form 1 prints

  

I had some time this week to try out the new Form 1 printer. I cued up some files of Bob Roth's new finger design that Ivan Owen had modified for printing on a Makerbot. I figured these would be a good test. I set the resolution at the highest setting in the Formlabs software and generated a support structure for the parts. It's interesting that the supports are very small triangulated icicle like structures with a very small point of contact. I was curious how these would work, but they seem to work quite well. I believe this print took about 9 hours (again at the highest resolution settings). 

I came back the next day to what you see here. I had a small amount of lumpiness right at the first few layers of the build after the supports. I think this might be due to me not cleaning the build surface super well from the last test print that Adream and I had done. We also had left the resin from the last build in the build tray (although had kept the lid closed) and it had been sitting for a few days. Regardless, the supports broke off very easily with an x-acto knife. The resolution is quite amazing. There are no visible lines from the print process. The density of the build was surprising as was the physical weight of the resin parts. The prints are noticeably "heavy". I rinsed these parts with alcohol and I can say that I am not a big fan of the "tacky" feeling of the prints after cleaning them thoroughly. I did notice however that the prints seemed to loose that after they had dried completely, but there is still an odd feeling to the surface of the prints. All in all this is a pretty cool machine if you don't mind waiting for the quality that it provides. I still want to put some prints through a durability test and see what kind of use they can take. I'll keep you posted...