Formlabs is showcasing new SLA materials and a new curing solution. The new Tough 1000 Resin, with a tensile modulus of 1000, a Tough 1500, and an improved Tough 2000 resin are meant for wear resistance, wear, and impact applications. The company hopes that these resins will compare well to HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene), PP (Polypropylene), and ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene).

Parts made with Formlabs Tough 2000 V2 resin.

Formlabs CEO Max Lobovsky said,

“Formlabs’ goal has always been to deliver any part at the push of a button. But that mission depends on more than just speed and ease. We need parts that are as tough and resilient as the products we rely on every day. With the new Tough Resin Family, SLA printing now delivers the strength and durability of the world’s most trusted thermoplastics.”

Drone made with Formlabs Tough 2000 V2 resin.

Cure L V2

Along with the larger Formlabs systems came larger parts that were getting too big for the previous Cure solutions. Enter the Form Cure L V2, which promises 1-minute post-cure cycles. This could actually be a pretty nifty thing for many labs working with photopolymers, microfluidics, and the like.

Agostino Lobello, Product Development Engineer at Radio Flyer (yes, that Radio Flyer), said,

“We were shocked by how fast the cure times were across all materials, even the engineering resins, which allowed us to work faster and get finished parts to our engineers in less time.”

Software

An updated PreForm 3.54 has improved workflows for the Fuse and Form printers. Supports have been improved, and you now have measuring tools in the viewer, which is handy. The team has generally cleaned up the UI, and automated build packing is now better. Across the board, this seems like a set of sensible improvements from Formlabs. My only gripe is that I’d prefer resins not to mimic existing materials but instead be optimized for particular applications, uses, and sectors. If more efforts went into making “Fixture Resin” and “Medical Model Resin,” we’d see more innovation, and we’d really enable customers to do much more. Resins meant to be photographed, burnt out with casting, that are radiopaque, conductive, magnetic, and more, would add to our arsenal as a true production technology.

Formlabs Form Cure L V2.

Yes, a lot of people want to work with what they know. And a lot of people are working with end-use constraints or industry-wide affectations for PC or PA. But, additionally, there are a lot of people who just want a machine to make electrical connectors every day, all day, or lampshades. For these people, if you have the ultimate electrical connector resin that just works better than others, they will opt for you and stick with you. And they’ll use that machine day in, day out with just that resin. These kinds of production applications now often have to shoehorn a design and photopolymer into a particularly new way of making and thinking. That’s hard enough. Better resins for specific applications, however, would let people excel in production applications. And in production material volumes will be bigger and clients will be stickier. I’ll swap out a perfectly good prototyping machine for the next thing, but if I run a production line off of something, I’ll think more than twice before replacing it.

I understand that Formlabs has a lot of prototyping customers, and they should see improvements as well. Having a general tough material will be great for people. But many people I know are building little print farms to handle parts for companies, production, design departments, end-use parts, and more. And for them, more resins that are functional and the best for a particular part and application can be better. Across the dental portfolio, Formlabs already has a Permanent Crown Resin, IBT Flex Resin, and more. And there are indeed resins for surgical guides and dentures, as well as numerous casting resins. But, I just think that rather than catch all resins, end application ones represent the future.

Images courtesy of Formlabs