Formlabs

Formlabs

Basic information
Founded	2011
Legal Structure	Private
Industry	3D printing
Also known as
Official website	https://formlabs.com

Formlabs is a 3D printing company that charges its customers $875 to $11,899 per printer for the permission to use third-party materials on hardware they already own. In July 2024, Formlabs acquired Micronics, a startup building a $2,999 desktop SLS printer funded on Kickstarter, & immediately canceled the product. The cheapest SLS printer Formlabs sells starts at $28,989; the Micron would have cost roughly 1/10th that price. Founded in 2011 by MIT Media Lab students Maxim Lobovsky, David Cranor, & Natan Linder, the company raised $2.95 million on Kickstarter for its first printer & has since raised over $230 million in venture funding.

Consumer-impact summary

• Formlabs charges a per-printer license fee ranging from $875 (Form 4) to $11,899 (Fuse 1 series) for the permission to use third-party materials on hardware the customer already owns.
• The company acquired Micronics in July 2024 & canceled the Micron, a $2,999 SLS 3D printer that had raised over £1 million from 431 Kickstarter backers. Formlabs' own SLS printer, the Fuse 1+ 30W, starts at $28,989.
• The Form 2 uses proprietary DRM-chipped resin cartridges. Formlabs committed to supplying consumables through 2023, then left the end date ambiguous; by September 2024 consumables were still available but with no guaranteed supply timeline.

Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Formlabs category.

Acquisition of Micronics

Formlabs acquired Micronics on July 11, 2024, & canceled the Micron desktop SLS 3D printer the same day. The Micron had launched on Kickstarter in June 2024 at a starting price of $2,999. The campaign raised over £1 million from 431 backers.

SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) printers use a laser to fuse nylon powder into parts without support structures. Traditional industrial SLS machines from manufacturers like EOS & 3D Systems cost $200,000 to $500,000 or more. Formlabs' own SLS offering, the Fuse 1+ 30W, starts at $28,989. The Micron at $2,999 would have undercut the Fuse 1+ 30W by roughly 10x.

Formlabs CEO Max Lobovsky acknowledged this price gap in an interview with TechCrunch, stating that Formlabs had achieved a "5x leap in starting price" with the Fuse 1 & that Micronics was "trying to do another 5x beyond that." Per Tom's Hardware, "Boppart will join the software side of Formlabs while Chan will lead the development of Formlabs next generation printers." The Micronics brand was discontinued & the Kickstarter was canceled.

Tom's Hardware headlined its coverage "David vs Goliath" & reported that the Micronics branding would be discontinued. 3D Printing Industry reported the acquisition as producing "new accessible SLS 3D printers forthcoming," but no such product has shipped as of April 2026.

Formlabs offered backers a full refund plus a $1,000 credit toward any current or future Formlabs printer & a free Open Material License. By December 2024, backers reported on the Formlabs forum that the promised $1,000 credit had not been delivered months after submission. Some backers who attempted to use their credit toward a Fuse 1 purchase were denied a $5,000 discount for unspecified reasons. The forum thread was auto-closed in July 2025. A $1,000 credit toward a $28,989 SLS printer represents a 3.4% discount for backers who had pledged for a $2,999 machine.

Open Material Mode

Formlabs requires a one-time per-printer software license to unlock the use of third-party resins & powders on its printers. The license, called Open Material Mode, costs $875 for the Form 4, $1,999 for the Form 3 series, $2,499 for the Form 4B, $3,999 for the Form 3L series, $4,999 for the Form 4L, & $11,899 for the Fuse 1 series. Without the license, users can only load Formlabs' proprietary DRM-chipped resin cartridges.

On the Formlabs community forum in September 2023, Form 3 pre-order customer rkagerer stated that paying "$6k (per printer!) for the capability" might "expose them to litigation risk given the original marketing and sales assurances" that Open Mode on the Form 3 had been promised pre-release. Another user, Reine, asked "Is Formlabs idea to charge me three times the cost of a printer to use 3rd party resins?!" Other commenters wrote that "no normal person is going to buy a 6k add on" and questioned who would buy the $6k option. Formlabs' current tiered pricing on its store lists $1,999 for the Form 3 series and $875 for the Form 4.

The license is free for accredited educational institutions. As of January 2026, Open Material Mode is included with new Form 4B & 4BL purchases, but owners who bought the same printers before that date must pay the full license fee. Formlabs' warranty terms state that failure modes caused by third-party materials are excluded from standard warranty coverage, adding financial risk on top of the license cost.

Form 2 deprecation

Formlabs announced the end of active support for the Form 2 in April 2019, following the launch of the Form 3 series. The company committed to selling resin tanks, cartridges, & build platforms through at least 2023. The Form 2 uses proprietary DRM-chipped resin cartridges. Without an authorized cartridge, the printer runs in a limited mode that disables the heater & wiper functions, reducing print quality.

By September 2024, nine months past the stated deadline, Form 2 consumables were still available but Formlabs hadn't provided a firm end date. Users requested concrete timelines to plan investment decisions; Formlabs didn't respond in the thread. Once Formlabs stops selling Form 2-compatible cartridges, owners of the $3,500 printer will have no official consumable supply. The printer becomes unusable even though the hardware itself still works.

Third-party developers attempted workarounds. ProtoART produced a Universal Cartridge, a DIY modification kit installed into an existing cartridge that allowed third-party resin use with heater & wiper functions enabled. The Universal Cartridge is compatible only with Formlabs firmware versions through 2.2.0; the product reached end of life & is available only while supplies last.

Products

• SLA printers: Form 1, Form 1+, Form 2, Form 3 series (Form 3, 3+, 3B, 3B+, 3L, 3BL), Form 4 series (Form 4, 4B, 4L, 4BL)
• SLS printers: Fuse 1, Fuse 1+ 30W
• Software: PreForm (slicing & print preparation)
• Post-processing: Form Wash, Form Cure
• Automation: Form Auto, Form Cell

See also

• Bambu Lab
• Creality
• MakerBot