👀 Formlabs Spring 2025 Product Announcement coming March 24th

Formlabs News
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SLA is definitely a large portion of my business, and I can admit FL gives me special support sometimes
but I still pay for all of my equipment at full cost (which can be hard to swallow as a small business when I see influencers get free machines and print random articulating dragons :sweat_smile:)

To be clear, I don’t have a contract with Formlabs as a brand ambassador that prevents me from speaking criticisms
in fact I have been vocal on several negative things in the past during my 5 year experience with the Form 3 & 3L. The Form 4s have really been outstanding and I appreciate they let me speak my mind and still support me.

I agree that Formlabs is shifting more towards industrial, but in my opinion, this is a good business decision. The “middle ground” for 3D printing is shrinking quickly and you either need to compete with a race to the bottom with Asia for consumer level printing or go after the more impactful, lucrative industrial sector. It’s just part of the shifting landscape in my opinion.

I’m not saying it doesn’t suck for consumers, I get it. But the Form 3s are still very good machines that are totally capable and users aren’t really forced to upgrade. The existing materials for the Form 3 are still well beyond consumer level materials.

I started my business buying a used Form 2 that was almost at the end of the life cycle (1 year before the Form 3 came out) and it was still a great machine for what I needed at the time. These machines last much longer than consumer level hobby printers and I appreciate that - a 5 year lifetime on a piece of rapidly changing tech is quite good.

I do think it would be great if things were more backwards compatible but I’m just offering a different perspective in full respect of what you’re asking for.

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I appreciate the reply and agree with some of the points you brought up such as the machines being of better quality and lasting longer than the typical Chinese based ones.

However, the higher resin prices for the laser based machines compared to the new LCD based ones is significant at half the price at ~$70 cheaper. If we include the bulk pricing, it’s even more insane of a difference because we’re talking the basic resins being ~$35.

On top of that there is no excuse for what Formlabs did with removing the free open mode that the Form 2 had from the Form 3 lineup. Then they continually updated the firmware to block people from using the reusable cartridges so they could eventually extort the customers for their “Open” Material Mode which didn’t come until way later towards the end of the Form 3 lifecycle. HP among other printer manufacturers were sued for such tactics.

If they cannot or will not reduce the prices of the older resins then let me use the newer ones and if they don’t want to do that then at least give me the open material mode so I can do it myself and not at some outrageous price.

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I won’t argue against your resin pricing or open mode points, I would be happy with both of those as well but I understand the business decisions behind it :slightly_smiling_face:

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