At the Symposium on Computational Fabrication, @BenFrantzDale and I gave a talk about hacking stereolithography and using the Form 1/1+ as a research platform (slides here). This talk coincided with a public release of OpenFL, an API for the Form 1 and 1+.

We’ve been flying under the radar so far, but wanted to bring it to the attention of the forums – I’m sure that plenty of you have Form 1/1+ printers and a desire to push the limits of stereolithography.

OpenFL includes a special build of PreForm that allows you to customize material files. Check out the example file here to see all of the options that you can modify.

In addition, the OpenFL API includes a pair of Python packages to

Interact with your printer automatically and programmatically

Examine, modify, and make custom slice files

These APIs have grown out of in-house software, and we’re excited to be releasing them to the public. We can’t wait to see what you do with OpenFL and your Form 1/1+s!

Examples

In one test, we customized slices to add a pause + rise halfway through a print. This lets us insert a carbon fiber sheet into a printed part, giving it better material properties.



In general, the printer is useful as a high-precision UV source. With UV-sensitive paper, you can turn the 3D printer into a 2D printer:



With presensitized PCBs, you can use this as the first stage in a PCB etching pipeline:



Finally, you can turn the printer into a strange MIDI instrument.