Just got on to look up Nylon 12 powder and it seems to be going through an update. Shows a picture of a 10kg “bag” instead of a jug for $999 but when going into it the image is broken, still says 6kg and it’s unable to be purchased?
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Either everyone using a Fuse orders via bulk through a rep or no one uses the primary Nylon 12 powder as much as we thought… but Nylon 12 is still “broken” through the online store. Only way you can actually find it anymore is by going to the Store > Materials > selecting either a Fuse 1 or Fuse 1+ but the page is still broken.
A Formlabs rep had reached out to me about this via email and said
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
We recently discontinued the 6 kg package of Nylon 12, and the new version is now available in a 10 kg package. The product itself remains the same—only the packaging has changed.
We’re aware of the glitch you encountered on the store, and our team is working to resolve it. In the meantime, if you need any assistance with placing an order, feel free to reach out!
I find this funny because we are between jobs this week and we were literally about to empty and cleanse the system of our Nylon 12 GF to do a little testing with Nylon 12… the only material it seems folks have consistent success with and with a reasonable refresh rate…so the timing of this is somewhat hilarious as we trouble shoot and try something new.
Now it seems… Formlabs is taking a few days to simply “fix their store” around their number #1 SLS material… during the work week…
I just find this company very “interesting”… the Support team, like always, is very responsive…but what in the world is going on at the top around the big conference table every morning…
I just hope they are trying to get the cost of material down for “us users” by this move from jugs to bags of higher volume powder…and not the other way around. At $999 for 10kg a bag now…that does not seem to be much of a cost saving for us over two 6kg jugs…
Previous 599/6kg = ~100/kg
Current 999/10kg = ~100/kg
So, basically, price did not change, except you have to buy higher volumes of powder now. Kind of curious as going up in volume results in zero price change.
I think buying 100kg+ for like a 10% discount is more so a marketing move at this point… You would have to probably be running a room full of Fuses to get to meaningful 20% or so or more discounts and ordering container fulls of powder. Curious how many people actually does this.
Good luck and keep up posted on the reliability and performance you see of Nylon 12.
Have you tried looking into SLS powder from the the bigger brands to see what pricing you can get? Might even be worth trying their GF powder if they have one.
The powder credit system prevents use of external material entirely:
I do think however even if an open mode of Fuse or they sell an open material license, it is probably not within anyone’s ability except really hardcore engineer firms to develop print settings for 3D party powders. It’s probably too much work.
However, “3D party” powders such as BASF ultrasint are selling 1400-1600 per KG at volumes of 20KG, indicating some 20-30% cost savings. Conversing with people running EOS or HP machines have shown me 20-40% material cost savings in Nylon 12 and 12GF powder for those systems.
Unfortunately, especially in terms of Fuse, we are entirely at mercy at Formlabs for material and cost. Fuse can probably compete in print quality for like Nylon 12 against larger systems, but I have found equivalent pricing or even cheaper to order my parts to be made on an HP machine. It’s increasing looking like a very specific niche to try to make money and make this machine work…
WOW! Didn’t know they pushed their anti-consumer antics onto the $20k+ machines as well. At this rate I don’t foresee myself ever going with a Formlabs product. My Form 2 and Form 3L are probably it for me.
Don´t. The material prices is a joke.
Yea it being over a week later and still unable to see or purchase Nylon 12 from the online store…I have a feeling there is more to this story and not just a “website glitch” as told by the support team…
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Retailers still have it available for purchase. Might be a glitch but as you say it seems strange.
Emailing support back and forth right now.
Unfortunately it’s hilariously similar to my experiences with support on all the past printer issues…where it feels like no one in support has ever actually used a printer but in this case…they actually have never used the “internet” haha.
Hit them up today and got this
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Thank you for reaching out again, and I truly understand your frustration.
Could you kindly try accessing the following [link] to our webstore? We would appreciate it if you could confirm whether it is functioning correctly on your end, as we are unable to access it ourselves.
Thank you for your patience while we work on resolving this.
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So In this case they can’t seem to “access the internet” haha but that link was dead and non usable. So told them that an got this
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The link appears to be working on our end (https://formlabs.com/store/materials/nylon-12-powder-10/). If you search “Formlabs Nylon 12” on Google, it should be the first result as well.
I’ve notified our web team to investigate the issue further. We understand how frustrating this must be, and we’ll work to resolve it as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, I can assist you by preparing a quote for Nylon 12. If you’d like to proceed, please provide me with your billing and shipping details, and I’ll send y an of quote. You can complete your purchase directly from the quote via email.
Thank you for your patience, and I look forward to helping you with your order.
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In which this time their link worked…but I told them it is literally unfindable through their website and store… if they just go through and try to find it on their own…but again it doesn’t seem like support can do that.
It’s like Deja Vu all over again…when I would tell them their Firmware and Nylon 12 GF was not working but they would never verify it on an actual machine or attempt to print on it themselves….
So apparently if you want Nylon 12 from Formlabs…you have to now google search “Nylon 12” as you can no longer find it through their website or online store…
Hmm, could be one of those “works on my computer, must not be a problem” thing or they’re making some moves behind the scenes they don’t want to announce yet.
Yea I’m assuming there is more to this behind the scenes other than them not being able to figure out how to “fix a website”… but this is a funny comparison between the issues we’ve had dealing with support trying to “convince them” for nearly a year that nylon 12 GF was not printable… before finally them acknowledging it and fixing it in firmware.
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Hi everyone - thanks for flagging the issue. We did have an issue when transitioning from jugs to 10 kg bags. And we were in a website code freeze which complicated matters. You can purchase 10kg here (Buy Nylon 12 Powder) and we will flow the correction through other pages in the next few days. Appreciate your patience.
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Full fix is in place. Sorry again for the delay. The announcement of all the new products today made it harder than usual to patch this one.
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Seen the new material? Nylon 12 Tough. Says on the website its only compatible with Fuse 1+ with a refreshrate at 80%.
Yes I did. Got excited at first then I saw it’s weaker than Nylon 12 with even less heat deflection. I see they advertised it as a “affordable prototyping option” n not so much for end use parts.
Sounds great for prototyping but not sure who decided to name it Nylon 12 “Tough”… to me that name would imply that it’s stronger than Nylon 12 alone but that isn’t the case it appears…
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I have contacted EOS directly into the cost of EOS PA650 which is probably the closest to FL Nylon 12 (actually seems closer to Nylon 12 Tough). Cost is $92 USD/kg and sells in either 10 kg boxes, but with a minimum order quantity of 20 kg.
Funny enough, they asked me about the same question regarding powder credits. Sooo…
Formlabs - If we can use third party powders, how does the Powder Credit system work? What does “Supplier Certified” mean?
I can see under the firmware release notes that there is a mechanism to remove powder credits, but what happens after I do that?
I checked my printer and I can activate this feature, but nothing tells if the powder credit feature goes away and/or what happens when I want to switch back to FL Nylon 12?
Is the new firmware to use third party powders available yet? I couldn’t find this option anywhere in the menu. Today I tried to update my printer (the printer offered me a new firmware - Fuse 1), unfortunately without success. Update failed.
It does seem to be available under the current firmware from Oct 15. I have a 1+, so I can’t say if it works on the 1… or even if the feature works at all. There is a bug in it, though. If you enter the menu, you can’t cancel out of it no matter what you press. I had to switch off the printer and turn it back on. Traditional Formlabs feature rollout.
I have checked out the Preform custom settings which is interesting and stupidly crazy at the same time. I like the fact that we can do a save-as trusted profile from a FL powder and make adjustments, but I wouldn’t know where to start with making adjustments and how it would work with third party powders. This should probably be it’s own topic if anyone tried it out.
Just as a side note, use of third party materials may void the warranty on specific bits of the printer. They have updated their terms and conditions page when they rolled out the open materials mode for SLA, so I’m assuming it’ll apply for SLS. There’s pretty large allowance on Formlabs end to justify not providing you support or warranty repairs. It’s a word of warning… use at your own risk.
Hi! I’m a product manager on the SLS team here at Formlabs. Nylon 12 Tough may have a small decrease in tensile strength, but has more than double the elongation at break than our current Nylon 12. This makes it a robust and durable material that’s more resistant to breakage.