Last month I printed a dozen rings to test the Form3’s new light-touch supports for castable wax resin at 25 microns with Preform 3.5.0 and firmware rc-1.6.7-584 (21 May 2020)
First the Good News:
- 25 micron printing with castable wax resin creates very clean surface detail. As someone who has been running a Form 2 at 25 microns, it’s nice to see the beta settings for jewelry pushed live.
- The light-touch point supports are significantly smaller than standard supports, and peel off with less damage to the model.
- The decreased trussing is also notable. Instead of multiple crisscrossed supports, a series of single, vertical supports makes for easier model release.
The Bad News
As many Form3 users have documented (@larsenstephen, @monk2002uk), the Form3 suffers from several deficiencies, none of which are solved for jewelry casting.
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Layer Shifting: The Form3’s nasty inability to avoid shifting during print creates very specific problems for jewelry models-- if the goal is to make 25 micron surfaces to reduce the need for clean-up, layer shifting dramatically undercuts that value. None of the rings I printed are acceptable for final casting.
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Overcuring: The scalloping effect of extra curing between the support connection points actually undercuts the benefit of using light-touch points. At many locations, the over-cure completely enveloped the smaller support.
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Misshapen Openings: Especially noticeable in the vertical plane, the fine detail of circular openings are flattened and often result in thin films of cured resin blocking the opening entirely.
Unfortunately, the output quality of the Form3 for 25 micron jewelry printing still does not match the output of the Form2.
Comments welcome,
JD Davison
Lab Partners Jewelry