How My Form 1(s) Stopped Forming, & Formlabs’ Awesome Support

So you may have noticed my posts have kinda trickled off a bit. I sincerely apologize, it wasn’t intentional. In the end weeks of July, my printer started producing some very hideous prints, such as the one above. The bad prints were consistent; nothing was printing nicely at all, and I hadn’t seen prints fail so badly up until that point. During an open support conversation with Formlabs, the printer gave up completely, refusing to stay powered on without tripping the power supply’s internal fuse. Something was wrong, terribly wrong...

A Little Update

Hello, everyone! I apologize for the wait for the Form 1 Stress Test v.1.1 write-up. I’m actively working on it when I can between other projects I’ve been working on. The main reason for the delay is that as I’d been working on the write-up, I’ve also been printing other things, like test prints for prospective Form 1 buyers and further tests on the Stress Test.

Unfortunately, there’s some bad news. In my time with the Form 1 thus far, I’ve yet to get many successful prints off it. This includes prints both large and small, parts with supports built by the software and built by me, and with all different layer height and resin type settings. This is all with the Formlabs Clear resin, unmodified and using a clean resin tank (just had to mention this because, as some of you know, I’ve been dabbling with other resins and pigments).

Build Platform Map

Looks like I'd been a bit busier than I hoped this weekend. While I work on the next write-up, here is a little build platform map that I’ve been using to help me figure out where I should place parts. This has been especially helpful in my experiments with placement of objects and how they are affected by the forces caused by the peel process. As marked on the map, it’s based on the current build of PreForm that’s out now (version 0.8.1-rc7, build number 13). Hopefully it will help you as much as it has helped me. ^_^)

Success...!!

Here is the latest version of the Form 1 Stress Test model, v.1.1. It’s currently drying after its 10 minute alcohol bath, but hopefully you can see that the model is pretty much all there! The color and texture reminds me a bit of the skin shed by the Xenomorph in the movie Alien. Feels a bit symbolic, like the test is growing more mature. lol

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post much more about this one possibly till later next week since I’ll be busy with some other things, but when I do, I’ll cover what was done to get the print working better and what tests were changed or modified. Meanwhile, I’ll try and post about some other things that won’t require too much time to write.

In this version of the test, I’ve included a tasty treat that replaces a similar test from the previous version. Can you see it? ^_^)

First Print EVER! \(^Ɐ^)/

My first print ever... and it failed!

Truth be told, I expected it to fail in several areas, so it was also a success in that it taught me a great many things about printing on the Form 1 3D printer. This mangled mess is a print of a model built specifically for stress-testing various properties of the Form 1 and Formlabs’ clear resin. I’ll explain each of the different parts of the print and model below, and if they were successful or failures (and if I know why).