We will sale our investment of formlabs of 3500.- with all Resin bottles (most still half filled) and 3 Tanks as well as all stuff you need. We made 10 month investigation but it is wasted money and time. The result is poor. A lot people from formlabs making advertisement how good it works but it does not and formlabs themself can not send any usable sample except the advertising tower. And this tower looks like not printed from original Form1+ printer. Looks all like fake. Make me a good price and take all with you.
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So sorry to hear this, @tbelectronics! We have a Form 1+ at the office and the general feeling is that it’s a great machine! We have some cool prints to prove it too 
I know I might be asking all the obvious Qs, but have you tried exchanging it? Maybe there’s a problem with this machine in particular.
@cyprien is there something we can do here?
I would love to have a solution. Since 5th day of receiving we are unhappy and opened the formlabs ticket. After some month we received an refurbished device. Some problems disappear but mainly we want to print out stuff exactly (200 microns) like in Preform. Yes, the details on text for example are looking precise. But the dimensions on any area of printout does not match. Lets say the cube should be 5cm x 5cm x 5cm, the result becomes curved areas with 5.1 x 5.2 x 5.1cm. In real, those areas are not usable. But ok, we can handle that in some cases. Now we ordered though Resin. Printed 2 times and the platform becomes demaged by printer itself by lifting up the object while printout. Other 2 platforms becomes broken in case of milk dottet points from laser. We are not able to create such defectives. But guarantee in case of device and in case of assessoirs are not guaranted. We now have not one usable printout and payed 6 bottles Resin + 3 platforms + printer with all stuff. And formlabs says we need to pay again for new platforms and new resin and we need to open the printer ourself (very time intensive and risk) and clean all mirrors again. Tonns of documents I need to read and nothing is successfully. 1 of 20 parts has really great results and with afterwork we can take it. But that is not a finshed printer. It feels like just taking our money. We would love to send all back and get money back. We are in that case since 6 month!! All the answer we have are: hey try that test XYZ again. We spend money and time again. Without result. Formlabs is not trustable to me as long they want not take the device back we reported on 5th day after first printout.
@tbelectronics , you need to take into consideration that Resin material has a shrink & stretch factor associated with it. This should be taken into account for your part design. Different resins have different shrink oxides, and its good to test with all resins that you use and make a chart to take into future considerations. This is why they make low-shrink resin for some machines. My 2c.
Please see, we did that already. Formlabs themself was NOT able to create reproducable results. They tried. On start page of formlabs it is written “easy to use” and it is not easy if the manufacturer is not able to handle the stuff as wanted. A lot to count on while producing. All objects needs to be created explicit for printout instead of the printer prints the object like wanted. Most of our simple looking objects becomes trash. Difficult looking parts becomes ok but with wrong dimensions for example on the parts where fluid or screw should go into a hole. All has 0.5mm variations on random areas which becomes unable on sum. But that is not the main part only. Most printouts needs to be done minimum one time for trash in case of… laser not clear, Resin not working, device has random unknown precision interruptions. For our quality of prototyping it is unusable in such a case if you wait 12h for a part which you need to print out several times regarding the wrong dimensions and the trash-print-system. We made hundreds of printouts. Not only 10 or 50. So, I think I can teach you in case I have a lot experience. This system is “not easy to use” as formlabs pronounce. It is for experts with a lot of time and money OR with funny articles where precision is not that important. We want to give all back.
I always thought “cold” printers should have better quality because of no thermal shrinkage and therefore no warping.
But it seems to be quite different… Thats really interresting to hear.
I’ve always been a firm believer that these machines are for prototypes only. Said prototypes are not 100% accurate for consumer based, which is why factories exist to produce on mass scale for the end result. I’m not sure what one would expect from a 2k model. Plus, it sounds like you are having a lot of hatred towards the company and honestly should be redirected towards them as I never saw anything regarding resin shrinkage in the initial post. Carry on
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3DForm
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Is this post still actual? I also had several issues with Form1 printers too, most of them was fixed though. Had a problem with laser and galvos, had a few cracked trays, dust issues and so on. Although, when it’s working well, it makes breathtakingly beautiful and precise prints. I’ve checked your review, your printer seems to be suffering from laser and/or galvo problem.
Also, 3D printers are not like microwave ovens, you need to be extremely careful to have successful prints on the long run.
Have you tried to print the 5 little butterflies and see how they look like?
Cheers,
Thomas
