Maxim, you’re right that there is a lot more to print quality than pixel size… but the number and size of pixels does not have any impact on print speed. Ignoring the differences in resins, when printing with MSLA, speed is impacted by light source power, chamber temperature, retraction requirements of the print surface, and maybe a little by refresh rate of the screen in some cases. As far as I can tell, the Form 4 achieves most of its print speed advantage from the textured release surface under the print film which improves retraction performance between layers. That’s a legitimately cool improvement for this style of printing. Unfortunately I can get almost as fast of prints with double the resolution from competitive machines that are a tenth the price. Those systems can also use resins that are a quarter the cost of FormLabs’ resins and still maintain excellent print quality and in some cases biocompatibility. I hope the Form 4 is a great printer, but I haven’t seen anything yet that justifies the premium price. I’m also a bit sore that there’s an extra markup for just the ability to print biocompatible resins. There is zero difference in machine specs and biocompatibility isn’t effected by the printer, just the resins and their post-processing. If you want to make a premium printer that sells at a premium price, that’s great and there’s a market for it, but don’t make misleading claims to justify it.
Best of luck with the launch then. You’ve given me no reason to upgrade my form 3 setup
From an engineering perspective, there are a handful of reasons to still pick Formlabs over lower cost hobby level printers IMO:
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My understanding is that peel forces are lower. Not as low as top down stereolithography, but likely lower than consumer level printers. This means you can have higher success rates and lower touchpoint sizes which means reduced post processing. Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything do a proper technical comparison between touchpoints across multiple printers - that would actually be really nice to see
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Materials are one of the most important areas of innovation for the additive manufacturing industry…maybe more important or second to the speed revolution. Formlabs has a much better material offering than consumer level printers. Yes, there are third party resins from Loctite, BASF, etc. but I’m not sure out “out of the box” those are on other printers
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Out of the box use. I started printing back in 2013 when you had to tune and tweak literally everything. There are many users and companies who don’t have time for that and Formlabs has always had a very strong “out of the box” system
I’m not saying that the Form 4 is 100% worth the current retail price and you should go buy one. It’s almost twice as expensive as the Form 3 which is surprising given the fact that the design actually looks easier to manufacture than before, but just calling out some reasons people would still choose to purchase a Formlabs machine as opposed to a generic consumer/hobby printer.
I also think that times are changing and there’s more of an emphasis on bigger companies/customers in more industrial spaces. This customer base values ease of use, reliability, and up time over cost…which I think is totally fine and a fair business decision. At some point though, it’s possible that competition will catch up - similar to how I would almost never buy a $20K+ FDM printer in present day (unless I am printing exotic aerospace things out of PEEK). I’m not quite sure we’re there yet for resin, but I just barely fall into the customer base that I described above and it’s all relative.
Yeah, forget about using non-Formlabs resins. Here’s what they have on their website. “Open Platform Solutions,” which means that apparently there will be “Certified Materials” (yet to be announced), or you can pay $6,000-9,000 for an Open Material License to be able to use third-party resins. I can’t even make a purchase decision because they haven’t even announced what those resins are. And what happens if they decide to axe a provider from the “official list??”
IRONICALLY, they have on the web page that their mission is to “expand access to digital fabrication, so anyone can make anything.” 
I was looking to upgrade from my rock-solid Form 2 to the Form 4 for the speed, but I use the Open Mode for better castable resins. Formlabs’ castable resins have been extremely difficult to use (crusty jewelry castings, success rate of less than 1%) since I got the machine seven or eight years ago, and being able to use third-party resins was ESSENTIAL. I dutifully experimented and posted MANY posts about Formlabs’ castable resins on the forums trying to help others, so we all could learn together, but I eventually gave up. I recommended Formlabs’ printers to my students and others because I believed it was the best printer on the market in that price range.
I expected the Form 4 to be a little less expensive than $4,500—not a deal-breaker since I appreciate the quality—but the fact that I have to pay ASTRONOMICALLY MORE to get the same Open Mode functionality I had on my Form 2 is a dealbreaker. $10,500 to $13,500 for a Form 4 with Open Mode?? I am beyond disappointed in this. The agent told me that “people might break their printers” if they are allowed to use third-party resins. Sorry, but as a user who’s been doing this for years, I’m pretty appalled that Formlabs thinks we can’t handle it. My ONLY failure ever on my printer was caused by Formlabs castable resin…cracked my tank and the resin leaked onto the glass (Formlabs replaced the tank free of charge…).
Maybe your institutional users can just write a check for that and it’s no big deal, but for the average user who has decided to not buy a Chinese $300 DLP printer off Amazon, is a loyal Formlabs user, and who has decided to buy a more expensive printer because they appreciate the quality, I am FLOORED that they think charging thousands more to be given the “privilege” of using non-Formlabs resin is appropriate. No other manufacturer to my knowledge does this. Are they trying to alienate their user base?
If you’re not going to provide a reasonable solution for castable resin, and instructions to help us cast successfully with it in different environments (hobby shop vs. casting house), at least allow us to buy and use resins that work. OR WORK WITH THOSE COMPANIES PROVIDING GREAT RESINS and allow us to buy them as an AFFORDABLE alternative to the resins that Formlabs has struggled with for years. Also, casting resins are NOT $300 a liter in the real world.
As an MBA with a focus in customer service and customer loyalty, I would have strongly recommended that Formlabs seek another solution. Offer better resins, and more affordable resins, and we will buy them. The least you can do is restore Open Mode functionality. If you MUST charge for it, I’d be willing to pay $200 more. At this moment, I’m so upset about this I’m researching other brands and you may lose a loyal customer for life. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? 
Did the Form 3 have Open Mode at no extra charge? Honestly curious. I skipped the Form 3 because my Form 2 was pretty solid. I just expected that Open Mode was a given…
Sadly, they cut out the open mode after the Form 2
No you had to pay extra for it. Quite a bit from memory. Not an issue for me as my clients request specific resins and pay accordingly but I wouldn’t bother jumping from the form 2 to 3. I wish I hadn’t when I did it but i’m now in the 3 ecosystem. The 4 shows me nothing exciting apart from a slightly bigger build volume but i was considering getting a 3L anyway so that point is rather moot.
As an engineer who runs a research fabrication workshop, I have a number of resin based 3D printers. This includes the Form 2, Form 3, a few from FormLabs’ competitors that are much more expensive, and a number of “cheap” MSLA printers. I actively steer users away from all of them except the “cheap” ones unless there is a very specific requirement only achievable on a certain printer. Mostly, that means required precision geometry that cannot be printed without a secondary support material as a filler. Operating costs are an order of magnitude different. I can fix every aspect of the “cheap” printers, but even if I couldn’t, I can get a replacement the next day for a few hundred dollars. Print speeds on the cheap ones are around ~70% of the Form 4’s advertised speed, but I can get 700% output for the same upfront cost.
I find the post processing pretty similar between different MSLAs. Yield for a new user out of the box is better with the Form printers than the less expensive printers… but the difference is moderate. Again, resin choice seems to have the biggest impact here and I can choose any resin from any manufacturer (including FormLabs) for the “cheap” printers while the printers (except the Form 2) have to use the companies’ proprietary resins. Some resins need elevated print temperatures, but I’ve added heating to the “cheap” printers for less than $20 using an off the shelf part.
As for “out of the box” materials, FormLabs is certainly better. The branded resins for the “cheap” printers are moderate at best and often require adjusting settings to get reliably good prints. But there are a lot of high quality resin options one can find with a bit of research. Most of those resins have profiles for printing on most of the available printers, so you just import the settings and go. If you happen to have some experience, the “cheap” printers allow you to adjust nearly every aspect of how they print so you can tweak outcomes to fit requirements. You can also mix resins together to get very specific blends of properties.
My first resin printer was a Form 2 and I have a lot of appreciation for FormLabs’ printers and resins. They’re all quality products. I’m just disappointed with the extreme markup, walled garden approach, and disingenuous claims attempting to justify both. Being someone with experience in the field, I would not consider the Form 4 as a viable option for my purposes at the current price and resin policy unless it could demonstrate outcomes I cannot reasonably get from other currently available options. If FormLabs goes out of business or gets acquired, their printers might simply stop being usable as the software, hardware, and resin are all proprietary. Most of the “cheap” options are based on open source hardware, use open source slicer programs, and can use third party resins. If you have limited space for printers, don’t have time or desire to really learn how to use them, and need the fastest individual print time possible, the Form 4 may be worth it to you… but you should know you’re paying a high premium for it and walling yourself into their system.
This is exactly where I’m at. The claim yesterday that “allowing users to use third-party resins could damage the machine” was baffling. The thing is that Formlabs has the ability to track what we are using in our machines means that they are fully capable of seeing that a very tiny minority of users may have had a print failure or problem while in Open Mode, so they KNOW that it’s not going to “destroy the printer.” Unfortunately, I’m in agreement with your description of their replies as “disingenuous.” I’ve been a Formlabs “cheerleader” for many years.
I was willing to accept the extreme markup on the Form 4 to have the ease of use and great support, but the lack of an INCLUDED Open Mode to use other castable resins (since Formlabs has never managed to come up with a resin that burns out cleanly, despite claims that it does) makes this decision hard for me. I WANT a Form 4. I will pay the premium price for the Form 4. But I will NOT buy a Form 4 if I can’t use a resin that actually works. I experimented with burnout schedules (since Formlabs for many years refused to provide workable schedules), metal temperatures, investment types (I’ve got half-empty boxes of different investments they recommended). The only thing I haven’t done was install an expensive Ventmaster on my kiln.
The jewelers on the forums who are “doing it successfully” are unfortunately not sharing information with others. And I’ve found that the casting houses I’ve contacted will not accept Formlabs castable resins. Would be awesome if Formlabs posted a list of casting houses that are able to cast successfully with it, but I have the equipment and could do it myself if I had technical information to make it work. And here’s an example of the results I’m talking about…
I really don’t want to learn a new slicer, although I was able to learn Cura and PrusaSlicer for my FDM printers. I felt a sense of security with Formlabs because I was dealing with an American company, American software. I tried Voxeldance Tango last week and it was not intuitive at all. Some recommended Chitubox. But I guess I could find Facebook groups and online forums to fill in the gaps. Even the Bluecast FB group has lots of good discussions about settings.
An impressive take on lcd printing. Love the collimating lenses and release texture innovations. ‘Integrated cooling’ was also mentioned but couldn’t find much info on it.
Started with Form 2, then 3, 3L and 3+. Tens of thousands invested in resins/vats. Having said that, after purchasing Phrozens mighty 8K for $600 my mind was blown. Not having to replace a tank for obsolescence’s sake every 3-6 months was bliss. No mixer dislodging (bane of my existence). Aqua 8K resin exceeded grey pro in uv stability, detail & shelf life at ~1/5th the price. Now have Mega, mighty 12k and Revo 14k on the way. Form printers sat untouched for over a year 
When we started, FormLabs was the price you paid for decent and consistent prints. Now with huge competition (in an arguably altogether different market) I’m curious how the 4 will hold up 1-2 years from now. Our phrozen fleet in our small enterprise has far exceeded reliability of Form 3/3L using black v4 & grey pro mostly. That damn mixer.
I LOVE FormLabs on-printer UI… seriously it got so good towards the end of our usage. Most cheap LCD printers have a display as an afterthought. Remote sending, and generally very good software and support. The consistent updates with FormLabs are also incredible.
When opening a mighty 8K to upgrade to 12k it did seem incredibly dinky inside. The print results quickly erased any memory of that 
I wonder if Form Auto will work with this unit or if there will be a separate version.
Anyways just venting thoughts here. I want to love the 4 but the entire subscription style model of proprietary resins and vats leaves a bitter taste. Excited regardless! Form is the og pioneer 
Lychee Slicer is my favorite for resins. Their team has been friendly, responsive, and supportive over time and I find the software fairly powerful and straightforward. Your mileage my vary, of course. They also do FDM, but I’ve mostly stuck to PrusaSlicer for FDM out of habit and lack of a need to change.
Are you able to compare quantitative touchpoint sizes? I’ve always been curious about this but nobody seems to ever have numbers for comparison. For reference, I am routinely in the 0.3mm-0.4mm range on Formlabs machines, even on my 3L. It depends on material, but for example, large Tough 2000 parts are always 0.3mm for me and peel away very easily, sometimes with zero post processing required.
This is non-standard though (default settings are 0.5mm) and is a result of many years of experience knowing what I can get away with. I would be curious to hear a comparison on other machines.
So Loctite, BASF, etc. will have pre-canned profiles you can import and they work out of the box? That’s cool. I’m at the point in my business where I don’t want to futz around with print settings anymore. I spent years doing that back in 2013 when 3D printing was at its infancy and I have no interest in doing that again. Building hardware for a 3D printer I have zero issues with, but iteratively tweaking print settings is something I would rather not do anymore.
Perhaps it’s time for me to buy one of these new low cost mSLA printers (eg. Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra perhaps) and do/make the engineering comparison that seems to be lacking on YouTube…
Good information @rebel! I guess the FDM model of buying the printer from one company and acquiring a third-party slicer was daunting because of my experience with my Form 2, but I’m on my second FDM (Ender, more recently an AnkerMake), and I’m doing just fine with them. There was a learning curve, but $6,000–9,000 (Open Materials License) sure is a great incentive to learn something new! I actually quit printing everyday things on my Form 2 because it was so much cheaper to print FDM. But my Form 2 has been amazing.
And you are SO RIGHT on the vats. I have all of my vats that I moved from Texas to Colorado thinking that I could replace the window on the bottom (most are cracked from the edges) and re-fill with the PDMS. I was having to replace them every 1-1/2 to 2 liters of castable resin. I guess it’s the “Hoover vacuum bag model” where the company probably makes more money on tanks than the actual printer so there’s no incentive to make them more durable. I always felt bad about throwing them in the garbage…I was told that they couldn’t be recycled.
The Elegoo Mars 4 I saw last week had the metal-framed tank, and apparently replacing the FEP is easy and cheap (6 sheets/$9.99 on Amazon). I would prefer a reusable tank.
Part of the fun of my Form 2 was tweaking touchpoint settings to see how small I could get. I would have to look to see, but I think at one point I was using 0.2 (I think the laser was 0.14). It resulted in very easy removal and minimal cleanup on my jewelry models.
When Castable Wax 40 came out, all of that went out the window. It needed many, many more supports, but PreForm was pushing the supports through the other side of the jewelry model. If I “just needed to clean them up after removal,” and I had to do that for each model, what was the point of even 3D printing them? The beauty of 3D printing was that I got clean models right off the printer.
At that point I became discouraged because the purple castable resin was giving me terrible castings, and I had no desire to clean up prints to the extent that was needed with CW40. I guess I could have waited to see if they improved it over time, but I’d spent too many years fighting it and accepting a 1% success rate with the Formlabs castable resins. Bluecast was my only saving grace. But alas, I can’t use Bluecast in a Form 4 without paying thousands of dollars for open mode.
Here’s the profile I use with Lychee Slicer, 0.3mm supports on phone sized objects no problem. Been using with aqua grey 8k & hyperfine 12k resins. Same tear-away force as Form, their light-touch supports is just marketing gimmick.
This profile is a game changer for Phrozen printers (8k/12k), found it by chance and it sped up my prints 3x. ACF film is required for it to work.
For the kicks, here is the sad state of SLA vs LCD
Very interesting…maybe I will get an Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra and start playing around with it…
Have you ever used high quality engineering materials on the printer? Wondering how differently those might print and/or how much tweaking would be required for those. From what I understand they are typically more viscous, which can probably be solved with a heater.
A good friend runs a dental operation that just recently started supplementing hand cast dentures with 3D printed. From my very extensive back and forth with his journey (biomedical is a whole different beast), seems that very viscous resins were easily handled with addition of small chitu heater unit retrofit. My personal experience with Loctite resin was very poor but that was just one print. Siraya Blue runs like a dream on these printers. Thats about all the inpiut I have on the viscous stuff as I have ptsd from the thick form resins and gunking up/leaks/mixer failures 
Haha fair enough. I do mostly engineering things so the viscous resins are important. I’ll sit on the idea of buying an el cheapo for a bit…it’s not so much the cost of it, but more like - do I have time to do all this interesting but distracting testing 
With my Form 2, I used a Phillips baby bottle warmer with the Bluecast resins…their bottle fit perfectly in the warmer. I had high hopes that Formlabs would eventually allow for warming of third-party resins, but at the time it was a hoop I was willing to jump through in order to get successful casts when their castable resins were causing me major headaches.
I did have a cracked tank once and resin leaked all over. Formlabs handled the issue really well, and for that reason (and many others) I was a loyal customer. But I learned that castable resins are very caustic and can degrade a tank quickly, cracking the orange plastic, seeping under the PDMS, and even cracking the clear window if it got underneath the PDMS. My biggest “wish” on my list was longer-lasting tanks. I did buy an LT tank for the Castable Wax 40 that I never used, but to be quite honest, I didn’t have high hopes for it lasting any longer with castable resins. These “disposable” tanks ended up being cost I needed to figure into the cost of my prints. One tank would last 1-1/2 to 2 liters at most. Some were less.
Unfortunately touchpoint sizes are hard to quantify uniformly. What we can get away with changes a great deal with geometry, model volume, and critical features. I find I often mix different sizes of supports and contact styles to get the best outcomes. We seldom print the same models more than a few times each, so the ideal solution changes each time. I also adjust exposure times and anti-aliasing to meet different requirements, which impacts how the touchpoints behave beyond just their size and shape. I try to be technical in my work, but I find supporting models for resin printing one of the more intuitive aspects of the process.
But yes, most resins which aren’t designed for a specific printer will have settings profiles available for at least the most common printers, often pre-formatted for multiple slicers as well. I’ve had a great deal of success finding resins based on video reviews. My most recent resin addition printed flawlessly with its default profile for the printer I was using. The only changes I made were to facilitate printing at different layer heights, as the company only provided settings for one.
When I tried my first low cost MSLA printer it was in a head to head comparison with a much more expensive unit. I figured that if I was going to on-board one new printer I might as well try the cheap one at the same time. To make a long story short, I got rid of the expensive printer and bought three more of the cheap one.