No we bought it out right because we had interest in less out sourcing of parts printing with materials we couldn’t print in-house so we have been taking 405nm materials and doing R&D until either we have success or the resin producer has success. Having the ability of using any material has been a great asset so far in the short time of using it as we have already added 2 resins to our available materials and hope to add more this year and eventually add more machines all with open source capabilities. The form 4 is so fast to we ran a job with 20 parts and it was done in 37 mins which is crazy turn around time when you need 200 for a order.
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The pricetag may be justified for companies who want to print a lot with third party resin and formlabs open the door to actually lose money.
But me as a freelancer who most of the time print non-profit stuff or have just different needs in resins the pricetag is kinda unreal.
So why not give hobbyist or small businesses the possibility to get the mode for free? I still have to pay for the tanks. Can’t get my head around the fact that this company becomes so greedy after the community gave them so much money and trust in the first place on kickstarter…
Also, I have to be pay much more for Grey 4 or Grey 5 with my Form 3 than with the Form 4.
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I agree with this 100%. Its the main reason why we probably would not expand our Formlabs equipment, which I am hoping to do. When you’re running 4 x Fuse 1, and looking at such a huge bill to use other materials, it just makes more sense to sell up and move to another provider that supports Open Source materials.
I really hope this pricing becomes more realistic, because at the moment it’s so high we’ll just jump ship. Making profit is already very difficult.
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As soon as I bought a competing brand and got to experience a metal tank where you only change the film on the bottom, I became a bit angry. I have been carting around my Formlabs tanks for 9 years, hoping for a solution to re-use them, because I feel bad dumping them in a landfill. This new printer has an easily replaceable FEP bottom that costs a few dollars. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on tanks that only last 1-2 liters of resin. And I will happily buy Formlabs’ resins for the convenience. But even now that the “Open Materials Mode” price has been lowered to $2499 and $4999, I’m not willing to pay that much in addition to expensive tanks that frequently need to be replaced and overpriced resin.
Perhaps you make it up over time when you’re only paying $17.09 per liter of a major brand printer company’s third-party resin. That’s almost a tenth of the price of Formlabs gray resin. Not insignificant.
And sorry, Formlabs Marketing—the name change to Open Material Mode doesn’t change the fact it’s a ridiculously overpriced license fee.
I did end up buying another brand of printer, with the intention of someday going back to a Form printer when they finally eliminate the OMM. I HATE THIS NEW PRINTER. I was spoiled by the ease of use of my Form 2, the Open Mode that was FREE, the cartridge system (not the tanks, though, because they’re wasteful). I never expected to have to learn about resin exposure times and to use the Chitubox slicer, which is painful. I WANT TO BUY ANOTHER FORMLABS PRINTER BECAUSE IT’S AN ELEGANT SOLUTION. But I simply can’t justify the already expensive printer with another $2500 tacked onto the price. And you won’t provide a good solution for castable resin—there are plenty of viable castable resins that you should have licensed years ago—and you won’t certify Bluecast’s castable resin, from a company who has sung your praises for years and provided us technical support for casting when Formlabs was unable to.
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