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Formlabs' Form 2 Printer Offers Upgrade from its Predecessor
Sep. 22, 2015 02:55PM PST
Emerging TechnologyFormlabs’ Form 2 printer offers key upgrades from the company’s previous 3D printer, the Form 1+.
Formlabs’ Form 2 printer offers key upgrades from the company’s previous 3D printer, the Form 1+.
According to Engadget:
It’s been more than a year since Formlabs debuted its Form 1+ 3D printer, but that was more of a slight revamp of the company’s original 2013-era Form 1 printer, rather than a true successor. That honor goes to the new Form 2 printer, which features a similar design to its predecessor, but is far more capable. Its build volume is over 40 percent bigger than the Form 1+, allowing it to produce larger objects, and its laser is 50 percent more powerful for finer resolution printing. The Form 2 also resembles a traditional desktop printer even more now, with the addition of new resin cartridges (you can still manage resin manually, if you’d like). The downside? At $3,499, it’s still something meant more for professionals than typical consumers. Existing Formlabs customers will get a slight discount, at least. Form 1 owners will get $400 off the new machine, and backers of the company’s original Kickstarter campaign can get $600 off.
All of Formlabs’ machines utilize stereolithography (SL) technology for 3D printing, which is something typically found in higher-end printers. Unlike the fused deposition modeling (FDM) tech used by competitors like Makerbot, which spits out plastic from an extruder, stereolithography paints layers of objects by passing a laser through resin. Basically, that means SL printers can print objects with much finer detail than FDM machines. When viewed side-by-side, complex models printed by the Form 2 looked like finished products that you could buy in a store — the same models printed by a FDM printer feel like cheap toys, in comparison.