Siraya Tech Resin

General Discussion
1

Hi all, wondering if anyone has attempted to print with the Siraya Tech resins or other affordable resins on their form 3.

To be honest at this point the thing that is preventing me from using my form 3 more than anything is the resin cost. It is really, really hard to make an economic gain from printing such small pieces when the resin is so expensive… The fact that resins that are just as good exist for literally 1/5th the price and those companies are apparently profitable and making money shows me just how much of an eye gouging we are taking from formlabs…

This is the main reason why I will look to sell my form 3 and get something else in the coming months…

3 Likes
2

Sell it in your case.

The main reason to use Formlabs is its resin. If you need a cheaper alternative, go for those LCD machines sold on amazon. Cheap and good in small prints. There is even a DIY kit DLP printer you can download from online and build it by yourself. That machine literally allows you to print any resins and minimize your cost to the extreme ( assume your labor/time is free).

3

I must be missing something. There is no distinguishable quality that I can see between the Formlabs Gray ($150) and the Siraya Tech Fast ($35).
Maybe if you need engineering resins and only that you might have a point, otherwise you are throwing your money down the toilet as far as I can tell.

4

Has anyone a copy of the Safety Data Sheet for the Siraya Tech Fast resin? How much of a risk does it pose to the users health?

Has it any chemicals in it that affect PDMS (or the other materials in the Formlabs build trays)?

Just a thought - as a cheap resin damaging an expensive build tray or causing a leak into the printer through leakage caused by chemical damage is no longer a cheap resin…

Bleach looks like vodka (normally a clear liquid), Ignoring the smell issues between the two - both kill germs but I would not want to drink one of them!!

5

I agree with you, there is no huge difference in the printing quality side if you say the Grey material.

However, I also don’t agree with you throwing the money into the toilet. You buy a Toyota and BMW, they all can run and do the same job. Are you saying you throw the money into the toilet because you buy a BMW?

Each brand aims at different customers. If you are not happy with the brand, you can switch. As long as the brand still runs, it means it has its clients.

btw: I use both of the materials before and I know the difference.

6

Why not share your experience here, that is what the forum is for, no?
I’d like to hear it. :slight_smile:

7

That’s what I thought too. I’d be hard pressed to see how the form 3 is the BMW and other printers are the Toyota today though. They are offering similar quality, way, way bigger print volumens, way cheaper resin and at a lower price!! Where exactly is the formlab’s advantage? (unless you are printing with some very specific resin which you cant find anywhere else… I dont know if that even possible anymore).

Sorry… looking at what else is on the market right now I’ve become quite disenchated with formlab’s offerings, and I’ve been a user since the original kickstarter form 1. But seeing what they charge for their resins is just price gauging. To each his own I guess.

8

Ugh, I hate it when I see luxury car comparisons as a justification for an expensive product. Ir’s a tool, not a status symbol. To anyone who thinks their Form 3 is a BMW, go find a better way to flash your cash, because no one is impressed by what desktop 3D printer you have.

Sorry you had to deal with that. I just cringe every time I hear someone try to deflect reasonable questions wit some weird status appeal. So now, on to your actual question. Look, Formlabs is ridiculously expensive for the home market segment, but pretty reasonable compared to higher end machines like 3D Systems or Stratasys.

As far as what you get for that money, it really depends on the use case, and what is important to you. In my opinion the Form 3 (now that they’ve fixed some major problems they were having earlier) produces better results on small, highly detailed parts, than something like the Photon. It also does it with less effort by the user. The resin autofill, the resin jugs you just plug into the machine, the auto-sensing the type of resin and automatically knowing the right settings, the easily removable and swappable resin tanks, these are all quality of life improvements over something like the Photon. They all make it easier to just focus on your design and hit print.

Those all come at a relatively steep price, like highly consumable tanks, that cost as much as some printers, and resin that is several times more expensive than the competitors. If those kind of quality of life features are not important to you, and the, some would argue minor, difference in quality is not critical for the projects you are doing, then by all means, a cheaper printer sounds like it is a better choice for your needs. To a certain extent, I think it might just come down to your billing rate, and the value you put on your time.

In my use case, mainly making quick testing prototypes of products that are going to end up being CNC milled, all these advantages are more than worth it, because I have enough work on my hands with CNC toolpaths, and all the other stuff, that I want a fire and forget printer for my prototypes. But I can definitely see workflows where I would rather have several cheap printers, than one expensive printer where the consumables cost as much as another printer.

9

The BMW/Toyota is just an easier example to make people understand brands target different segments of consumers.

To be honest, it all depends on how you are going to use the tool and that justify whether it is a good investment or not. There is no absolute guide to say it worths the money or waste the money. If you look at the cost in another way, Formlabs is super cheap compared to those industrial 3D printers (I own several industrial SLA machines, the start cost to fill a whole vat of the machine is around $50,000 just for the resin. The DSM resin sold $300/liter, which is literally 2 times the cost of formlabs.) And the even more funny thing I found it out later is DSM sold the same resin in the same brand oversea for $50/liter in order to compete with local brands.

How to justify the price difference for a same product sold in a totally different price in two regions? The competition makes the difference. When you mention a 3rd party resin only sold for 1/3 the price of Formlabs resin. I personlly agree with you they are almost the same. But based on the other factors, I may still rather to pay more to get the Formlabs resin instead risking my whole workflow to use a 3rd party resin. It is the balance between your opportunity cost and the item value itself.

1 Like
10

Yeah thanks for the input guys, I agree with you both on those points. I just couldnt believe my eyes when I saw printers like the Phenom L selling for less than the form 3, with resin 1/5 (not 1/3) of the price, and the quality, from all the reviews I can find, looks like its up there. At first I thought it was a cheap chinese printer not worth my time but getting a positive review from Tested (as well as a few others) is not an easy thing to do. Im gonna get my hands on a print from them soon and see whether its for real.
Printing volume and cheap resin are a big deal to me, but I get you on the ease of use and reliability of the form 3, they are hard to beat.

11

Aside from the imho useless BMW-discussion, let’s get back to the initial question of this thread. Has anybody used other resin-brands than Formlabs in a Form3? What results did you come up with? Certainly many of us would love to read your experiences - either for theoretical or practical reasons.

12

Agree. Being able to use way cheaper resin on the form 3 with similar printing results would be a game changer for me. In the beginning (circa form 1) there was much experimentation being done with different reisns, mixtures of resins, etc. Seems that has died down a bit over the years (or at least people are not commenting about it).

1 Like
13

Buy a cartridge of the resin from Formlabs. After using it fill it with 3rd party resin-like apply lab work resin. It works pretty well and almost the same quality and you only pay 1/2 the price.

The problem is the machine will tell you the cartridge is expired and you can’t keep using it alter anotger 1-2 liters printing ( Yes, it tracks your printing volume). So it won’t be an eternal solution but do give you an option to lower the cost a little bit.

14

Awesome thanks for the tip, I did not know about them. Any particular color / type you recommend? The modelling gray looks good.

15

This is something FormLabs could address with firmware.

They should sell their own resin in a bottle and let us fill.

16

I think the problem was the durability of the pinch valves. no guarantee on how long before they leak and the whole thing draining into an flooding the tank

17

It’s $150 for the cheapest cartridge of resin. How about putting a decent valve on it with the $120 after the resin? Then, let’s talk about that $150 for a tank.

$300+ to try a new resin is not reasonable. I love my printer, by the way. But these consumable costs will keep me from ever buying a FL printer again. I’m sure they will do a top shelf dlp printer at some point, but if the resin and tanks are 4-5 times higher in cost, I won’t be in.

1 Like
18

You can buy the “universal cartridge” to solve that issue.

There are several brands that work great with the Form 3. One of the best known is ApplyLabWork.

19

From what I’ve seen of the Tested reviews they are nearly worthless, like most other YouTube reviews.

20

Right there with you.