Formlabs Form4 - Open Material Mode

3D Printing
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I’m not trying to break any laws here but if admin feel my question is inappropriate, please do remove it.

A customer of mine has a Form4 3D printer. They want me to print a load of parts (several hundred) for them using their Form4 machine however the properties they want are not available in the FormLabs resin selection.

They are open to paying (a significant sum) to unlock the machine to access what FormLabs calls “Open Material Mode” which is fine however it comes with the drawback that the resin must be added to the vat by hand since the auto dispense and level warning features are rendered inactive.

I don’t understand why FormLabs don’t allow you to simply fill your own bottle when you’ve paid them 50% on top of the machine cost to use other resins - feels icky to me…

That said, I’m thinking of options:

  1. Use a peristaltic pump to top up the vat as and when needed, possibly using some sort of liquid level detection to automate it.
  2. The resin bottles have an RFID tag so the machine knows what has been installed. It remembers how much has been used so it either stores that internally against the resin bottle ID or it writes a value to the resin bottle RFID tag. I might be able to work around this by rewriting the RFID tag when required.

Has anyone already done this?

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Speaking as an admin, I don’t know how this would be an inappropriate conversation. You are not asking about circumventing an authentication or authorization mechanism, you are talking about, after paying for some functionality, how to add additional functionality. Whether that additional function happens to be available in another mode seems irrelevant to that question.

If you were trying to modify the RFID to sell counterfeit product, I’m guessing that would be dubious at best. But I don’t see how your question is any different from learning the RFID counter system on toothbrush heads works.

(If it were me I’d go with the peristaltic pump because I’d worry about them changing the RFID system in an update, but that’s a musing from someone with zero experience and isn’t helpful, so I’ll shut up now… :grin:)

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Thanks Michael, I’d agree, but being new here I didn’t want to assume :slight_smile:

The peristaltic pump is probably the least hassle solution, I can probably use a time of flight sensor to measure the fluid level and top up when required. I can 3D print a clip to attach the sensor to the side of the vat.

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