I am just now stumbling upon the differences in the printer resolutions with different resins. I should have figured this out beforehand but here we are.
In short it appears the Form 4L prints at lower Layer Thicknesses than the Form 4 / 2. Also lower resolution in XY.
My experience is I have a Form 2 and printed a lot in Grey Pro at .05 resolution
I now have a new 4L and am setting up for Clear V5
Any thoughts on this? I didn’t realize this was the case. I suppose I was foolish in assuming the 4L was capable of the 4 but at a larger size… considering both are “4”. Yikes.
The Tough 1500 (which was recommended to me) at only .1 is a concern as its what i’ve been hoping for and recommended for stronger parts and longevity and all that but I also thought it was capable of .05 like the Grey Pro on my Form 2 was.
How do people feel about the .1 resolution? I suppose I’ll know first hand soon enough. But I’m curious of peoples experience. What about detailed parts?
Clear V5 only doing .05 is also a bit disappointing realizing the printer is not capable of the Form 4’s .025 in any way, so for instance you can’t run like 6 figurines that are say 4 inches tall at a time at a high resolution. Think like Warhammer tanks.
The X/Y on Form 4 series and Form 2 shouldn’t really be compared as these are totally different systems. The Form 2 guided its laser point using to galvanometers, which can offer much better resolution than what any screen-based SLA printing can offer, but will always be much slower as it draws every cross section with that point.
Fine feature resolution is much better on Form 4 series though as now we’re working with ~50µm pixel size (+ Anti Aliasing) compared to Form 2’s 140µm laser spot, for things like miniatures, this is a much more important thing to have.
On the layer heights: This is a thing to come on the Form 4L.
Simply put it is a much newer machine than the Form 4 and more testing is needed (also longer testing as the prints can be much larger for validation) to have all of the settings nailed down, unfortunately it isn’t just a simple copy and paste from the Form 4 settings.
You can find the roadmap for Form 4L settings following this link to our support pages. We hope to have a good amount of settings releases this August (25µm for Clear and 50µm for Tough 1500 V2 being among those).
If you absolutely want these settings right now, you can head into the Print Settings Editor within PreForm and generate your own profiles (although I’d advise just waiting for the official settings).
I hear you on the XY. I was just noting the 4 vs 4L on that. Which I think is all good.
It really is just about 50 on the 1500 and 25 on the v5 stuff.
Thanks! That is great to hear. I can’t wait to try out some prints. Waiting for my friend to get here to help me haul all this big stuff in to the house and upstairs.
I’m still pretty new to resin printing, but from what I understand the Form 4L’s larger build volume comes with a bigger XY pixel size, so it can’t hit the same fine resolutions as the Form 4. The .1 mm limit on Tough 1500 V2 seems normal for strong, large-format parts, but I’m curious — for those of you printing detailed models, how much difference do you actually notice between .05 and .1 mm in real-world use? I mostly work with PLA and PETG on my FDM printer, so I’m used to thinking about layer heights there — I’m wondering how that perspective translates to resin.