Formlabs Form 1 SLA Printer Donation

Projects
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I reached out to Formlabs to ask for a sample of official resin in order to see if our issues were resin-specific or mechanical. They responded with very relevant information (and a coupon offering)

Hi Sean,

Thanks for reaching out! I’ll be happy to help as best I can.

OpenFL is actually a Form 1±exclusive tool. The Form 1 does not have the laser power required to use OpenFL. Resin manufacturers will sometimes have a “recommended setting” for printing with their resin that is already hardcoded into PreForm— you may want to ask the manufacturer of this resin for such a setting.

This is a bit of a tight spot to be in—we haven’t supported the Form 1 for many years now (since the introduction of the Form 1+,) nor do we sell resin compatible with this printer any longer. The last resin we sold compatible with the Form 1 was Clear v2. This resin is nearly identical to Clear v4, but I can not guarantee that v4 will perform as-expected.

Because you’re in a tight spot, I’d be happy to do what I can—I’d be happy to provide a coupon for half-off a cartridge of Clear v4. Let me know if this would help, or if you have any questions!

Kelly Hicks
Formlabs Services | Customer Care

So on the bright side, that explains some of the mysteries we were trying to solve (why OpenFL was having issues, and possibly why our prints are failing if the resin isn’t preset-compatible). On the other hand, it sounds like getting it working will be pricey and potentially not even work if there is no compatible resin out there that will work with our hardcoded settings. From here, I think it’d be worth making use of the half-off coupon and giving it a go with their clear resin or trying to find a resin that we know works with the Form1 presets.

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42

With the half off coupon, the resin would be cheaper than fun to do. I’ll kick in $20-30 if someone else wants to also take a risk and experiment

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43

I’ll kick in 20bux.

44

also, i think it might be worth getting a colouring kit, or just get some grey instead
since the clear is clearly not working well

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45

thanks mimi and sean for doing so much work on this. i’d throw in a few bucks to experiment. i wonder if it would be possible to upgrade the laser so that it was more comparable to a +1.

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46

I can ask if they think grey or colored would be as likely to work. She seemed to think clear v4 had the best chance

47

Clear is the easiest to work with. I can lend a little bit of clear v4 to test with.

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48

That would be amazing! We’re only printing small test cubes, so we’d only need enough to fill to the min fill line I think.

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49

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