RESIN TAX = Lost Customer

General Discussion
1

I know this topic has probably been posted more than ever but as a brand new person to the 3D Printing space this is absurd and abuse. Here is what I did and where I ended up.

I have been researching 3D printers for a while now and one I never considered was a resin printer. So two weeks ago I have been researching printers to narrow it down to what I need.

So I went to AI and leveraged several AI engines and input the same prompt.

PROMPT

I need to narrow down which 3D printer I should buy. Here’s what’s important to me and the weight each item holds. I will measure the weight between one and 10 one bean doesn’t matter at all 10 meaning that it is very important number one item to watch out for.

1. Printer type is unknown, I’m open to resin and filament type printers.

2. Smell and noise reduction is important to me. I will be running this in my basement and I have people living in bedrooms in the basement. Weight is 8.

3. I do not like the lines that are seen on the side of 3-D printed objects. I’m not a huge fan of that but I can deal with it if I need to. Weight is 6.

4. Speed and quality of the print is very important. Weight is 6.

5. Easily switch between colors or materials. Weight is 7.

6. Build volume is very important. The larger the better, weight is 8.

7. Print precision is very important. Weight is 7.

8. Reliability and support are very high on my list. Weight is 9.

9. Very wide range of filaments or materials printing with is very important. Weight is 9.

10. Reviews I’m looking for something that has several high reviews from several sources. Let’s say 4.5 starts or 9 out of 10 score is very important. Weight is 10.

11. My budget is around from $2,000 to $10,000.”

END PROMPT

The #1 printer that was returned is the FormLabs Form 4 which I went in on 100% and was ready to purchase until I came across the “Resin Tax”. This is absurd and as bad as paying taxes on a bonus I’ve already been taxed on.

So two days ago I was ready to buy the Form 4 but every time I looked at the $2,400 price tag to use someone else’s product really got me.

Imagine buying a brand new car and right when your in finance ready to sign they hit you with “Oh BTW if you use our gas “Lexus Fuel” it’s $9.00 a gallon but if you want to go across the street to Maverik which is $2.24 a gallon you MUST pay a fee of $2,400 in order to use their fuel.

This more is ANTI Community, ANTI-Customer Friendly and makes you look like you’re so GREEDY that you are going to rob your customers.

I was looking at the Form 4L and after looking at the prices and there’s a RESIN TAX of $5,000?!!?! Are you kidding me?? So if my income is a higher I have to pay more??

Whats the reasoning for this tax? I’d love to hear this justified. This is simply just wrong in every way. It’s the same process for the Form 4 so why is it 2X the price?

This is just disgusting and I wish I could add my receipt for my new 3D printer that I wish was the Form 4 but it’s not and the ONLY reason I didn’t buy the Form 4 was 100% due to the RESIN TAX.

2

Material is an important recurring revenue for Formlabs. This “resin tax” that you are mentioning is probably linked to how much Formlabs will “lose” if their customers decide to use materials from another supplier.

The Form 4L will consume more resin, and that could also explain why it is more expensive to buy the Open Material license. Look at the license for the Fuse, which is an even better example, at roughly USD 12k.

This is only a theory, but it makes sense to me.

3

The argument I’ve seen on this forum a few times is that FL can sell their printers at a lower price than much of the industry because they make it up on material revenue. I’m not sure whether this is truly the case, but it seems logical. I’d agree with @Edouardh that the OMM cost is likely tied to the expected lifetime profitability of material purchases.

It might be useful to revisit the analysis with material cost, the OMM fee, and a rough estimate of expected usage factored in. In my case, it would take roughly 2.5 years to see any ROI on OMM for my Fuse 1+ (based on 150 kg/year and additional savings of $35/kg).

Another important nuance with OMM is risk: there’s the potential to damage your machine and have nothing to show for it. As FL states, “When using Open Material Mode, some failure modes that are more likely to be caused by third-party materials are excluded from our standard warranty.”

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4

Hi @FreeRide !

Thank you for sharing your feedback! We’re sorry to hear about your frustration regarding Open Material Mode.

Generally, offering our printers as a closed ecosystem by default helps us ensure that customers can rely on dialed-in settings and get reliable results out of the box. For most customers, our existing material portfolio without OMM should be enough to cover different printing needs, while allowing us to deliver a seamless ecosystem: materials that are tuned for each printer, software that ties everything together, and qualified support when things don’t work as expected.
When non-Formlabs materials are used, we lose the ability to deliver the same reliable, seamless experience. Offering OMM as a separate add-on helps us limit this and keep the default printing experience on par with our expectations. It’s intended for experienced users who are conducting R&D with resin or need material properties that Formlabs doesn’t provide.

Keeping a business model sustainable is obviously an underlying consideration in any decision, but it is not the main factor for our approach to OMM - the reasons mentioned above are the key drivers.

Thank you nevertheless for sharing your thoughts - feedback is always valuable!

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5

Yes sure… Like switching from jugs to plastic bags on nylon powder was for our comfort? :joy:

Of course using Formlabs material is much easier and more reliable for end-users but don’t use this argument to justify a 12k price tag for an open license. This is business.

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6

And now Imagine that settings for Pa12 at least in Fuse 1 are probably tuned to ensure failed parts after several cycles and users needing to refresh buying more powder. If you are experiencing orange peel defects they can be solved by ramping up Surface armor to 933mW with no real effect on powder degradation.
Sticking with the stock value of 820mW constantly created this defects, and I’m talking from an experience of over 3000 parts from Nov 24 to date, I’ve lost over 200 due to this setting and for a while my only option was refreshing and buying more powder.

7

not to sound too harsh, but perhaps you need more of a toy. like an Elegoo.

They’re not the same quality, same performance, repeatability, reliability, etc.. but they are less expensive.. and you can happily f**** around with any resin you can get off amazon forever with them..

Today i was doing some new prototyping. concentric ring products. grabbed my calipers, measured, needed 2.100 diameter. and about 4.5” tall… smacked it into solidworks, ran thepart, tossed it into Preform and printed.. it was a smooth fit.

just for shits, i grabbed my calipers… it was 2.1004 +/- .0003 diameter around the perimeter.. and that was with virtually NO cleaning (I have a pressure wash with SG, which I held it under for 10-15sec, then threw into IPA wash, then cured).

I DARE you to find another resin printer that’ll get within a digit of that accuracy, with less than 10 minutes of fu@@kerykery.

really. this might not be the place for your money.

you aren’t going to get reliable accurate replicability on an elegoo or some other $1500 box… but it will be cheaper..

so if you’re looking for the cheapest, you should just close this and scroll on by…

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8

You could always FDM print in ABS and vaporsmooth if thats more your thing. You can use any shitty filament you want on for example a Prusa Core One and they will do the trick. Then vaporsmooth to get rid of the lines.

Oh, and thats gonna smell. So maybe do as @Davidwedge suggests and buy an Elegoo and move on is the cheapest and best decision.

9

I’ll chime in here that for someone who values freedom in as many aspects as possible in their resin printer, have a look at Prusa’s resin printer @FreeRide . One of the downsides you may find with many other offerings on the market is that they use Chitu systems in their core and some people are not happy with that aspect of those printers’ business model (closed hardware etc, chitubox slicer - although others do work to slice for those platforms).

I for one value openness in my tools, having built and enjoyed a Voron printer and a couple of my own designs over the years. But we got a Form 4 when lower cost resin printers couldn’t meet the needs of our business and I have found it remarkably easy to overlook the closed aspects of the material ecosystem because the materials we need are in the catalogue and keep getting replaced or supplemented with better ones. We are able to factor the material cost into our business model (otherwise we couldn’t have made the decision to purchase!). YMMV but I hope you find something that works for you.

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10

It’s not really a “Resin Tax,” it’s the Formlabs open material license doing precisely what it’s supposed to accomplish.

Formlabs makes its money on the ecosystem, not the Form 4 hardware. certified resins, optimized profiles, support, uptime. when you opt out of it, they charge ahead to cover the resin revenue they’re losing. bigger machine = greater resin burn = higher license. that’s why Form 4L costs extra.

is it customer-friendly? questionable. but it’s typical industrial additive economics. stratasys locks via chips, HP via powder, Formlabs by licensing.

if you want plug-and-play reliability, you pay the cost. if you desire full material freedom without a license, Formlabs just isn’t geared for you — and that’s the real rationale behind the “Resin Tax.”

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