never seen even the most basic FDM PLA in the real world be affected by this.
3. I can’t speak for everyone, I have used/ worked/ owned with FDM printers $150-150K. Unfortunately you cannot beat how fast the FDM workflow is where you have a part in hand immediately after printing. It does not matter that the Form 4 is fast, post-processing (washing, curing, removing supports, sanding) will make the workflow slower than any FDM printer 95% of the time. Budgeting 1-3 hours PER PART in post-processing is realistic.
4. Unless you need the 150C heat deflection, I don’t see why you need high temp. If you just need a little bit more of general heat resistance I’ll just use the general purpose grey V5 (good up to like 60C-65C). Otherwise check out flame retardant if you need more.
5. Depends on what you mean by wear resistant… both should be ok. Tough 1500 better at taking repeated impact and bouncing back into shape after repeated loading. Tough 2000 better at repeated wearing and is more rigid. Have reasonable expectations and you’ll be fine. These two resins will not be making rocket parts and it’s not going to be as good as SLS nylon or the best high end FDM materials.

I would highly recommend you rethink support materials. Large flat areas is a big problem. Here is how Formlabs currently would advise you and how I will print these large flat things, which is ange the part 35 degrees upwards from the platform:

To have any semblance of success, you have to orient the part carefully use supports with every print (and even edit them to get it to work sometimes). This is part of that significant learning curve I was referring to. I never had much success with directly printing on flatform – overhangs curl upwards, and support material directly attached to the platform without raft will seemingly arbitrary detachment and cause the print to fail. This is also critical for Tough or any of the engineering materials to cure accurately, the support columns pulls the part and ensure it does not deform during curing. If you are even able to get the print directly on platform to work I guarantee the tough or even high temp will curl upwards directly if you do not do this, causing the part to not fit.

Check out flame retardant

The problem like I have stated before, none of the things I just told you matters because tough and whatever you will likely print will warp during printing. This would have been an ideal use case for the Form 4 if the printer can actually print accurate and good parts, which currently does not happen due to deficiencies in the printer settings. I cannot currently recommend this for you, and you likely would be very upset if you are in the hole $7K for this system and have your parts not work.

Edit: I’ll emphasize that warping during printing and warping during curing/ post processing are two problems. Warping during printing is what I documented extensively and waiting on a fix from Formlabs. Warping during curing is a problem since the days of Form 2. If the print settings for the Form 4 is better, this would be a different conversation. I MAY recommend this printer 1-2 years from now if things change significantly for the better.

[eaglechen]

As we head towards Q4, I figured I would give a little summary/ very minor update. I apologize that the thread has kind of drifted in places and became disjointed and hard to follow, a lot of this to my own fault going off topic slightly.

To those at Formlabs still reading this, I would refer to my initial post and reply to Kyle at 7/26 position in the current thread near the beginning for a fast, action item summary.

Here is my current operating strategy going into Q4 with the recent release of 3.38.1 Preform

1. Current Preform release does not indicate any fixes to warping among general purpose and tough series materials. I will currently continue limiting my printing to Precision Model resin only. I will probably not experiment with other materials unless good results or fixes are demonstrated, just don’t want to waste more material.
2. Support material generation appears to remain unchanged.
3. With the announcement of open material of Form 4, I do believe there is a VERY niche market where a $2000 open material license will be bought, but I do think it defeats the point of the Formlabs ecosystem of “reliability.” I almost bought it to try Loctite series resin for engineering with a much better near room temperature curing workflow. Of course, if this defeats the point of the Formlabs ecosystem, I may as well by a desktop printer with a lot more open parameters if I do this, therefore I will be holding off from this for now. Keep in mind I can buy a couple desktop systems and a full workflow for $2k.
4. I neglect to mention before I was informed of the possibility and existence of print settings editor (without open material license) to tune Formlab’s own resins’ print settings; however, I don’t think I have the time or resources to do this. Point of professional 3D printing is that it will work, we are paying Formlabs to do this work ahead of time…

I hope the core usability fixes are close, will keep all posted.

[eaglechen]

One more update as of Preform 3.39, appears no fixes or changes to settings for any material since launch has been available yet. This would have been nothing noteworthy of a post, but I do feel this is worth mentioning as an additional: essentially it appears that I have oversold the performance of precision model resin. Don’t get me wrong, the warping and general printing reliability is much better than any other material I have tried; however, it still does occur to a noticeable level. For example, this American topographical model warps at the corner where it first attaches to supports upwards from the flat bottom upwards around 0.5mm (not terrible, but definitely easily visible):

Of course, I would never dream of printing this in like grey v5 or tough 1500, any thin part would warp away unlike precision model. Furthermore, I would to highlight an additional problem. This American flag model I successfully managed to print and cure initially bent upwards like a potato chip after just being in a room with ambient temperature for around 1-2 weeks:

I have read about this similar problem of the model with thin sections warping itself spontaneously after one week, most likely due to the internal forces of the model annealing itself. This unfortunately seems like a really difficult problem to fix, but obviously I wouldn’t be able to hand something like this to a client.

For now, I will be basically halting all production (fortunately corresponding with a lull in my work anyways) and waiting for better print profiles and settings or any indication from Formlabs something is done. Honestly if I could just print Tough 1500 reliably that would be perfectly fine, but it’s already approaching 3 months of having this printer and I don’t really see a reasonable resolution in sight just yet.

[SteamFactoryLLC]

As someone with 10s of thousands of hours with Formlabs SLA in a production setting with practically every material Formlabs makes and a very wide variety of shapes/sizes from solid bricks to tiny parts with 1.5mm wall thicknesses. Here’s my take.

99% of printing problems come from only a fiew factors:

• poor DfAM. Just like any process, 3D printing has limitations. Understanding those limitations and designing to accomodate them is the best way to ensure success
• poor orientation and support locations. I rarely accept any default orientation and often eschew Formlabs advice, especially on thin parts. My go-to method is to print on edge directly onto the build plate if possible. I manually place supports on areas I feel are critical. This has resulted in parts with no warp. The process to do this is nuanced.
• Cure with supports. I realize this is a semi-religious perspective, but I’ve had best results curing with supports when possible. Especially on thin parts. Supports are very easy to remove if taken off the part immediately after cure is finished. They are extremely difficult to take off once the part has cooled.
• An extremely crtical thing to watch for is washing parts. My customers’ (I’m a Formlabs reseller as well) biggest problem is over-use of their wash medium. Fresh 99% IPA is by far the best. Stay on top of the specific gravity to ensure that it remains viable. Also make sure you don’t over-wash your parts. That will weaken the support structure.
• As mentioned make sure parts are completely dry. Parts that aren’t dry will most likely warp in cure
• Some materials printed on Form 4 don’t require the Cure to “cure”. They can air cure. We do this all the time with clear and the parts are amazing.

Personally, after working with Formlabs printers since Form 1, the Form 4 is an incredible machine in terms of capabilities and value. Steam Factory will be expanding our Form 4 footprint substantially over the next year.

[eaglechen]

Afternoon! Unfortunately I do not have quite 10000+ hours of printing on Formlabs printers, but I have used every Formlabs SLA printer since Form 1+, and I can probably claim at least a couple thousand hours of printing in my experience. This thread has gotten quite long so I will use this as the opportunity to once again summarize some key points, but I do suggest you to actually read through the whole thread to understand what I have encountered to be the core issue with Form 4 currently (which is very different from your advice). I would recommend paying attention to the end of my initial thread where I documented warping of parts DURING the print process. I can definitively say that unfortunately the core usability issues lie outside the “99%” of print issues above.

To summarize, currently my Form 4 is sitting on a desk collecting dust due to some core reliability issues in achieving accurate claimed by Formlabs not related to post processing:

1. Most importantly, pretty much every part that comes off the Form 4 will bend between where the model first attached to supports versus the rest of model before washing, curing, anything. You can see this happening sometimes even during printing. This happens with Grey, Clear (most general purpose materials) as well as engineering materials, with warping Tough 1500 being especially dramatic. Speaking with Formlabs, this seems to be a combination of immature print settings and material properties and they seem to be working on this, unfortunately, nothing for me to do but to wait at the moment. Here is a picture of 5mm+ warping on Grey V5, you can probably guess where it first attached to supports (no thin walls or special model here, just straight warping of large cross sections, thin cross sections also suffer):
   
   
   
   The only material that kind of achieves Formlab’s own claims is probably precision model. It’s not perfect and has its own issues, but I definitely cannot only be printing only teeth going forward. This is the LARGEST issue preventing Form 4 from being remotely useful at this point. I don’t expect perfection, but I cannot hand my clients a 3-5mm warped part. It’s been multiple months since I first started this discussion, and I am still waiting for a solution. I do believe that Form 3 can probably print these things without a problem, giving more credit to the idea of print process or setting deficiency.
2. Refer to my immediately post above, even if I somehow do everything well and do get a mostly flat and accurate thin part, the part will spontaneously warp itself after sitting in a room for 1-2 weeks. This seems to happen to precision model and every general purpose material such as grey and clear. This seems to indicate that long term wise the internal forces inside the part continues to anneal and also speaks to potential long term stability issues of the material.

Now let’s address some of these factors most related to curing and post-processing. Unfortunately, these are pretty tried and truth things almost all users will realize after just a couple weeks of printing, and I have used and wasted my share of time and money to essentially reach the same conclusions. Pretty much every experienced user will do some variations of all these things; the issue is doing everything you mentioned will still result in a inconsistent process in my opinion:

1. If anything, I have become acutely aware of the limitations of Form 4. Currently, it cannot really do anything reliably besides like making small things like dental arches directly on plate. Unfortunately, I don’t make those things and the real world success I am actually able to achieve is nowhere near enough to be depended on. I don’t expect the best tolerances of 5axis CNC or wire EDM that in reality no one except like rocket companies need. I don’t need accuracy beyond what my own eyes (and my clients’) can easily see. My expectations are Formlab’s own claims of 0.2-0.3mm+/- and like within 0.15%. Currently the printer cannot achieve this, sometimes it cannot achieve even 10X this. Also as a side note, pretty much no one designs things “suitable for 3D printing” in the real world at least with what I do, I usually spent time post-processing files to eliminate small features and thin walls. Pretty much everything I currently print adheres to Formlab’s own design guide, which a lot of the times the printer is unable to achieve. The parts I have shown in this thread are all ripped straight from online repositories and edited and are very simple… Furthermore, it does really hurt when my colleague delivered into my hand one of these parts I cannot make on the Form 4 made reasonably accurately on a $500 printer he can tune and fix. I have no doubt as well if I order these parts to be made on a $250K industrial SLA or HP jet fusion machine they will be consistently accurate and look good.
2. I think you are once again proving the point that this system faces a huge learning curve. It certainly took my probably many months of experience to learn support editing and many years to get to probably my own proficiency. If it takes “10000 hours” of printing to truly master these nuances, I shudder to think what other users outside the service bureau world or without significant printing experience is encountering… Currently any preform auto-tools are not part of my workflow. I spend usually 1-2 hours editing supports manually. Issue is currently what should work for Form 4 and probably would print on Form 3 does not produce good results. Furthermore, I never really had any success with directly print on flatform and you can really tell preform is not optimized for this. Knife edges and overhangs will bulge upwards noticeably, and the ability to support these is limited if support columns must attach to the part itself. I found supports also that originates from a little raft tend to arbitrarily explode and detach and ruin the model as well; this is why probably Formlabs have the guidelines they have (telling you to use full raft and not do this).
3. I pretty much do all of these washing and curing things, if it is remotely public information or advice to improve curing, I do it and try it. IPA is replaced nearly once a month (I never get close to hydrometer saturation), dried for half to one day, and cured according to guideline. Ironically I personally haven’t encountered solvent warping and warping from soggy parts because probably of the steps I take to avoid that. However, this doesn’t solve print setting deficits straight from the printer, tough supports with big touch points to actually get a print to work, and high temperature curing causing a part to bend itself during curing especially with engineering materials. I am hesitate to handle models while warm since engineering materials turn into the strength of putty while warm and can easily bend; I have found support removal while warm kind of helping tough 2000. Tough 1500 doesn’t really work for this; of course, I cure any general purpose material with 5 min ambient temperature or not at all, but this still usually results in a painful support material removal compared to Form 3.

I think I fell into the marketing indeed of believing that a semblance of industrial 3D printing value have been delivered to the desktop for a good price, and I think I have more than experienced this just being realistically pretty far from the truth. $10k for this system would have bought me a fleet of cheap SLA machines that I can tune and fix and use open materials; or bought me a significant amount of outsourced parts from professional service bureaus. Compared to Form 1, this is a quantum leap, but compared to the rest of the market, I am having serious regrets for this value proposition.

That being said, I do think Form 4 has some potential, I am just however stuck waiting for Formlabs to do additional work; perhaps this is realistically months or years away.

[olce]

Hi,

I almost pushed the “buy button” to purchase the new Form 4 to replace my form 3+
Main reasons would have been de speed and updated materials (provided it maintains the dimension accuracy of the Form 3+)

However, after monitoring this discussion, I’m going to hold off for a while.

I also was looking at a promising SLS alternative… Micron: A Desktop SLS 3D Printer on Kickstarter. However, sadly, they were acquired by… Formlabs, and the project/product got cancelled.

Now, not to minimize the investment of @eaglechen in time and efforts… (it’s is one of the most details testing I’ve read of a Formlabs printer). I would like to see more counter-feedback or success-stories, or “counter proof” (or however you want to call it) from other Form 4 users, that it is possible to print dimension accurate objects using the Form 4 with specific materials.

If there is no counter feedback, it would mean that not any Form 4 users would be able to make a successful correct print, and the Form 4 is a flawed product?

Maybe we or someone should publish an objective survey inviting all current Form 4 users to provide very detailed feedback about the results?

For now, I guess I’ll hold off on buying the Form 4 until I can read about proven results that these issues have been resolved, or until a solid alternative comes into the light…

[SteamFactoryLLC]

This truly seems to be a very specific issue for you. Have I seen warping? Yes indeed, I have. Do I attribute it to the printing technology? Typically, no.

I’ve printed thin, tall skinny parts and parts with a great deal of mass.

I’ve printed hundreds of these parts. I have seen them warp. This version does not warp unless I do something stupid. I manually wash these parts. There have been times when I’ve forgotten and left them in the wash overnight. Yeah. Then they warp. They also warped in the early phases of this design. The addition of the honeycombs took care of the warping.

Here’s a 1 1/2" thick manifold. Zero warp. Printed with threads which mated perfectly to their fasteners (nylon luer fittings) on a Form 4. We have printed dozens of these manifolds without issue.

When making these parts, I am realistic about their application.

My issue with your long-winded ramblings is that you could be misleading people to believe these machines are something no one ever claimed they are i.e. “these machines can print everything perfectly!”
When the specs of the machine say “this is the printing resolution and this is the feature accuracy you can expect”, it does not take into account poorly designed features, improperly supported models, lack of post-processing, etc. It is a nominal claim and hence not false. This is no different than any claims on any device ever built by human beings.

My typical advice to those having difficulties with print quality is to first take a look at the model itself. Are there ways to add geometry to reinforce areas that are having issues? How are you supporting the model? Try multiple orientations and see what happens. Are you using fresh solvent to wash parts and are you using the recommended process for washing?

[eaglechen]

Evening! Let’s address some of these things…

This certainly is something very specific experienced by me. For what is worth, its coming up on like 4 month since launch of Form 4 and this for all intent and purposes is a young system. I expect bugs, but a reasonably useable product (which is not the case currently for me). I do believe as time increases and more people buy these, it is inevitable that other people will encounter this as the part warping during printing is massive and a easily reproducible issue. I have already met with representatives from Formlabs, who acknowledged this being a large issue and seem to be working on it.

There is nothing mysterious about post-processing/curing hassles as well as part instability (spontaneous warping over time) either. These are old problems since days of Form 1/2. Read the forum or talk to anyone who have printed on one of these and you’ll find that. I am fortunate this is not my main business and I am not losing anything with the time and money I have spent doing this, read here or talk to anyone in AM and they will have way less objectivity and have way more choice things to say about Formlabs. I have said my opinions and my experience, and you are free to read and think what you want; I am simply passionate about additive and enjoy sharing my experience extensively so perhaps I can contribute to users and maybe Formlabs.

I was initially excited to see some flat and accurate parts, but unfortunately how you achieved these results kind of proves my point:

The thin manifold should be very easy to print, and I can probably count on a first print success from Form 3 if I were to make it on that that. It sounds like you had to make many iterations in order to finally get this to work. The fact that you had to go through a substantial iterative process for something that looks very simple to make and change its geometry to get this to work on the Form 4 is a huge problem. Some clients come to me with parts similar to that they have had successes manufacturing with professional service bureaus. For me to turn around and claim their parts are unmanufacturable without substantial part redesign is not a solution. I am sure one can design and only print things that print directly fit on the platform and the ideal of being “a good part to be 3D printed” and get some reasonably results but this is just really far from reality. I follow this guide (and the version for Form 4) religiously and frequently process files with Meshmixer and Materialize to adhere to this: How to Design for 3D Printed Parts on the Form 3 | Formlabs, but at the moment the Form 4 cannot reliable achieve it’s own guidelines. Other printers including $250 ones (albeit with a lot of work and tuning and only sometimes) and $250K ones I can order parts from can easily print these guidelines and what I would want to print easily.

Again, that clear manifold looks beautiful. Unfortunately, maybe I will see 1-2 things a year that I can stick on the platform and print with no support material like that. If I tell the people I make things for they have to make only things like that they would drop me and go order parts from someone who can do it… it’s not hard.

If you took the time to actually read my “long winded ramblings” you will realize that at no point was perfection ever mentioned as a requirement. All I want is Formlab’s own marketing and design guide to be true. General purpose materials should have straight edges and no huge visible defects, and engineering resin should be reasonable enough for me to trust tolerance to install as replacement parts for my engineering clients. I don’t need or want sub-micro or like metrology level accuracy you can only tell with CMMs. Even large flat surfaces that are only mostly ok are good enough. This is a VERY VERY VERY resonable requirement and something ALL industrial 3d printers should have. Afterall, consistent parts within 0.2mm-0.3mm or 0.15% (or 0.3mm across like a 200mm part) is Formlab’s own claim:

There are various other things such as marketing guides that claim this.

If anything, Formlabs is the one advertising perfection here, these are ripped straight from the website:

Ironic that above images shows that Formlabs advertises tolerance that can match initial designs, and then you have to print and reprint and change the initial design because the printer can’t do it… But that all aside what that do phrases “unmatched reliability,” “geometry freedom,” and “parts printed in every resin will match YOUR design parameters every time” mean to you? I think people who do not have the knowledge of you or I will be sorely disappointed by the current performance of Form 4 if they really only have this surface knowledge.

Again, I understand 3D printer is not magic. I have been in this game for a while and used printers from $250-250K for professional work for more than a decade. I am not “10000 hours of printing experience” but calling me anything but an experienced user compared to who Formlabs in reality is marketing and selling this to would be not accurate nor realistic. I know what is acceptable for clients, and what other systems can do through being in additive for a while and making a lot of expensive mistakes. If extensive model processing for many models in 3D party software to adhere to Formlabs guidelines, 1-2 hours of support editing by a very experienced user, and pulling every trick in post processing still achieves questionably reliable results, some failing and entirely warping during printing, then what conclusions would you draw? If this was a $1000 open printer where I am responsible for tuning, I would have not made this post but rather be scheming ways to tune this out myself. Instead, I am reading a full webpage by Formlabs about how they make industrial 3d printers: High-Precision, Blazing Fast SLA and SLS Industrial 3D Printers | Formlabs. Anything I have demonstrated above and extensively documented with (I even have a google drive folder in my initial folder with test parts and pictures) with having warping or bad issues are usually just thingiverse or printables.com models edited. If I printed them on true 3D systems or stratasys polyjet 3d printers (that Formlabs used to have webpages about how they can outprint those machines) they will work near flawlessly. This should be super easy and realistic to do, and Form 4 should eat these for breakfast. Again, if I can get like 95% reliability on like a few good materials that’s all I want (bare minimum of a $10K system marketing itself to be a turn-key industrial solution). Instead, I am here writing up novels for Formlabs to document and hopefully correct these issues.

You are right in these marketing statements being “nominal claims:”

Indeed, these accuracy claims are nominal sense that they are in name only and are not substantive or real currently… They are not currently achievable with:

1. Using 3D party software to add/ correct unprintable geometries according to Formlabs guidelines.
2. Supporting and orienting with many MANY trials by a very experienced user.
3. Extensive and nuanced processing by a very experienced user using new equipment, fresh solvent, and many, many tricks.

This has turned into a many months long journey with many frustrations, but I will say this as an absolutely undeniable fact that is perhaps more important than anything I have said here. Formlabs service from sales to support to anyone I have interacted with was forever the OPPOSITE end of the scale compared to accusing their users of “long winded ramblings” and assuming their users are not capable of using their machines and always misdesigning features or improperly using their software. They have been nothing less than exceptional. Just scroll up in this thread and see Formlabs product leads and even executives responding to me in person, scheduling meetings to hear my feedback, and taking quite frankly brutal criticism IN STRIDE and on public forum. Not an ouce of blame cast, nothing was dismissed, and nothing less than listening to all of my most trivial concerns was done. I can say this about ZERO other 3D printer companies, additive service bureaus, or resellers I have worked with. This deserves absolute commendation and I am convinced with this attitude problems like with Form 4 can be solved. This is the reason I have kept this system and am even in the process of possibly shopping for a Fuse. I admire this company and want to support it.

[eaglechen]

It would obviously be dumb to listen to only my opinion on the Form 4… It’s a lot of money; I recommend people order samples, talk to lots of people, and think for themselves before buying anything this expensive. That being said, since Formlabs had acknowledged they are working on the model warping during print process issue, I do think it will be a while before the settings are mature like Form 3+. I bet if I throw a lot of the things I try to make right now that don’t on Form 4 on 3+ they would work.

The hardware of Form 4 is capable of much more than 3+. The printer has a performance ceiling far higher than 3 series. I just don’t know how long it will take to get there. The hardware is a massive step in the right direction, problem comes from software and print settings, a lot of pain is leftover issues (curing, supports) never fully thought of before either imo.

Artistic things or curvy things that don’t need to be accurate I can hide the defects through clever orienting look amazing. I’m sure the dentists and labs printing arches and geometries directly on the platform only will also rave about this system. I am sure like if you are only making connectors or something and only print on platform you’ll always get a good print, this is just not my application of service bureau and natural things I think a lot of people want to print. Obviously, niche things you can probably get to work and experiment with does not absolve this printer of it’s problems. The point of “industial 3D printing” that Formlabs market is so I don’t have to do the kind of experimentation I have done. For the most part, we are running into a different problems than Form 3, Form 4 will for the most part at least finish the print, indicating me future success should be a lot better. However, industrial and desktop competition has caught up significantly compared to Form 3 era. My clients also increasingly want perfection, I can get them to accept slight flaws, but not huge glaring warps and other problems currently… This is why I CURRENTLY (cannot speak for future, which I am cautiously hopeful for) cannot recommend this or the value proposition. Again, I recommend anyone order parts, talk to lots of real users, and think for yourself.

[leonhart88]

While I agree with many of your points here, I think it also depends what your application is.

If you’re doing any kind of one off service work, you don’t really have the luxury to test and tune things like you may have with your work.

I do think that the warping during post cure, and specifically the heated post cures are a legitimate topic for Formlabs to try and improve because we’ve all seen it happen and it’s sometimes very tricky and time consuming to get right when coupled with challenging geometry. Again, not a luxury one has control over when doing service type work.

Other industrial resins don’t required heated cures, and the Formlabs resins cure much too close to their HDT. That’s definitely something they can and should be working towards improving IMO.

[eaglechen]

Leon,

Think it’s also a matter of expectations, and let’s be very real here, pricing. If this is a $1500 printer with open parameters and resin is $35 a cartridge, this will be a very different story and I won’t be here making posts but rather trying to make my own settings to make things better. Basically, every Formlabs webpage you can go on will advertise this to be an “industrial” 3D printer with turn-key reliability and performance requiring no experimentation. Heck, like I said there is even an entire webpage about it: High-Precision, Blazing Fast SLA and SLS Industrial 3D Printers | Formlabs I don’t mind at all Formlabs locking me into buying their materials; I don’t even mind the in all honesty hefty premium for this system compared to (on paper ONLY) equivalency to desktop systems and having to buy support every year. I was not allowed to even buy this printer without a year worth of support. I don’t mind any of this, I WANT industrial 3D printing. Pretty much everyone I have talked to who uses a big top down SLA machine or like a Carbon DLP has told me so long as you pay the blood money, maintain the machine, and adhere to design guides in all reality not too different from the Formlabs ones you WILL get 99% reliability you can depend on. If the Form 4 offered a 95% of what my experience with like a 3D systems or Carbon machine can do, its capital cost will make this an amazing deal.

Unfortunately, the current problem is of course, pretty much the Form 4 cannot do what it advertises it can do. In all reality, the material costs of the engineering materials or anything that is not general purpose is not multiple factors of cost of savings but rather seems to me just a couple 10’s of percentages at most at this point, especially at volume compared to those really big industrial systems. The entire point of locking me into this ecosystems is so that I don’t have to experiment with anything; this is a point Formlabs says on almost every webpage… I should not have to do any experimentation and pray the model doesn’t spontaneously curl during printing, and I should have zero anxiety about a print finishing in a condition identical to Formlabs’s own design guide.

This is all completely ignoring post processing, where basically everyone who has a big SLA or other top end DLP systems tells me works consistently. I know you ultimately get what you pay for, and for the most part that is very true in AM. I don’t expect this thing to outprint a big $500K top down SLA with 0.1mm touchpoints, but for what Formlabs is charging a VERY reasonable expectation of 95% first-print and post-processing success with a core few materials should be the minimum. The frustration is paying a hefty price, having Formlabs charge me in many aspects for an industrial 3D printing experience, and getting a desktop 3D printing experience.

Like I said before, this can change short term wise if better print settings come along. I will keep waiting. Post-processing is probably a long-term problem; I doubt meaningful changes can be done without product or material changes. I can work around that slightly (obviously not giving this deficient process a free pass), I just need the printer to achieve what its marketed to.

[eaglechen]

I will actually add an additional data point here. Recently received the flexible build platform. I had a 1 cartridge of grey left, decided to make this pretty simple topography model, figured nothing really could go wrong. No support material required, flat simple thing on plate. Imagine my shock when I discovered the annealing forces of the part physically pulled this silver metal part off the magnets and bent the print surface itself away from the plate (now, unfortunately do not have a picture of this because the vibrations and motion of me taking the plate off the printer caused the edges of the plate to peel away from the part). But regardless, you can see the dramatic result here:

middle still attached to the part, edges bent away from middle. Originally bent the plate, me placing it on the table caused the print surface to peel away from part.

Pretty dramatic, never seen a print do this to a Formlabs printer.

Obviously, the edges peeled upward each with a deviation of several millimeters. I of course reprinted the part on the normal build platform, leading to me unfortunately cracking the first one despite me being pretty careful with a sharp scraper. On the 3rd reprint I used normal build platform and spent 15-20 minutes chiseling part away from the platform with a razor, was able to finally get a reasonable result (not perfectly flat and some variations, but definitely within Formlabs guidelines). All in all, as each print is about 300mL material, I threw 2/3 a cartridge essentially in the trash.

I think this gives more credibility to the theory of significant internal annealing forces generated during printing of V5 general purpose materials (similar phenomena on Grey V5 and Clear) as well as tough 1500. I increasingly don’t know how this be addressed software wise, seems more and more like a material limitation. I guess I will continue sticking with printing in precision model (which of course does seem to suffer from this, just to a lesser degree).

[Joshua_Herskovic]

I am about to pull the trigger on Form 4B but now I’m wondering if I should go with 3B. If 3B would result in reduced post processing because of finer supports then that may be the way to go. Can anyone comment on the 4B vs 3B supports. I’m guessing the lower peel forces on the 3B may allow finer point supports. I’d mainly be working with bio resins such as Bio durable, 50A, and silicone.

[eaglechen]

I definitely cannot recommend Form 4 at the moment; I have used Form 3 extensively, and I think if you really read in this forum you will find this notion: Form 3 is a pretty mature product at this point, and can print the general purpose material and select biomed materials reasonably well. However, this is only true for a few materials. I don’t believe anything in the Formlabs material line like such as any flexible stuff will ever work reliably (trust me I have tried). Form 3 also have many specific hardware problems and I believe it is a matter of time before the consumables will be sunsetted. Form 3 is also absolutely molasses slow compared to Form 4; do keep that in mind. I does hurt a lot more throwing away a 35 hour failed print vs a 7 hour one…

you may have some success with biomed durable, but I do not think you will ever see flexible printing such as 50A and especially the really difficult silicone workflow work reliably. I think Formlabs SLA will forever be a few reliable materials with exotics things outside like general purposes resins being thing you can only occasionally print, with some geometries, for very niche things, some of the time with a lot of experimentation.

Form 3 have smaller touchpoints, but this will not be the case for flexible and durable materials I think. It is still a top down SLA machine, and I think the “low force” peeling stuff Formlabs advertises does have truth but it will never be as good as a top down SLA or polyjet. The challenge with flexible material is very dense support matrix, breaking the part peeling off supports, and randomly having prints explode even adequetely or over-supported; I never had any success with this that I can count on. Ultimately, this does not matter as what sucks is the washing and curing workflow, which will be identical.

Order sample parts and tread very carefully.

[Friedl_1977]

Hi @Joshua_Herskovic -

I recently bought a Form4 but am fairly new to SLA printing. I can reiterate what @eaglechen said about the sample part. Send your local agents one of your models that you print and ask them do to so in a resin you would want to use.

Even if you have to buy the resin in the even that you do not proceed with the purchase, it is still a risk worth taking. In hind sight, I wish I did that…

Regards,
Friedl.