We have been running the Form3 for a few weeks now. I have been through the forums and there have been discussions with no real answers beyond ‘Hope Formlabs comes up with a firmware update to fix it’ (and that was several months back. I am running Gray (V4), Tough, and castable wax resins. Firmware and Preform are current as of last night.
Almost since the get-go we have had uneven layering, especially apparent on flat surfaces. I was hoping that adaptive layer height or the new gray resin beta updates would help. I did a print I had already done before (100 micron layer height, default print settings) last night with adaptive layer height and Gray Beta settings. I not only got the typical inconsistent layers, but now had several areas that were almost wavy (about 5mm at a time swollen out or in slightly in bands). So the updates+adaptive made print quality worse not better. Tried adaptive layers on a castable wax print that I had done before on fixed 50 micron layer… helped a bit… got maybe 60% without banding… the rest still had the lines through it.
I know there have been issues with the new low pressure system, but really not liking the fact Formlabs has had what… over a year now… and this is still an issue? My team (a very large TV production in New Zealand), specifically got the form vs the Peopoly Noir because it would be good to go out of the box. This has not been the case. Also, as Preform does not really allow much tinkering under the hood, I don’t even really have the options of fine-tuning as I would on the Peopoly.
Did I make a mistake going with Formlabs (or at least the Form3 vs the Form2), or did I get a miscalibrated/faulty machine?
Sorry for the minimal pictures, under an NDA so this is about the extent of what I can show. The castable wax has a slight displacement map pass on it so is not supposed to be flat, the blue tough resin back surface is supposed to be flat.
