I went to my old job and took apart their new 3D printer
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ธ.ค. 2024
- After beta testing the Form 4 3D printer and getting really curious about what was going inside of it, Formlabs offered to let me tear one down. Not one to say no to a good time, I ripped that machine apart and learned a lot. Hopefully you enjoy seeing the inner workings as much as I did!
If you're wondering, this is the printer we tore down: formlabs.com/3...
This radical transparency about design and engineering decisions is a brilliant way to showcase the thought and care that goes into this product. Brilliant marketing and very educational. More companies should do videos like this.
Don't forget when formlabs bought out Micronics because they were releasing a customer SLS printer that would compete with the fuse so they bought them out and killed the printer mid way through the kickstarter. Don't give them to much credit, formlabs is just as anti-consumer as stratasys. Not to mention their artificial lockdowns of certain printers to justify they "range" of resin printers, and excessively high "open material license" if you want to use anything but formlabs materials with their printers.
they doesn't really care becaues it's all lock down by patants
@@5jvm0u4 that wont stop people from using the ideas in wish ripoffs
I agree, having worked there and seeing the new models and how it works - plus the appreciation for the progress made from the past model and the work that went to it, is great marketing. It could be different for others but this somehow made me want to trust the product more.
Seriously
This would be a cool series. To see you tear down cool consumer products.
BOLTR featuring stuff made here. I think Ave would welcome the company 😂
Yes! Please more videos like this!
I agree!
same
Like AvE without the gobbledygook and domestic violence
I LOVE THIS STYLE OF VIDEO
2 nerdy engineers, asking about every single piece and explaining what it is, how it works and why it's important.
Thank you for making this Video
and
Thank you TH-cam recommending it
woah,, 1984 moment... The Telescreen is actually TH-cam where the Tube can listen to it's viewers.
@@Antarcticist Or your cellphone, alexa, siri, etc, etc, etc.
that's we what engineers do! everything, EVERYTHING, gets challenged on customer experience and cost.
@@isreal194 YES, Tell Trump to make it mandatory to record and upload detailed teardowns of all products manufactured between 2025 and 3000
Hearing an engineer's brain go through how every part was designed makes you have a lot of respect for all the good products that are out there
Yess ! This guy as a lead engineer was veery impressive props to him. As a mechanical engineer im surprised by how luch he knows about mechanics, optics and motherboards, wiring. He really knows every part of the product which is not easy to do
The best advert for a product I have ever seen. Now I want to buy one.
My thought exactly, "this is the best advertising formlabs could have done."
Me too, and I favor FDM over resin 3d printing for all sorts of reasons
Me too and I don't even know how to 3d print...
Hope you have a kidney you don't need.
We all do...
Good lord that was some serious nerding out over every freaking detail.
Loved every second of it.
The "Stuff UnMade Here" absolutely sent me into a fit of giggles.
ill send you back home
gradually growing into an evil laughter
"18c, that's pretty cold" "unheated garage"
... *cries in canadian*
As SEA, my unheated garage is about 35°C all year long except a few days during winter.
Explains the hat.
hmm 55 F is around 12 C so maybe he means that, because 18 C is nearly room temperature tbh
18°C, pretty cold, that's just a room that is bit chilly in winter for me, our garage can go lower than that and I don't even live in Canada, just France 😅
@@Quantyour I wish my wouldn't be colder than 12C today. But maybe that's why I took a break to watch this excellent video.
That was cool! I appreciate the information popups when you're mentioning different terminologies.
I don't know of another YT video that is just so... exactly what I want. Product design, system engineering, tool tear-down, mechatronic analysis, 3D printing. This is my specific jam.
It's very encouraging to see an engineering manager have such a thorough understanding of so much of how an entire machine came together. There were obviously a few fine details Alec didn't know off hand, but the other insights he had tells me that he probably knew them at one point and that he could very easily find the information or point you to the engineer who has it.
Successful companies making quality products are run by people like this.
When a company allows a teardown video of a complex machine like this, you know it's one of the best. It's an incredible video!
As a 67-year-old it’s encouraging to see such dedicated, smart, and brilliant young people forming the future!
Very encouraging indeed!
If it helps you feel better about 99% of talent is wasted in the western workforce. Very sad indeed. We don’t innovate, we manage the decline. I love this guys brain though he’s super smart
Internet has a way of showing negative more than positive. Very much in good hands when it comes to future of both math and science.
they are photopolymerazing the future
@@carsonhunt4642 This is true, and I see it at my current job. We have quite a few really intelligent people, but they’re stuck working on machines that are 20+ years old.
This is a must watch for engineering students to get a perspective about the various disciplines of engineering coming together into product development. Also a good intro to product development. Fantastic video.
This is honestly some of the best advertising I've ever seen
When you know how things are made, every thing around you is much more fascinating. Thanks for the great video, Shane!
Correct!
oh, but you also see everywhere the flaws and where development cut costs. like when you are used to design injection molds for high quality cars, and then take a seat in a car that is sold at the same price-tag with not that quality :D
Props to formalsb to put this on a platform! Many companies would not want someoone to tear down their machine, much less advertise it. Love the transparency.
I am not gonna lie, this is one of the most interesting things I have watched in a long time.
I would watch the 4 hour extended cut 😅
It was really *really* cool to see all the annotations for the different kinds of mechanisms. I'm just a hobbyist, but this taught me a bunch of new terms for parts that could eventually come in handy, that would be incredibly hard to search for without knowing what they're called.
Watching this is really helpful to me as a senior in mechanical engineering.
I am currently working on a machine in my internship that can measure 6 foot long coiled wire parts that are 0.03 inches in diameter. They want very high precision measurements between discreet points on the part.
What's stressing me out is how long the design process is taking me (as I work part time during school). I feel the pressure of "better have this done in less than a month." But in reality, designing any machine takes a lot of time, with many false paths and mistakes.
Thinking about how much time was put into every single little component on this printer makes me feel better for taking a bit longer on my machine design.
First rule of engineering: multiply your time estimates by 5 ;)
That's kinda the reality of most mechanical engineering jobs, you're allocated to just work on one small part of a big machine.
@@fabianmuhlberger6153 Your an optimist. 🙂
Fun teardown, and a big Kudos to Alec! I know how stressful it can be when you have another engineer tear into your design in front of you. It must be way harder when it’s a legacy/legendary engineer doing it on camera! But he clearly knew the design and was confident in the decisions that the team made in the design. Great job!
"Stuff UnMade Here" channel would be my favourite channel!
It’s funny to hear you slip into manager voice every so often. You don’t do it in your normal videos, but it’s here. It’s clear you have a lot of knowledge and you’re asking really tough questions.
This perspective is one I’ve not seen anywhere before and it enriched my view in so many ways. It also makes me know what my next purchase will be in this space.
Thank you all that made this video possible
Shane: So this is a fancy CNC part, it's super-important for the machine to work correctly (21:34)
Also Shane: 30:12 xD
This is like my dream job. Designing a machine, thinking about all the little details, manufacturing, assembly and all the ways the user could break it. And in the end you (hopefully) come up with a great product. This must feel so epic having your own product that people actually use and are happy with.
Avoid corporate. But at the same time, small companies have no stability and you have to work a lot more. In the end, the spots where you can actually do this are far between and rare. And usually they come only for the people who worked tirelessly for years.
@@Ayce47 yeah, that's what i thought :/
The fact that there was no point where Alec said “stop, it doesn’t come apart that way” is so much self control and confidence in the design. You can also see how visibly worried he is that Shane won’t approve of some bout of engineering.
Nice to see repairability taken into account when designing a product.
We have a few of these at a maker space I just started at. The employees like them and they say they are very reliable. Glad to see so much engineering goes into these... It's not just all marketing.
Thanks for taking the time to make this. This would for sure make an awesome series. As an industrial design major, I love seeing the behind the scenes of how this stuff was conceptualized.
For an engineer who works by developing new stuff - this was an exciting hour. Learned a lot too. And feel a bit better with myself that small details - when done optimally - takes weeks 😅 Seeing how much care they took with every part, my next SLA will be Formlabs.
We have some Form 3 printers at uni and the quality of the prints is incredible. Seeing what's inside of such a machine, I realize i have absolutely no clue whatsoever how it works. Going from 60 LEDs to 0.05mm percision over an area of 15cm^2 with a couple of plastic lenses and an lcd pannel seems like black magic.
we really enjoy companies giving the opportunity to give the chance to someone with big influence to show case something of theirs in this sort of way and it is very rare but whenever it happens its always really nice and just makes you want the product even more
23:15 "I'm going too long", roughly 1/3 into the total run time. Oui, Chef, I guess.
Really awesome video. I'm so glad that we live in an era where we have access to this interesting deep-dive engineering content. Thank you for your hard work!
This video is a gold mine for aspiring product engineers. I wish there were more videos like this one
i love the "which never happens" sidewards glances
This would be so cool to have one of the original engineers pick apart your iteration of their product. This feels like true engineering.
I always wish I had time to design stuff like this, but I ended up in a super fast paced job shop. Normally we would barely have time to get dimensions on a page and get it to the shop floor.
Yeah I feel that.
It has its perks though, you accumulate experience a lot faster like that.
The art of knowing what not to analyze.
Dude the Form 3L has been our best printer at work, Been eyeing off the Form 4L with hungry eyes.
Love the little popup definitions, thats a brilliant idea!
As a mechanical engineer with a constant desire to learn how things work I am so delighted with this video. You can tell what an experienced engineer Shane is and it is so exciting to see him go through and dissect everything. Loved the video.
Such a cool video, just the amount of engineering that goes into different parts!
Saw someone taking apart a machine on TH-cam-totally awesome! It’s such a tech challenge. I’m all about disassembling stuff. I once took apart my Flsun S1, and man, it was an unforgettable experience. That thing is like a tank-super heavy and a total pain to get into. Putting it back together really put my skills to the test.
I love this. As a design engineer student it’s nice to see how you think about this. Would love to see more!
I absolutely love the notes explaining field terms. Super helpful and educational
I don’t think many people appreciate how rare a video like this is. Not just a tare down, but one person who knows a ton about the machine in general but not the specifics having a conversation with someone who knows all the specifics about how design decisions were made. A real treat.
This type of Love (for lack of a better word) that was poured into Engineering this product to be 100% user repairable is the kind of product THAT I BELIEVED would no longer be feasible or retain a customer base to support.
Despite the low march pace through the tear down, I have nothing but ABSOLUTELY RESPECT for the passion they poured into their jobs.
Sometimes products with great design and capabilities end up being fragile or finicky unable to stand up to the rigors of real world use or It’s the opposite end of the spectrum being HD/Industrial to compensate.
Designing a Precision Machine (THIS ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES A HIGH LEVEL OF PRECISION TO FUNCTION) and be able to test it to the point so that ALL but the most obscure issues remain AND CONTINUE ironing out even those with new reiterations to be updated for the most recent batches manufactured speaks to the fabricator/maker inside me.
Thanks for geeking out and sharing all the important details that were put into every feature, part, nook, cranny, detail and even screw height position. This was mind blowing on a whole other level despite knowing that’s just how engineering is 😊.
Absolutely loved this! The depth and detail into each subsystem really were like "WOAH". I also know how fun it is to have a Brain-meld with someone who has spent their complete mental efforts in the same field as yours!
I had a similar experience in both sides, though of course in much less technical detail though. I went to visit my college 2 years after graduation and spent time learning about the modifications and upgrades made to my project - a 6DOF arm + Wheeled Universal Chassis(we used a few Formlabs built components as well) from the Juniors who were giving its Motion systems and Software their all. I was in a similar position to them, when we had met the person who had envisioned the first prototype and got started on the BOM and grants, our senior, when we had created our V1!
It really is an experience like no other when you can geek out about technical details most people don't care about/you don't get to use anymore; But instead of having to explain your thought process to the tee, you can just bounce off ideas and technicalities superficially as the other person also has done their work so intently and understands the crux of the technicalities, rather than the herrings.❤❤❤❤
loved Shane's "Was that really necessary" to every over engineered part- This really puts into perspective how much work and time and ingenuity are put into these machines.
Hat's off to these guys. I'd be terrified if you were digging into something I'd produced in this much detail.
This video twigged the same happy feelings i get taking apart things myself, thanks for sharing!
Except of course with the bonus of expert commentary instead of humming and the occasional yelp/grumble that form the usual sound track of my disassemblies 😂
Such a cool video, it's always so interesting to get the perspective of the engineers on a product they built - "oh yeah, this part was a total pain", "we put this here because users are dumb", etc. :) The questions seemed a bit careful, and maybe quite production-centric (which makes sense with Shane's background, and with him probably knowing what questions not to ask), but then again moments like the "misfeature" test at 45:10 were definitely not going easy on the FormLabs engineering lead guy, either :P
15:00 I always enjoy a bit of Raspberry Pi! And of course they have an AI camera now too, but that feature for printers is still more of a marketing gimmick. I wish all 3D printers had integrated cameras, though. Amazed Prusa still doesn't ;(
Everything "AI" is a marketing gimmick
There is another Raspberry Pi, a CM4 at 46:34 ;)
@@szaszm_ Indeed!
I also enjoy finding Jeff in the comment!
What was that first Pi?? It’s not Zero but is it like CM Zero???
@@TheMarcQmost tech adverse ppl don’t know that, to them any automated script/algorithm/bot whatever can be called fancy ai, no “I” needed, just the automated part 😂
I watched it all, its really really interesting to see the behind the scenes of the making , production and engineering required to build such a high end product.
This is by far my favorite video I have seen this year! Extremely interesting and love hearing the passion into the design.
Teardowns are a joy and very informative. It is glorious to see marvelous engineering presented by a great inventor.
What a cool video! Loved listening to the two of you nerd out about the build of this
so interesting to hear the production insight into products like this. Makes you appreciate all the seemingly simple things we all enjoy in our appliances.
So... Now I know where such good engineers as you actually work in.
i love this video. it is one of few videos on the internet shows how hard it is to make these things.
Thank you, that was delightful
I love hearing experts diving deep, getting nerdy and passionate
I'm really not happy with formlabs after there micronics acquisition, really want to see affordable SLS and I don't think we will see it soon because of them.
their
To be fair, the Micronics printer was interesting, but nowhere close to being reliable and repeatable enough for prime time.. They tried doing things cheap and dirty with sheet metal and 3d printed plastic bits that constantly deformed and jammed when they really needed the engineering analysis that Formlabs did that you can see in this teardown where they adopted extrusions and die castings and other custom engineered parts to make certain components and functions more reliable.. Being acquired was the best case for them and for the future for low cost, but reliable SLS IMO..
@@TheJunky228you are awesome
@@Flying0Dismount"Formlabs" and "low cost"? You must be living on a different planet
@@Flying0Dismountfdm wasnt reliable for a long time either.
As someone who's on the entry side of doing product engineering this is fascinating to see.
3:15 I know for sure shock absorbers like that are used in industrial machines, as I actually work with them - most pneumatic actuators where I work are used together with a shock absorber, quite possibly only to make the machines stay under some OSHA-like noise volume limit, or possibly make them not self destruct over time.
Learned so much, really appreciate the pop-up annotations too
I hope this becomes a series. Was super interesting.
Glad to know that you are alive
This was a great watch. Gives some insight into design thinking and manufacturing considerations.
Those longer rubber studs holding the fan are there if you ever need to replace the fan, you pull those and the bulb holding the fan will sharing to easily remove the fan
The only time I've seen a deep-dive like this before was when a university guy in Michigan was dissecting Tesla car parts, and he didn't have the Chief Engineer standing over him and helping. Shows so much confidence in their product, amazing.
Hey do you know what that video is called? Would love to see the Tesla breakdown.
@@ashwinsankar1111 I think it's from the WeberAuto channel. There's a lot of (worthily dull!) but comprehensive reviews on there, e.g. "Understanding the Tesla Model S Performance Motor".
I absolutely love this sort of deep dive into these technological marvels and how they even became to be, the blood, sweat and tears, etc. beautiful stuff.
Also, I learned a new phrase! _"polka-yolk"_
Some of my coworkers are ex-Formlabs, I laughed out loud at the 32:24 Max comment. Funny how different stories make their way around the world.
An amazing piece of technology methodically torn down with a clearly pationate engineer happy detailing every design and development process to create a highly functional and capable tool. Kudos to FormLabs for allowing this and shows the dedication to producing quality products!
it must be super cool to see the iteration process of a product you worked hands on with like this, especially when the product has changed so much over time
Totally loved this! I love that you ask about how each part is manufactured and the design constraints for each parts
Thoroughly enjoyed this format. Alec is a smart... 😮
I studied industrial design and have been lucky enough to design a handful of products. I never worked dedicatedly in the field, but can really appreciate the effort that went into the design and am thankful for the video.
I was one of those I the original crowdfunding of the form one those many years ago, glad to see the company doing well,
4 minutes in and I already know this is perfect gold. I want MOAR!!!
This is really fun to watch! I’m an engineer too and I really like all the questions.
This is brilliant!!
Me working in product development services I like to show this to our customers just to say, see: “you need interrelations and time and resources!” There is a reason why it’s called “development” and not “finished and done!”
Thank you guys!
My favourite content you ever made was your early stuff which is when you were just an engineer making TH-cam videos as a hobby in quarantine. So happy to see your success, but I've missed those old style videos. As a fellow engineer it's really fun to see content like this.
I love my Form 4 and Fuse 1. This was a super interesting and informative. It really shows that so much thought was put into everything including servicing the parts without the normally wasteful “Ship the thing back, and we’ll send another” modern method. I look forward to a Fuse 1 teardown at some point, right?
I am very glad to see that they allowed this to be done. This kind of frank discussion between an end user and engineer is great for future engineers to see so they get in the right headspace before entering the field.
It is so cool. Product design, system engineering, tool tear-down, mechatronic analysis, 3D printing.
The way an engineer takes something apart is so different than anyone else. It’s fun to watch
Awesome being able to watch this. It makes me feel better as a young engineer that I’m not slow, engineering just takes a lot of time.
Absolutely fantastic video! Super interesting, informative and easy to follow. It really helps appreciate the care and dedication that was put into every aspect of the product. Thanks!
while FDM is undergoing race to the bottom, the sheer confidence to showcase something like this is eye opening. if i was ever on the market for SLA i would get Formlabs
This low-level tear-down by a former engineer is fascinating to see - just the analysis of the simplest-seeming little part and recognition of quality. The willingness of FormLabs to do this is a whole different level of confidence in the product
I work for one of the largest independent solutions providers of SolidWorks, Mastercam, Markforged, and Formlabs 3D printers in the country. I can confirm this printer is legit, as is this TH-cam channel.
i watched all of this, understood a little of it, enjoyed all of the enthusiasm and craftsmanship pride
This would be a fantastic way to interview engineers. Have them tear it down and let them tell you what they see.
I thought I wouldn't be interested in this but figured I'd give it a shot. I'm almost done and have been so interested in this the whole way through. I feel like this is real behind the scenes way better than a factory tour.
i’m currently in engineering school this is the most helpful thing to learn about how to design.
The "Bite valve" part is called a duck bill one way valve. They were designed for aircraft toilets in the 1950s. They allow vacuum to go one way but vacuum will pull it closed when its reversed. Its a simple and great design.
10:25 - 18 ºC is pretty much room temperature. 55 ºF would be 13 ºC. Still not exactly chilly.
The whole point is just the most american thing in this conversation.
niiiice! I love your more engineer-y videos! my favorite is still the cyclonic filter for the laser cutter!
Fascinating tour of the engineering of this little marvel. Thanks! I guess I'm going to have to save up my penny's to get one.
great teardown and conversation! thanks both for doing this!
more flexures next time plz
Please continue to do these in-depth breakdowns with more equipment! Ideally more than just other 3dprinters.