The Formlabs Form 2 is about to take SLA 3D printing mainstream

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 Form 1, as it was called, was one of the first consumer-oriented stereolithography printers the world had ever seen back then, and ended up being a massive success on Kickstarter, gathering up almost $3 million before the campaign concluded.

The Form 2 desktop 3D printer features Wi-Fi connectivity, a streamlined printing process, and a larger build platform.

At a panel discussion on the 3D printing landscape hosted by CNET at this year’s CES, Formlabs’ chief marketing officer Colin Raney described the “dirty secret” of 3D printers as a legacy of complicated machinery stained by awkwardly large devices, operational errors and a high cost of operation.

On the user-friendliness front, a colour touchscreen is provided for managing print jobs, and an intuitive interface is promised with the PreForm software that boasts features such as 1-click print to make the whole print process as easy as possible. The more powerful the laser, the faster the layer forms, and the faster your object is finished.

The printer uses standard or functional resins where each has a goal depending on what you are printing.

Without a doubt, the most annoying part about SLA printing is dealing with the photopolymer resin that it uses to print. It’s incredibly sticky, and tends to get all over the place if you’re not careful. Raney likens 3D printer users to musicians who become intimately familiar with their instruments, where each machine has its own idiosyncrasies.

Born out of the fertile soils of the MIT Media Lab, the Formlabs Form 1 was something of a gamechanger for desktop 3D printers, shifting the conversation from simple plastic trinkets to complex resin structures. 3D printing needs to become similarly frictionless. They are proprietary and custom created to be used with the printer.

The Form 2 has Wi-Fi on-board for wireless printing, and Formlabs has also introduced a new dashboard to let the user monitor print progress on a desktop computer, tablet or phone, plus alerts and notifications can be sent from the printer to your mobile. But perhaps one of the more unexpected use cases of desktop SLA has been for stop-motion animation: some two years in the making, French animator Gilles-Alexandre Deschaud completed the 3D-printed three-minute short film Chase Me earlier this year. The crucible of delivering backer rewards was a blessing in disguise, as Formlabs found themselves with in-house sales and customer service teams, which has allowed them to sell directly to customers instead of through resellers. Not only were printers big and expensive, they also required skilled technicians to make prototypes work properly.

Lobovsky talks about building a printer for “prosumers” – which includes serious amateur designers as well as professionals operating on a limited budget.