3D Printing With Resin Is Risky, but Formlabs’ New Creator Series Aims to Make It Safer - CNET

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Formlabs is branching out from its business roots to offer its resin expertise to the masses.

3D printer manufacturer Formlabs has a new set of materials aimed at enthusiasts rather than its usual business audience. The Creator Series consists of two different resins, Tough and Super Clear, that have been designed specifically for third-party printers such as Elegoo, Anycubic and Phrozen and formulated to be safer than other resins. This is a big departure for Formlabs, as it has always kept its 3D printing business granular and in-house.

The Creator Series is available on Amazon from Thursday for $45 per kilogram. This is a little more pricey than some resins, but far cheaper than Formlabs' resins for its own enterprise machines. Tough resin is designed to be durable for miniatures, busts and "low impact models" that won't be under a lot of pressure, while the crystal clear resin exactly as it sounds; a glassy-looking resin that produces clear models.

"As the hobbyist market grows, it’s exciting to see the impact and power of 3D printing in the hands of creators. However, there’s a concerning gap in the safety of the resin options currently on the market, so we tapped the experience of our leading materials science team to deliver innovative, high-performance, safer, and low-cost resins," Formlabs CPO Dávid Lakatos said in a press release Thursday. "As another step towards making 3D printing accessible, Creator Series will empower more users to experiment, innovate, and create with confidence."

Formlabs has a proven track record of making excellent resins. Its enterprise resins are expensive but consistently excellent. It has an extensive R&D department that produces a huge variety of resins. Normally, they work best on Formlabs machines like the latest Form 4, but these new resins have been tested on other third-party printers. The company even lists specific printers the resins work with, offering profiles for popular slicer apps like Chitubox and Lychee.

I've always been impressed with how well the Formlabs resins work in their machines, so it will be interesting to see how they do in other 3D printers. Even though they are $45 (about $15 more than other brands of resin) per kilo, I don't think it is an unreasonable price for a resin that's well-tested and potentially safer.

According to Formlabs, "These resins also reduce the potential health risks encountered with traditional hobbyist resins, with safe ingredients that don’t produce harmful odors or large amounts of volatile organic compounds." If that's true, and I will do my testing as soon as possible, these resins are sure to be popular with the consumer resin 3D printer crowd.

The Creater Series resins are available on Amazon now.