Formlabs made an unusual move: they’re entering the third-party resin market.
The company produces the highly polished Form 4 series, along with a wide range of engineering resins for use in their equipment. They provide near-perfect print parameters for these resins, making successful printing pretty straightforward on their equipment.
Last week’s announcement of the new Creator Series of resins is quite different. These are 3D printer resins targeted at non-Formlabs equipment. While it was always possible to try to use Formlabs resins in other equipment, here the company is designing specific products for that use case.
In fact, the Creator Series of resins are NOT compatible with Formlabs equipment!
Formlabs also provides “validated settings” for use with seven popular 3D printers from other manufacturers. These include:
- Elegoo Mars 4 9K
- Anycubic Photon Mono 2
- Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra
- Anycubic Photon D2
- Uniformation GK2
- Phrozen Sonic Mini 8K
- Creality Halot Mage 8K
The settings are provided in formats compatible with Chitubox and Lychee slicers. It’s also very likely the settings are adaptable to adjacent 3D printer models from these companies.
There are two varieties of Creator Resins at the moment: Creator Tough Resin and Creator Super Clear Resin. These resins were developed by Formlabs’ crack team of 30+ PhD material scientists, so it’s likely they will have the same good qualities as found in their own house resins.
One interesting aspect is that Formlabs believes these resins are somewhat safer to use than typical 3D printer resins. This is because Formlabs found a way to eliminate the need for using 4-Acryloylmorpholine, or “ACMO”.
Formlabs analyzed 70 different popular resins on the market and found that virtually all of them use ACMOs, some quite substantially: up to 60% of the resin in ACMOs.
ACMO has recently seen a “Significant New Use Regulation” issued by the US EPA. The chemical is declared dangerous when contacting skin and breathing it in. Resins using this chemical are now required to include a human hazard mark.
There are a lot more findings in Formlabs’ analysis that I will cover in another post.
Creator Resins don’t include ACMOs, making them somewhat safer to use than most common resins. However, it is still strongly recommended that you use proper ventilation and PPE when engaging with any 3D printer resin.
Formlabs is now selling each version of Creator Resin for only US$45 per kg, which is actually quite a good deal, especially for a safer resin.
This is a very bold move by Formlabs, as they’ve brought forward specific information about the largely unknown issues with the current resin market — and provided a solution, too. It’s also a strong move towards a safer environment for all in the resin 3D print world.
Via Formlabs
