> With the laser + galvo setup it was clear, but now that it's also LCD is the print quality better? Speed better? Reliability? Build quality?
1) Resin stability and reliability
Sure, you don't care if you're printing miniatures. If you're printing a dental appliance, suddenly you care a lot.
2) Convenience features
Heating the tank, refilling the tank automatically, etc. Sure, you can do these manually, but they're a pain in the ass to do manually
3) Repeatability
The mountings on my Chinese resin printers need to be reset all the time. I have to flatten replacement plates all the time. I can't count on the fact that the plate removes and remounts accurately.
4) General engineering quality
FormLabs probably did real engineering, measurement and design on everything with the explicit purpose of characterization and repeatability (light uniformity, release tension, etc.) At $500 a unit, that just isn't happening on the Chinese ones. After the hobbyists poke at them a year or two fixing the issues, the fixes sometimes make their way back into the Chinese units (generally creating other problems along the way).
Nominally, this should all mean way less grief printing things.
And maybe the main LCD is no better, but I would suspect it probably is. As far as I can tell, there is exactly one supplier for the LCD panels in all the Chinese resin printers. It would be really nice if FormLabs actually spent the NRE to create a better LCD with a second source as it would give a competitive kick to the space.
For a hacker hobbyist, the Chinese printers are WAY better value. For someone whose time equates to money, the FormLabs may be worth coughing up as $5K really isn't worth thinking about.
1) Resin stability and reliability
Sure, you don't care if you're printing miniatures. If you're printing a dental appliance, suddenly you care a lot.
2) Convenience features
Heating the tank, refilling the tank automatically, etc. Sure, you can do these manually, but they're a pain in the ass to do manually
3) Repeatability
The mountings on my Chinese resin printers need to be reset all the time. I have to flatten replacement plates all the time. I can't count on the fact that the plate removes and remounts accurately.
4) General engineering quality
FormLabs probably did real engineering, measurement and design on everything with the explicit purpose of characterization and repeatability (light uniformity, release tension, etc.) At $500 a unit, that just isn't happening on the Chinese ones. After the hobbyists poke at them a year or two fixing the issues, the fixes sometimes make their way back into the Chinese units (generally creating other problems along the way).
Nominally, this should all mean way less grief printing things.
And maybe the main LCD is no better, but I would suspect it probably is. As far as I can tell, there is exactly one supplier for the LCD panels in all the Chinese resin printers. It would be really nice if FormLabs actually spent the NRE to create a better LCD with a second source as it would give a competitive kick to the space.
For a hacker hobbyist, the Chinese printers are WAY better value. For someone whose time equates to money, the FormLabs may be worth coughing up as $5K really isn't worth thinking about.