It was an old basic Epax model, cheap as chips but punched well above it's weight, no longer available and surpassed by newer and better models.
The Form 3 wins in reliability and not having to mess around with all the parameters in the slicer for lift speeds and exposures, but that's where it's winning streak ends I'm afraid.
It cost a fortune in resin and I've never got good surface quality out of mine, some people swear they have but if you look close at their models they're not that smooth, no where near as smooth as the Epax was, certainly not when the Form cost nearly seven times as much.
A lot of the Form community hate the surface finish and lament the passing of the Form2 which was light years ahead in surface quality, it's better if you're modeling dental or dwarfs and elfs but large flat areas suffer badly, mostly due to the FEP sagging under the weight of resin and being dragged across the rollers (that don't roll
) by the laser print head, which then scratches the FEP, just a
design flaw.
Every fourth or fifth print I have to take the tank out and clean all the crap off the bottom of the FEP to get decent prints.
Having said all that, when I say decent I'm talking perfection, you expect some surface work to do on cheaper machines but not on a £4K machine.
Luckily I've just managed to secure one of the new Saturn 2 8K machines this afternoon in what I suppose is called a fire sale, 1000 units at early bird prices make it a viable cost option. They were all gone in under five minutes.
We'll see what happens with that when it turns up, the print quality is supposed to be right up there, the down side is now having to go back fighting shitty slicer software and working out new settings.
I'll run both side by side as the Form is rather good for small detail parts like axle boxes and springs, horn guides, anything without large flat surfaces really.
