In the previous post in this series we focused on how we torture tested the Form 2.

The Form 2 is the most advanced desktop 3D printer ever created. But as the saying goes, you don’t build the most advanced 3D printer in just one day. In fact, it took more than a half-dozen complete system iterations over the course of 18 months.

A peek inside the Form 2

We believe in sharing some of our experiments and learning as we built the Form 2. As engineers and designers, this is what we would want to see. In this post, we intend to pull back the curtain on our prototyping process and walk you through how we iterated toward the Form 2 design.

Our iterations took the form of complete system prototypes. Some iterations solved particularly difficult engineering issues; others focused on industrial design, while some of the last iterations focused on manufacturability, fit, and finish. Every version had one thing in common — they were all working printers, and each iteration built toward the final product we shipped.

Proto 0 — Hacking the Form 1

Goal: Explore a new print process and resin system.

Right from the beginning, we knew we wanted to focus on print reliability. To see if we could make that happen, we built mock-ups of a new printing process. The first prototypes used one of our most plentiful resources, Form 1 3D printers. Each engineer received a Form 1 to hack with the goal of improving on the peel mechanism in the Form 1+. The ideas were wide-ranging and involved modifications from attaching some 80/20 aluminum extrusions to the printer, to complete rebuilds of the structure and internal mechanisms.

An early slide mechanism

A rotational peel mechanism

It was also while building Proto 0 that we began to test ideas that we wanted to be key features of the Form 2, for instance, an automatic resin management system. For inspiration, we looked to 2D printers, tearing ink cartridges apart trying to understand the decades of engineering wisdom and learnings that have gone into designing those systems.

An early prototype of our gravity fed resin dispenser

Proto 1 — (Occasionally) Works Like

Goal: Build the first working prototype with the new Form 2 architecture

In the first few months of prototyping you wander, explore, and search for the best ideas. But eventually you have to start to converge. As with most engineering decisions at Formlabs, we used the process of elimination to select the core architecture concepts most likely to survive.

Proto 1 was the first attempt to put together a machine that would become the Form 2. Systems such as the wiper and the slide mechanism were first used in action with this prototype. One early simplification and exploration was to have the slide peel displace the whole length of the tank as can be seen in the photo below. Proto 1 was the last prototype that relied heavily on legacy Form 1+ components, including the build platform and the “brain” components.