Today I attendedthe Bay Area Maker Faire, and of course I checked out as many different printers and technologies as I could.
Regarding the FormLabs, I did get a chance to actually hold and examine some of the models in detail. Truth be told, it's not that much different (print quality) than what we can get with a well tuned printer. In fact, not too far from FormLabs was Ultimaker's booth, and their new Ultimaker 2 produced some of the best output I saw all day. And dare I say, it was better quality than the FormLabs.
On the other hand, there was one other company out there with a SL type printer, that absolutely blew me away. It's called the XFab, and is made by DWSLAB.
First of all, the printer is easily twice the size of the FormLabs, and prints much larger objects, then the material they use is not the same as the resin used by FormLabs, the final print is like a semi-flexible rubber.
But the output quality was unbelievable, it really looked near injection molder quality. Check out this little model. It's just under 2" tall. Look at the zoomed in image, I can see a few imperfections, but I still can't see any layer lines.
I want one of these printers.
OH, the price of the printer is $5000. Considering the quality of the output, I think it's a bargain.
Post's attachmentsXFab Model detail.jpg
XFab Model detail.jpg 219.24 kb, file has never been downloaded.
XFab Printer.jpg
XFab Printer.jpg 194.1 kb, file has never been downloaded.
You don't have the permssions to download the attachments of this post.
To print or, 3D print, that is the question...
SD3 printer w/too many mods, Printrbot Simple Maker Ed., FormLabs Form 1+
AnyCubic Photon, Shining 3D EinScan-S & Atlas 3D scanners...
...and too much time on my hands.