[Duanemclemore]

Form 3 owner here.

- What is the material in each process?

- What is the price per unit when accounting for materials?

- If the material is not a Form proprietary mix, does the cost of the printers include the Open Platform license cost? [0]

- What post-processing is required to wash and cure the printed pieces?

- How many human hours are required in the washing / curing of the pieces from each method?

- What is the dimensional stability over time of pieces from each method? EG, do the Form printed pieces shrink over time when exposed to UV as resin typically does? As such is it appropriate for use outside of the UV protected print chamber?

Frustrated with our Form 3 after a year and having consistently gotten excellent results out of our little Elegoo Mars for five years, we purchased an Elegoo Saturn. It runs between 3 - 5x as fast and has less partially cured resin in our complex lattice (jewelry) pieces. The materials are half the price. And the printer itself was 1/4 the price.

Their proprietary PreForm slicer has -some- features that are better than ChiTuBox.

But all in all, at 1/5th the cost, I wonder how fast you could print the same number of pieces with the equivalent (+/- 20) Saturns. Or, factoring in the $4,499 of the Form 4 and the $6k price of Open Platform for the Form 3, how many you could produce with the 52 Saturns you could by for the same amount...

[0] https://formlabs.com/materials/open-platform/

[kedikedi]

We have multiple form 3 printers at work too, and they are very slow! It takes an hour to automatically fill the resin tank (which I cheat by pouring myself) and supply costs are ridiculous. But I really like the rather consistent output quality and their software is awesome.

My comparisons are against my own printer, anycubic photon mono. I can get a new printer with the same price of a bottle of formlabs material :)

[Duanemclemore]

Yeah, you can't fill that guy without pouring it in. It just isn't happening with a new vat. The supply costs are indeed the worst part, too. However, we've had FAR from perfect, repeatable results with it. The Elegoo Saturn is DEFINITELY more consistent and repeatable. And yeah - lower end machines are kinda nuts. One moving part, etc. It's funny - they're a superior technology. How do we know? Form themselves went to mSLA on the 4 as compared to the SLA of the 3 with the complicated optical carriage.

[opello]

I've barely used FDM 3D printers, and never resin, but that Open Platform bit seems like a shocking downside to resin printers.

[Duanemclemore]

It's just a problem with Formlabs. No one else in the consumer market does the same that I know of. Both Stratasys and 3d Systems had (and I'm guessing have) proprietary, DRM'd materials for their machines but that's in the professional space. Tethon, who specializes in crazy materials, does too.

[mdaniel]

> and the $6k price of Open Platform for the Form 3

The Form 4 Open Platform pricing is still "TBD," and given the two licenses for the Form 3 differ by $3k, it makes me shudder to think what they'd charge for their newest toy

I also was trying to understand what that license gives you: is it removing the DRM from their printers to allow non-OEM materials?

[dlpower]

Open platform allows you to use non formlabs resins, it works fine but tbh what you pay for with formlabs is getting the perfect prints every time. The form 3 works so well because all of the resins have such optimized settings and you can just let it print without worrying about issues. If you want to use some other resin I doubt you would see as high of a success rate.

[Duanemclemore]

> but tbh what you pay for with formlabs is getting the perfect prints every time.

My 45 email chain with Formlabs would beg to differ.

I'm being a little bit silly. The reason for the (over)engineering of their products is to be as turn key as possible, and this includes materials. I give them credit for the ambition to try to be the "Apple" of 3d printing. I'm not 100% negative on Formlabs, and they've certainly played an important part in making even resin printing more mainstream and accessible to the consumer. That OG Form was the printer everyone wanted at the time, and for good reason. Not to mention the geometries we're printing are especially tricky (by design). So although I sound pretty negative in most of the comments here, all in all I both understand and respect what Form is trying to do. Things just... aren't as easy as they try to make them out to be.

[dlpower]

Yeah for sure, I see where you are coming from. I have used a form 3 a lot (4k of materials) and have my own form 2 and for my uses it has worked super well. There are certainly blind spots but for the consumer they are targeting who wants to print parts and not think about the details it is pretty slick.

I think for what it is worth formlabs has a pretty unique position in the market where their printers are low enough in price where they have to compete with enthusiast printers which makes it tough. If what you are looking for is a machine that you can tweak and set up exactly how you want it, formlabs isn't ideal. But for people who are not interested in working on a printer and just want parts to appear in the printer I d not think that anyone else does that better.

[mdaniel]

I guess "allows" in the same way HP "allows" you to only use their ink. Fantastic, and only (at least) $6k for the privilege of using my hardware as I see fit

[dlpower]

yeah the 6k is wild for sure, if you are looking to not use formlabs resin why would you buy a formlabs printer though?

The biggest advantage of formlabs in my mind is the ecosystem, the resins just work out of the box and you do not have to try and fine tune things. If I wanted to use Loctite or some other resin company (price per L is comparable) I would just buy a anycubic printer.

I do get where you are coming from though, I am not a drm fan but I am just curious why you would not just go with a different printer.

[Duanemclemore]

> is it removing the DRM from their printers to allow non-OEM materials?

Yep - that's it! Well, in order to do so I imagine they also have to give you an unlocked version of PreForm (their proprietary slicer) because a lot of settings that we have control over in ChiTuBox are hidden behind just the presets for the material selection.

[quux]

Asking the real questions

[Duanemclemore]

Thanks man! I'm trying to run a business here with these things, so if they don't perform it's out of my bottom line.