Form 3B Announcement!

Formlabs News
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The dental industry has been rapidly moving toward digital tools and workflows over the past ten years. Dental professionals are constant innovators, but 3D printing in dental has proven complicated. Systems are expensive, difficult to use, and difficult to scale.

Today, we’re pleased to announce Formlabs Dental, our new dental business unit, and a new dental-focused 3D printing platform designed to make producing high quality dental parts and biocompatible appliances accessible: including the new Form 3B 3D printer, a new Dental Service Plan, and new Surgical Guide Resin.

Get a deeper dive into the full launch here!

What’s different about the Form 3B vs. the Form 3?
The Form 3B is an advanced desktop 3D printer optimized for dental applications and workflows. When compared to the Form 3, the Form 3B enables you to print with biocompatible materials, has finely tuned settings for biocompatible applications, has optional software and firmware updates for quality controlled workflows, and has a dental specific service plan that can be bundled with the printer.

The Form 3B will serve as the primary platform for future dental and biocompatbile applications development.

I need biocompatible resins but I’m not a dentist, is Form 3B the right solution for me?
The Form 3B is recommended for anyone who wishes to print with biocompatible resins. We know there are many needs for biocompatible materials beyond the Dental space and look forward to supporting medical, research, and biomedical engineering applications on this platform also. All future biocompatbile materials will be available exclusively on this platform.

What materials can you print with the Form 3B?
All Formlabs materials will print on the Form 3B.

I ordered a Form 3 before the Form 3B launched. Will I have access to bicompatible materials?
Yes! All Form 3 3D Printers purchased, or quoted, before the Form 3B announcement on November 12th will have access to biocompatible settings. These will be identified as Early 2019 Form 3s in PreForm.

I was about to order my Form 3. Do I need to order the Form 3B now to have access to biocompatible materials?
If you received a quote for a Form 3 before November 12, we will honor that quote to deliver you an Early 2019 Form 3 3D Printer with full access to materials, including biocompatible, should you go on to place an order. Quotes are typically valid for 30 days. Please connect with your Formlabs Solutions Specialist when placing your order.

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So, if the machine is identical, suggested by the early 2019 printers being able to do all resins, where is there any benefit to the customer? This seems like a very cynical way of exploiting the dental market with expensive machine, resins and plans and restrict your regular customers from bio-compatible resins.

I really wish you guys would put your resource into fixing the issues with the existing Form3 instead of this. It just looks like exploitation.

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gotta love it…

A page from our president’s playbook. When things aren’t going right, double down on it.

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Agreed, this does seem like an artificially controlled price hike, limiting dental users by cost and other user capability for seemingly no reason. What benefit is there purchasing a Form 3B & Form 3 when you could just get a Form 2 with both resin selections at a lower price? Or even better, whatever the competition offers, given they probably don’t limit your capabilities with a software update…

Seems like a great way to allow competition a huge advantage.

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So, as an owner of an early 2019 Form 3, I will have full access to all current biocompatible materials, but not future biocompatible materials?

In general this announcement bodes very poorly. I don’t honestly care about biocompatible materials, but the trend here is terrible. Will there be a jewelry version next, which will be the only one to be able to run the latest cast-able? You already have resin lock in, why on earth are you making this connection, which is likely the biggest disadvantage of your entire system, even worse?

I was hoping more open-ness. What I’m seeing is even more lockdown. You have a good product, stop trying to control your customers.

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@Formlabs:
Have you locked down the hardware yet for the 3B or is it still being tweaked?
What are the technical differences between the machines?
Will the 3L I pre-ordered still support the full range of materials (including Bio)?

Some users have been having issues with fine detail on the Form 3. Given the timing I can’t help but feel like this announcement may be in response to discovering further hardware tweaks are required to hit the accuracy really needed for dentistry.

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Thank you for reading so throughly, when I read this sentence I was so relieved that I did not read the fine print.

I second this concern, if we don’t recieve any update on this from Formlabs in a few days I will ask them on FormNext next week and give you an update of what they answered.

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Hey Everyone,

Thanks so much for the replies. We absolutely understand there are some questions surrounding this announcement, and I want to make sure I’m answering as best I can.

Customers who have purchased a Form 3 already will have access to all current, and future biocompatible resins that are released. I realize that part of my initial post was unclear, and I absolutely apologize for any confusion.

As part of this announcement, we have also shared that Formlabs is now a biocompatible resin manufacturer. The development process is different to making non-biocompatible resins and we are confident we will be able to expand the application space and focus more on optimizing for specific dental applications with a different platform.

We will continue to expand access to advanced engineering resins and other novel materials across both systems.

As part of this, we are also announcing our dental business unit - a dedicated team working on these products. That will allow those not involved in dental to continue focusing on improving the Form 3 technology and print settings. We understand this announcement doesn’t add value to non-dental customers particularly, but we are excited to evolve our development processes around biocompatible materials, and the needs of specific medical and dental applications. The different price also includes access to a support team that is trained to help with dental needs specifically.

Our software team is continuing to work hard to improve print results on the Form 3, and this announcement shouldn’t affect that work in any way.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to voice your concerns. I’ll do my best to answer any additional questions that pop up.

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As a new customer of yours I am impressed of how quickly you have responded. Thank you for clearing up our concerns!

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Thank @DKirch you for the reply, but I’m still very concerned about the direction here. Many of us have been here since kickstarter days, and bought into an ethos of buying a printer and watching its capability grow.

With this split, you now have a ‘full fat’ printer F3B that can do all resins at a premium price, while normal users have a crippled variant.

You didn’t make something special for the dental market, they are getting an unrestricted full product, you made something less for the normal market, and that stinks.

I think you can and should offer the 3B to dentists with the support package justifying the price increase, but I don’t think you should restrict the normal printer.

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Thanks @DKirch, appreciate the follow up.

It’s still a little nebulous what the hardware differences are between a Form 3 and 3B. Is the B essentially a Form 3 that comes with a dedicated Dental Support team and the promise of future resins and optimization for dental applications? Or have you made / plan to make refinements to hardware platform?

Do you have anything prepped concerning this announcement with regard to the 3L?

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Isn’t it kind of bad to have a support team for this? That assumes that things aren’t working properly and that people will have to get help, which I don’t think is what people want, why not make sure that things are working correctly for people such that they aren’t likely to require support?

It seems really odd to split this off since there’s no physical difference between the printers, you’re just bundling in a support cost, so why not just sell the regular printer and have an optional support for dental?

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Hi, I am a dental lab owner, I already work with 2 form2 and 2 Form3.
Honestly I don’t think I need you plan, so I guess that Form3 B is the same price without the plan, as long as it’s the same printer…correct?

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This is totally bizarre. It makes much more sense to me to put the extra costs of supporting the dental/medical market into the resin costs (which I thought they have already done) and support costs. If you want to do dental, you pay more, that makes sense. Now we have to make a decision up front about whether or not we would ever want to use dental materials in the future and pay extra just to reserve that right.

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As a dental user for 2 years, I think this is just another company taking advantage of the health care market. I have paid for the pro service plan and had to use it just recently when the printer started acting up. Sure, you get a direct phone number, but no one answers and it takes forever to get a call back. It took me an entire day to get an $830 repair bill paid, so they would ship me a replacement printer. I was a big form 2 cheerleader, but my voice is becoming hoarse. Next printer, I may look somewhere else. I just dont see how a dedicated dental team could help, when the current pro service is so inefficient? I have never needed help printing dental models. I dont think this is the smart move into the market, but they didn’t ask me and probably have smarter people doing the marketing!

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I had the same experience with my pro plan with a added smack to the face. We bought 2 pro plans when we got our 2 form 2’s. When we bought them it states “Pro plan starts the day you register it” Even gives a blank date area to wright the date in so you can track it. So we held off registering it until we needed it only to have support then tell me that they started the day we bought them and they are expired… even tho after registering it online we got a e-mail stating that our pro plan is now registered and gave a date it would end. Then after I thru a fit & showed them there e-mail they said they will honer one plan but not the other plan (both bought at same time)… they then took 1 day to get to my ticket under the pro plan… then charged me 800.00+ for the hot swap and took 2 more days to ship replacement printer out (had to call them to get it shipped like I never called). There pro service plan is a JOKE to say the least. At least that was my experience with it.

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@dave55rc, I paid $830 on tuesday and it still hasn’t shipped. Like I said, it literally consumed my entire day to get them to accept my money. It is a shame, as I think they have a decent product and could really do a lot with it in the dental field. I learned 3d printing on my form 2 and have become comfortable using it. I would put up a breakdown every so often, but I cant stand poor customer service, especially when you pay extra. I just dont have time to play games.

I think they need to revamp the pro service plan. Make it work efficiently. Then combine with a software vendor like BSB and offer a dental software suite to do various dental prints. That is something no one else is doing…yet

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