Well, I just received my replacement printer and so far so good. I printed some test rings on the 50 setting and they came out relatively great. Lots of detail and good surface quality. Still some light bleed on the supports side, but that can only be fixed with a higher pigment resin tuned for the 25 setting or less.
Overall I’m happy with these prints, and they can be molded using rubber molds (I’ve tried it). Hopefully Form Labs will give us the castable resin soon.
I’m gonna try the same print using the 25 setting to see if there is any difference.
Hey great to see some jewellery prints, this’ll be my main use for the Form, even though they look reasonable good I don’t think they’re fine enough for master patterns. Hopefully the 25 micron setting makes up with a finer finish. A plus is that this material can be post processed. Also great to hear that they can survive vulcanizing. Cheers for the post.
They look much better than in the photos. It’s really hard to take pictures of these. I’ll try to post some more shots once I print at the 25 micron setting.
Monger, the prints look really nice. have you tried to burnout/cast with the Grey yet?
Still fantastic prints and some of the best macro shots I’ve seen here.
Douw, I haven’t tried it because it seems like that the grey is pretty much the same resin as the clear, therefore I don’t expect different results. I may try to cast some soon by covering them with a clear spray first. A thin coat of Krylon Fusion for plastics. I heard some people do that for envisiontec castings.
Thanks Jesse. It’s not really macro. It’s focus stacking. 
I was working with WIC100 prints from an EnvisionTEC machine and even their material which is made for investment casting and even that needed to be coated with clear spray, actually I had trouble spraying such small items that I ended up dipping them instead and drying with a hair dryer before casting. This stopped a reaction between the investment and the print giving a good casting result.
Jesse, what did you dip them in? Because I tried casting some b9 creator prints without any coating and they came out flawless.
GOLDEN Polymer Varnish with UVLS (UltraViolet Light Stabilizers) is a waterborne acrylic polymer varnish that dries to a protective, flexible, dust resistant surface over acrylic paint. Removable with ammonia. Available in Gloss, Satin and Matte. I used a 3:2 ratio of varnish:water
I will try that Jesse.
Here are the same prints using the 25 micron setting. Not a huge difference. You definitely get more peel lines when you stand up the rings vs angling them a little. So the best way would be to stand them up and angle them a little, but need to use manual supports to avoid messing up the details.
Hey MD they look fantastic and still the best macros on the forum! I’ll be interested to hear your results after casting some items with/without the polymer varnish, I used the gloss one. Thanks for your time and I’m positive my machine can’t be far away now.
Monger, excellent photography you must have a nice setup to get the lighting as good as this.
I will be printing small patterns no more than 15mm in height, would you say the B9 resin is a good alternative till Formlabs has a burnout resin.
I have managed to get my hand on some Clear resin and did a burnout test, the pattern was about 15mm high. Picture 1 at room temperature, Picture 2 at 250 C after 30 minutes, Picture 3 residue left after 6 hours at 850 C. This will definitely contaminate any type of casting in my opinion
MD your photos are really nice! Probably some of the best photoss ive seen of RP printed resin. BUT have you ever tried primer then photos? I would love to see these primed then photos. The transperancy of the resin always makes it hard to really see the surface. A real good primer is Bond Brand and is very diluted with solvent so it sprays on nice and thin.
MD how is the accuracy of these prints? What is tolerances your getting? I would love to know?
Bill, Thanks. The tolerances are surprisingly close (plus or minus 0.2 - 0.3mm in some cases).
I will try the primer. Right now my main concern is to cast these or to find a castable resin to use with the form1.
There is a resin that may work, but it’s about $350 for half a liter! It’s for the DWS 3d printer, which is very similar to the FOrm1, except is much more expensive and higher resolution. If a few people are willing to share the cost, we can test it on the Form1.
Douw, I’ve tried the burnout test too. My results were much better, however there was some residue left, which impacts surface quality and porosity.
The b9 resin (both the red and the cherry) burned out and casted flawlessly. I posted some photos on this forum that you can check out. Unforutnately, unless you are printing something that takes less than 1-2 hours to print, the b9 resin does not work well in the Form1. The pigment separates after a while, and degrades the quality of the print rapidly. I’m planning to mix some of the form1 clear resin with the b9 to make it thicker, and maybe that will help with the pigment. However, no idea how that will affect castability of course.
Form1 has told me on numerous occasions that they are working on castable resin, but I don’t think we are going to see anything anytime soon.
Monger, sound like the B9 resin is not what I am looking for. A friend who has a Form1 is waiting for a 3rd party burnout resin to test, will let you know if it is successful
If you you are talking about DWS as in http://www.dwssystems.com/, I have tried my luck and their response was, “DWS materials are developed to work only on DWS machines. There is no other way to transform this material form liquid form to solid form other than in a DWS machine”. Sound like you would have a hard time convincing them to sell you some resin. How about Asiga or Envisiontec?
Just got my shipping notice, its going to be a long few weeks ahead:)
The DWS resin looks to be readily available from their US distributor.
http://www.riogrande.com/Product/DigitalWax-DC500-Casting-Resin-for-Rapid-Prototyping/700966?Pos=2
I think they were just trying to BS you and sell you their printers. I’m not sure about the Asiga or Envistiontec resins, because those are for DLP printers.
I played around with the b9 resin again. Was able to print these 2 rings by mixing a tiny amount of the clear resin with the b9 red resin. I’m hoping these will still cast well. The quality of the print is a bit lower than the grey resin (maybe because I printed on the 50 micron setting, not sure if 25 microns will be any better), and that I think is because the b9 resin cures a little slower than then form1 resins, and also the b9 resin’s pigment settles much faster and doesn’t mix enough using the peel mechanism. If we could adjust the curing settings in the software, we wouldn’t have to wait for form labs to release a direct castable resin.
I will cast these next week, along with some casts of the grey resin rings (clear coated and not) and will post the results here.
Tell me what you guys think of these.
The mix I used was 150ml b9 red and 25ml form1 clear.
