What resin for highly detailed small figures

The Form 3 still struggles with small prints in some of the resins; there’s a lot of discussion about it in the forums including Bad prints out of brand New Form 3 and Form 3 vs. Form 2 Faceoff!.

I understand Formlabs is actively working on fine-tuning parameters to improve quality across all the resins. You can get a sense of which ones have had progress by reviewing the Preform Release Notes - look for phrases like “Improve print quality”.

From my own testing, I can confirm Black on the Form 3 looks great. It produces results which are largely on par with or better than my Form 2. Last time I used Clear or Durable resin, they weren’t nearly as good, and I’ve seen results from other users that lead me to believe Grey performance is still not there yet, even though it’s improved significantly compared to the day the Form 3 was launched. Still, I don’t think Grey would be my first choice on the Form 3 for now for small, highly detailed figurines. Here are a couple specific posts illustrating what I’m talking about:

I suspect organic shapes (with curves and textures) are less affected than “engineering” shapes (e.g. large flat surfaces). Also, some folks have devised workarounds by creating double or triple walls around their models, and reported a reduction of some of the unwanted artifacts (e.g. surface ripples / layer shifting).

I haven’t tried Dental Model myself.

If you’re going to test drive the Form 3 I’d pick up a cartridge of Black with it (even though it’s not the best for painting or capturing fine detail in photographs). Once the issues are solved, Grey will likely become a good choice again.

Hope this helps.

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