Formlabs – Appliances catalogue

07 Mar

Formlabs Form 1+ SLA 3D Printer Review

March 7, 2020
Posted by Samson

Formlabs Form 1+ SLA 3D printer

"Formlabs & # 39; Form 1+ produces some of the highest quality prints we've seen from a 3D printer, but high up-front costs and maintenance will scare off hobbyists."

Outstanding print quality
Attractive design
Supports multiple materials

Expensive
Maintenance intensive
Too complex for DIY repairs

When you hear the expression “3D printer”, you are probably imagining a conventional FDM (Filament Deposition Modeling) printer. These are the ones who take a thermoplastic coil, heat it up and spray it through a nozzle to create objects layer by layer. This technology has made leaps and bounds in recent years and is still improving today – but recently another 3D printing technique has crept into the mainstream: stereolithography, or SLA for short.

Instead of melting plastic to create objects layer by layer, SLA printers use a laser projection system to “grow” objects from a pool of UV-curable resin. When the laser flashes over the resin shell, a thin layer solidifies on the building board, which is slowly pulled upwards with each new layer.

Formlabs' Form 1 printer (which has now become Form 1+) was one of the first consumer-oriented SLA printers to hit the market. At $ 3,300, it's still more than most FDM consumer models, but according to the company, it can "outperform even high-end FDM presses."

Does it live up to all the hype? We got our hands on the company's new and improved Form 1+ to find out.

Features and specifications

When unpacked, the form weighs 1+ 18 pounds and measures 12 x 11 x 18 inches. Compared to most of the other 3D printers we've used, it's definitely a bit more compact – so it can be placed almost anywhere – including your desk. It's not that big that it affects all of your desktop real estate.

The bad news is that this leads to a relatively small construction area. Under its UV-blocking orange hood is the Form 1+ with a 4.9 × 4.9 × 6.5 inch building board, a removable resin shell and a 405-nm violet laser of class 1. Basically, this last specification means that the laser is strong enough to solidify resin with just a short flash, but not so strong that it burns your eyeballs if you stare into the printer while it is making your parts.

The machine also comes with the Form Finishing Kit: a set of tools, trays and other materials that you can use to improve your prints after they are finished. This is a nice touch for sure, but it's not just a nice little bonus that Formlabs introduced as a bonus – it's crucial and you have to use it every time you print something. More on that later.

Finally, the printer comes with a number of different "functional resins" that allow you to print more than just hard plastic parts. In addition to the normal photopolymer resin, Formlabs also offers a clear resin for faster printing, a flexible variant for the production of parts that can be bent easily, and a “pourable” variant for the production of molds.

Setup and configuration

According to Formlabs, Form 1+ was created to be simple and easy to use. This statement could not be truer in terms of furnishings. We are not sure if it could be easier. Everything is pre-assembled and since there is no filament extruder to play with, the machine does not need to be calibrated. To start printing, all you have to do is empty some resin into the tray, connect the printer to your computer's USB port, load a print file, and click Go.

The most difficult part of the setup is probably the installation of the associated software. Due to the nature of Formlabs' SLA printing technology, the printer cannot use conventional slicer programs such as Cura or Slic3r – it only works with PreForm.

Fortunately, the program is fairly easy to install and use. The user interface is great – the menus are organized logically, the icons make the button functions fairly obvious even to the unfamiliar user, and editing your 3D model is extremely intuitive. The learning curve is extremely low, but this is partly due to the fact that no advanced customization options are available in the program.

The system's default configuration settings should be sufficient to get you started. If something does not work or you need to make adjustments, all advanced settings are made in PreForm. This saves you the tedious task of navigating through menus on a tiny LCD screen and allows you to use a mouse instead of a button or a directional pad.

Construction quality and design

If a 3D printer can look cool, Formlabs has made it here. Unlike the efficiency-oriented industrial look that most printers seem to prefer, Form 1+ offers a much more elegant and attractive design. It looks like a modern "box with curved corners", which makes it feel a little more polished and professional – if you don't mind this large orange UV hood.

Practically every component feels robust and reliable on this machine.

Form 1+ also achieved good grades for the build quality. Nothing about it feels weak or cheap. The hinges on the bonnet, the clips in the resin shell, the single button on the front – practically every component feels robust and reliable with this machine. And although it probably wouldn't survive a fall from your desk, the occasional accidental bump won't bother him.

Printing performance

To test the capabilities of the printer, we went through our usual glove with print benchmarks and test objects.

The first thing we measured was the print speed. In theory, these SLA printers are said to be much faster than their brothers, who melt filaments because they only have to flash a laser over the resin shell to create a layer. To test the speed, we first printed a 1x1x1 centimeter cube with the standard layer thickness of 100 micrometers. With this setting, the printing took exactly 19 minutes. However, this is not particularly quick. For the second test, we increased the layer thickness to 200 micrometers (which is only possible with the clear resin from Formlabs – not with the colored variant). With these settings, the printer spat out the cube flat in 9 minutes. However, at the highest resolution settings (25 micron layer thickness), printing the same cube takes well over an hour.

Formlabs Form 1+ 3D printer Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

Based on these tests, it is clear that Form 1+ is not much faster or slower than an average FDM printer. At the standard resolution, it chugs at about the same pace as the other printers. However, if you reduce the layer thickness and use the printer's potential for full resolution, it will take a little longer. Even with SLA technology, the compromise between resolution and speed is about the same as with FDM.

That said, other print statistics are really impressive. Form 1+ absolutely shredded the test object “STRG V” printed by us, with which, for example, minimum wall thickness, maximum unsupported span, maximum overhang angle and more are to be tested. The piece was definitely not perfect, but it was much cleaner and more complete than what we normally see from FDM printers.

After a few weeks, it's pretty clear that Formlabs isn't just blowing smoke with all the claims about professional print quality. The Form 1+ indeed offers more detailed, higher quality prints than many other consumer-oriented 3D printers currently available. It's not much faster, but there are only a handful of competing machines that can do what this thing does. Oh, and not to mention that Form 1+ can also print flexible materials, which is pretty cool.

Maintenance, repairability, upgradeability

If there is an area where Form 1+ has problems, it is maintenance. The photopolymer resin that SLA printers use is an absolute pain in the ass. We can't knock on the Form 1+ specifically for that, as it's definitely not the only printer that works this way – but handling resin is definitely a nightmare – at least compared to a spool of plastic filament.

Resin requires drastically more attention to detail than ABS or PLA filaments. Before printing, you need to make sure there are no large bubbles in the resin tray as they may create a hole in your print. Sometimes a small hole is not a big deal, but sometimes it can ruin your entire model. The resin is also more viscous than water, so bubbles do not always rise very quickly to allow for easy bursting. So sometimes you have to wait for them to dissolve.

Formlabs Form 1+ 3D printer Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

And that's just step one. The real fun starts after your print is done. In this case, you'll need to put on rubber gloves (trust me, don't do it with your bare hands), pry the sticky model off the build plate, and wipe it around in a bath with isopropyl alcohol. This will dissolve uncured resin that may adhere to your model.

But you're still not out of the forest! Before you start printing again, you have to do one step. To make sure there are no cured parts lurking in the resin shell (which would block the laser and screw up your pressure), you'll need to rake a comb through the Goop pool to catch stragglers. Then you need to remove the tool used, wait for the bubbles to dissolve, and then start printing again. It's pretty tiring to be honest.

The photopolymer resin that SLA printers use is an absolute pain in the ass.

Repairability is also a difficult task for the printer. Formlabs has tried to keep moving parts as small as possible so that errors occur less frequently. That's nice – but if there is a chance that something will go wrong, getting into this machine and repairing it yourself is probably a difficult task. Everything about this printer is inherently more complicated than the technology that powers an FDM printer.

Smaller problems can be fixed easily enough – for example, a dusty mirror can be cleaned with a can of compressed air in just a minute – but bigger problems (an engine stops working, the mirror loses alignment, the laser breaks out, or you if you do If you drop some resin in the lower chamber, you will almost certainly need to contact customer service or send your printer in for repair.

The DT accessory package

Improve your game and get the most out of your equipment with the following extras selected by our editors:

Isopropyl alcohol ($ 25)

Canned air ($ 5.84)

flexible resin ($ 99)

However, we haven't found any of these issues during our testing, so we have every reason to believe that these issues are extremely rare. But still – if you ever have an accident, it's probably not going to be a DIY repair, which is annoying.

You can now simply forget that it can be updated. You get what you see with this machine. You can buy new types of resin and some spare parts, but as far as we can tell, the machine is not designed for upgrades or extensions.

Conclusion

Comparing an SLA printer to an FDM printer is similar to comparing apples to oranges: they are certainly different, but ultimately they are both fruits. Anyone who says you can't compare the two is a fool.

The Form 1+ is arguably one of the best consumer-oriented SLA printers currently available – but within the broader category of 3D printers, it is not necessarily the leader – at least in the opinion of this reviewer. The print resolution this device offers is excellent and, thanks to several quality measurements, far ahead of most FDM printers.

But not all of them. The Ultimaker 2 offers the same specifications for maximum resolution (only 25 microns) and can produce comparable prints without worrying about photopolymer resin (which is not only messy, but costs $ 150 per bottle). It's also $ 800 cheaper than the $ 3,300 Form 1+.

Simply put, we would only recommend this printer if your only concern is print quality. If you want the best prints you can possibly get from a printer in this price range, look no further.

However, if you're interested in things like price, convenience, and repairability, you should consider other options. There are tons of traditional FDM printers that offer slightly poorer print quality but also require far less maintenance and are sold at a much cheaper price.

While Form 1+ is definitely at the top of the list in terms of printing performance, you can get a lot more for your money elsewhere.