Formlabs uses a proprietary resin cartridge... it's the paper printers situation all over again, the printers themselves are not that expensive but the disposable ink costs an arm and a leg.
Don't go with Formlabs, support any of the open-platform alternatives.
And also, be aware that these printers require some serious development work (you need solvent to wash away uncured resin (if you ask me, this basically necessitates a chemical hood... Formlabs will happily upsell the "Form Wash" for this for another 699). If uncured resin falls on your floor (which has happened to me a little too many times), boy is it a horror cleaning it up even if you have industrial grade solvents; FDM printers are easier and their "ink" is much, much less expensive by comparison.
Jeff Geerling has a great video about this printer that got me up to speed on resin printing as well - coming from the 3d printing world I'm stoked to see the price dropping but it also seems like a lot more hassle to me at this stage
How stiff can you make the resin with those 3d printers ? Probably not as much as carbon fiber, but how does it hold against aluminium or fiberglass? Also, can you do composite fibreglass/resin with 3d printers ?
I used to use an older, more expensive version from FormLabs in my last company to print our (more accurate) version of Invisalign negatives, and we'd thermoform the aligners over the top of the cured resin (with a barrier).
The accuracy was great. They'd hold up. Printing took a while, but generally pretty solid as we scaled from in-house to full lab setup. They're great as resin printers go.
I have a noob "reverse" resin creation question. The product page says it has low VOC emissions. Could certain recyclables(e.g. 4,5 HDPE types) create the resin from my stuff at home with low VoC that I could use/sell etc?
My gut would say economically/technologically prohibitive but a low throughput table top recycler seems like a great way to reduce my recyclable garbage.
Wow this price is interesting. I guess the Chinese competition is really driving prices down. I do miss the first generation (I think second was too) where they were "true" SLA but they got sued into oblivion by 3D Systems.
As someone who got into FDM printing about a year ago, and still finds it very exciting, this is a really compelling resin printer. It's priced very well for the capabilities, especially in terms of providing everything a beginner might need to be comfortable with resin printing.
That said, I just noticed Costco online has some FDM stuff, which I think is a pretty exciting development, so if I have any money to spend on 3d printing stuff in the near future, I'll probably spend it there. :)
Don't go with Formlabs, support any of the open-platform alternatives.
And also, be aware that these printers require some serious development work (you need solvent to wash away uncured resin (if you ask me, this basically necessitates a chemical hood... Formlabs will happily upsell the "Form Wash" for this for another 699). If uncured resin falls on your floor (which has happened to me a little too many times), boy is it a horror cleaning it up even if you have industrial grade solvents; FDM printers are easier and their "ink" is much, much less expensive by comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l9xU3_36Xs
The accuracy was great. They'd hold up. Printing took a while, but generally pretty solid as we scaled from in-house to full lab setup. They're great as resin printers go.
My gut would say economically/technologically prohibitive but a low throughput table top recycler seems like a great way to reduce my recyclable garbage.
Pretty cool.
Theres no new blog or video or news, preorders opened 2 weeks ago
That said, I just noticed Costco online has some FDM stuff, which I think is a pretty exciting development, so if I have any money to spend on 3d printing stuff in the near future, I'll probably spend it there. :)