Is this a potential Form killer? Thoughts?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947576577/the-nexd1-the-first-multimaterial-and-electronics/description
I love my Formlabs printers, and appreciate how much work it takes to build a successful company beyond just making a prototype. But that thing looks pretty compelling.
In general the cleanup for a polyjet print is extremely messy to remove the support material. On top of that because they use peizo print heads they tend to spray dots of material that ultimately leave crude fuzzy build lines unlike an sla that produces a smooth almost analog build lines and have clean edges because the edges are drawn by a clean laser dot.
Materials are still photo reactive so the variety of material types are similar between the 2 systems. The only real advantage of a polyjet besides not needing a pdms layered tank is they don’t require the support structures that a SLA or DLP system do because it prints a photo reactive (part) and support (non photo reactive) material. They are similar to the wax based systems such as the Solidscapes that use 2 print heads printing 2 different melt temperature waxes (lower temp is the support material).
Polyjet is a pretty awesome technique but I wonder how they are going to cope with the patents that are already there by stratasys.
Probably the resolution will be lower, but the multi material in one print is quite awesome. It allows you to print rubber sealing together with rigid parts.
At least it shows that a LOT of innovation is ongoing! 
From the stats they’re saying it sounds like it could be good–but many 3D printers are written that way.
Since they’re doing their own print head design then it might be better than the other printers, but it could be worse. They compared directly to the Form1 and said it can print better but that would remain to be seen. They don’t have enough photos of printed objects. Still, it’s very exciting to see this type of printer getting made more affordable.
Nothing really innovative with what they are doing, Objet and 3d Systems been there already. Patent’s will be a big issue.
It is innovative. Just like the Form 1, 1+ and 2. 3D printing exists since 1980’s so nothing is innovative in that sense.
That they are aiming to sell a cheap printer, with good capabilities instead having to pay >100,000 dollar is innovation.
It’s the circuit printing that’s exciting. I backed Squink’s kickstarter, but it seems like this new polyjet could replace the Form N and the squink - very slick and 5micron resolution. Wow. Imagine printing the entire device with the boards integral.
The replicator is coming
5 micron still remains to be seen. The machine can probably position in 5 micron steps but I highly doubt this for the actual part. It’s still a droplet of resin that has to stay in place with all the interactions involved(like surface tension).
From the few prints you can see it looks like they have some print lines probably due to the mechanical stuff. Still, the biggest issue with most printers on Kickstarter is a lack of print examples, they need to various examples to show things like small detailed parts and large functional parts so that people can get an idea of how well it will work in a real situation.
I agree with Fantasy2. With a polyjet by nature where it prints the reactive and non reactive material at the same time per layer, chances are the materials will blend causing layer failures or changes in the material properties. It is possible do print 5µ layers with an SLA or DLP system though.
Removing support doesn’t look that messy, you can use your hands or put it water. I’m really interested in this printer and the Make interview answered some of my concern about the printer.
Also an interview: https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/13/nexd1/
The print speed seems okay , I’ll like to see more print example with print time. I love my Form2, which I just bought recently but I’ll be interested in buying the NexD1 later next year,