Formlabs, one of the leading 3D printing companies, recently introduced two additions to its SLA ecosystem – a lightning-fast post-curing station and a functional material with ten times greater toughness. The new Form Cure post-cures parts in just 60 seconds, while the newly formulated Tough 1500 resin rivals even injection-molded plastics such as polypropylene in terms of mechanical properties. This should make it easier than ever to use 3D printing in production scenarios.

Last year, Formlabs launched the Form 4 and Form 4L, which made the speed and unit costs of injection molding achievable. However, there was still a significant gap in the toughness and durability of 3D-printed and injection-molded parts. With the new Tough 1500 Resin, Formlabs claims to be taking a giant leap toward closing this gap. According to Formlabs, Tough 1500 Resin V2 offers ten times higher fracture toughness, three times higher Gardner impact strength, and over 150 percent elongation at break. Thanks to its increased toughness, Tough 1500 Resin V2 rivals the mechanical properties of polypropylene and creates robust parts that do not break or crack and retain their material properties for longer.

“For 3D printing to compete with injection molding, it needs to make significant advances in material properties,” explains Formlabs CEO and co-founder Max Lobovsky. “With our new Tough 1500 Resin, we've come significantly closer to the point where 3D-printed parts can compete with injection molded parts in terms of toughness and durability, with much greater design freedom and production flexibility.”

Parts manufactured using SLA 3D printing must be post-cured to achieve their final material properties. Formlabs is now accelerating this process with a lightning-fast post-curing station for its SLA ecosystem, the new Form Cure. Together, the Form 4 series of 3D printers and the new Form Cure are designed to enable a record-fast 3D printing process. The new Form Cure works approximately two to eight times faster than the first-generation Form Cure. In addition, the new post-curing station heats up to 60 degrees Celsius in just 60 seconds. With the second-generation Form Cure, standard resins can be post-cured in just 60 seconds, while engineering resins can be post-cured in less than 15 minutes. This streamlined post-processing process has already helped beta customers iterate faster and dramatically increase their throughput.

“When we combine the new Form Cure with the Form 4, we can achieve much more with fewer devices. The speed at which we can now get things done is changing our entire approach to projects,” said Robert Mackowiak, rapid prototyping engineer at Hasbro.

“We have to post-cure 600 parts per day,” reports Matthias Krabel, Managing Director of MAKRA PRO. “With our old Form Cure, we would need more devices to post-cure all these parts, which means more work and therefore higher labor costs. So the second-generation Form Cure is better for us—more affordable and more efficient.”

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