The tl;dr: The Form 2 is a delight.The full version:I bought a Form 1+ in June of 2015, and almost immediately began having problems with it- Surface finishes were horrible, and only got worse, to the point of looking like scrambled eggs. The resin wouldn’t fully cure, and I couldn’t get any of my buildings printed.What I was trying to do was print N-scale model railroad buildings. 1:160 scale. For reference, at that scale, a 4×4 wooden post is about 1mm across. To be fair, I was pushing the boundaries of what the printer could do, and occasionally it would actually print successfully, but a 95% failure rate wasn’t OK on models that fell within their design guidelines. (I don’t think it would work for anyone, really, but what do I know?) And tech support wouldn’t tell me that the printer couldn’t handle my models (couldn’t, really, let’s be honest; no tech is gonna get permission to out their product as not being capable of what they advertise), so I was stuck in tech support.After 3 months, they approved me for a replacement. It performed better, but still not well. Another replacement, which was outright broken (the Z axis didn’t always actutally work). During the whole time, I had asked repeatedly for a refund, but their policies didn’t allow for refunds. Well, apparently they changed their policy after the release of the Form 2, because after finding the problems with the second replacement, I again asked for a refund or upgrade, and they agreed. (I checked their website and their terms of sale have changed, as well.)So, they put me on the list for a Form 2. It was a 3-month wait, but now, almost a year after receiving the original printer, I have the Form 2. And while it would have been nice to have been selling prints for the past several months, it’s pretty much worth the wait.It prints beautifully. The detail I’m getting from this thing is pretty much everything I wanted. It’s easy to use, and it includes improvements across the board.Formlabs changed a lot of things since the Form 1+. It’s got a bigger build volume (though you can’t exactly use all of it, which is one of the issues I still have, but I can live with it), a stronger laser, a new peel mechanism, a wiper arm, a better finish kit… I’ll just go through all of them one at a time, noting where I had issues with the earlier generation.The bigger build volume is actually really nice, because unlike filament printers, it’s impossible to print an object as big as the whole build volume, as the models need to be tilted (and supports added) before printing. This means that since the full build volume can’t be used for a model, any extra bit of space is treasured. I ran into this almost right away with the Form 1+.The stronger laser means faster and stronger prints. Pretty much a no-brainer. I’m not sure if I had problems with this or not, but I did have resin that wasn’t curing properly, so… Maybe?The new peel mechanism is the best new feature, in my opinion. Here’s how the printer works in general:A metal build plate is lowered into a vat of liquid resin, very close to the bottom. A laser is guided up through the transparent bottom of the vat, and it cures the resin into a solid, which adheres to the build plate and the bottom of the vat. The bottom of the vat is covered with a soft silicone layer, which adheres to the print a little bit less than the build plate. The printer then separates the build plate and the vat, hopefully with the cured plastic adhering to the build plate and separating from the silicone at the bottom of the vat. This last process is often called the “peel”.The old printer did the peel by tilting the vat away from the build plate and the solidified resin. It took a lot of force to rip free of the vat’s silicone, so it could fail in several ways: If the printed model was too flimsy, it could be distorted. If it was too thick, it could rip free of the build plate. Et cetera.The new peel mechanism doesn’t pry the vat away from the print, it slides to the side a few milimeters. If you’ve ever tried to separate two magnets, or pulled a suction cup off a wall, you’ve seen how much easier this is. Instead of a large amount of force to pull the suction cup straight away, it only takes a little bit of force to slide along the wall. In the same way, the vat’s shearing action is much less stressful on the model. This means that it can print thicker and more detailed parts, both of which I had problems with on the Form 1+.The wiper arm is a new step in the peel process. After the vat slides over, the build plate lifts the model out of the vat, and a wiper, like a windshield wiper, wipes across the plate and then back. This does two things- It moves aside any little bits of cured plastic left on the vat’s bottom, and then it leaves a nice thin layer of new liquid resin right under the model for when the build plate lowers back down. On the old printers, if a small piece of plastic was left stuck to the vat’s bottom, it would stay there and block the laser curing new resin, getting wider and wider as it blocked the laser path more and more. Now, at least the little piece of cured resin will get moved around, hopefully causing no more than occasional blemishes instead of huge blocked areas. With the earlier printer, I had MAJOR problems with this kind of thing, and haven’t seen a hint of it on the Form 2.One of the other big changes is the sealed laser path. In the old model, although everything was in a case, it wasn’t airtight. The laser bounces off three mirrors before it gets to the resin vat, and any of them, or the laser aperture, could get dust on them, de-focusing the laser or blocking it entirely. I saw evidence of this first-hand on the last of the Form 1+ printers I had, with large horizontal flaps of cured resin which were likely from an unfocused laser. In the new model, the interior is airtight, almost eliminating this problem. Absolutely thumbs-up.Wi-fi! You can now send print jobs over Wi-fi. It’s really nice not having to run a USB cable across the office. Woo! This also leads to the ability to track your prints online and received emails or SMS messages when a print starts, finishes, errors out, etc. Very nice. It also has an ethernet port, if that’s more your speed.Resin cartridges, and auto-filling resin vat: The Form 2 resin is sold in cartridges, instead of bottles. This allows for automatic refilling of resin levels in the vat, and monitoring of resin levels in the cartridge, including auto-pausing a print if the cartridge is out. Very handy. If you want to use a third-party resin, you can, but you lose the auto-filling features.LCD Touchscreen and system memory: the older printers had a LCD screen to track print progress and tell you when the cover was open, etc. The Form 2 has a color touchscreen to browse uploaded models (because it can now store multiple models at once), change settings like Wi-fi networks, and track prints. Pretty nice.Also, overall, the build quality is fantastic. It all feels nice and solid, and the touchscreen is nice and responsive (I despise laggy touchscreens). Absolute thums-up.The finish kit. The finish kit is where you do some of the post-processing after a print, mainly including a couple of soaks in isopropyl alcohol, and it’s super nice. The old finish kit had a couple of tupperware-like tanks for the soaks, and they had tupperware-like locking lids, and were kind of a pain in the ass. The new kit has bigger tanks with lids on hinges, which are really handy. It also has a new tool for holding the build platform after a print, which makes it much easier to take prints off it, especially with the new removal tool, which is this prybar-like thing. It’s also all solidly made, and feels good to use. Again, solid win.I’m really happy with the new printer. Every change I’ve found is a solid change for the better (unlike Skype), which is the right way to do it: When you change something, solidly improve it.As I say, a delight to use. http://ift.tt/1UilzF3