At CES, Formlabs’ new products promise flexibility and scale

The next iteration in 3D printing – and one the industry has been evolving towards for the good part of a decade – is industrial scale. After all, while the ability to print virtually anything one wants is powerful, in many cases, doing so slowly, one copy at a time, just won’t make it business viable.

While in many cases, 3D printing is already being used to manufacture products or parts in large quantities, there are still limitations before it can be used to manufacture items on a large scale.

At CES 2024, Massachusetts-based Formlabs announced 3 new products that address precisely those scaling limitations, most notably, a new resin pumping system that improved five-fold on previous versions. We had the chance to visit their booth and speak to their Head of Branding Communications, Mike Baker. Interview below, edited for clarity.

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If you could start by introducing yourself and Formlabs, please?

I’m Michael Baker, Head of Branding Communications at Formlabs. formlabs is a maker of professional 3D printers. We have a pretty broad audience that is roughly split into two groups. About two-thirds of our audience are product developers, product designers, prototype developers, manufacturers, and people who are manufacturing aids or producing new and used parts, and then a third of our businesses are in the healthcare sector. That’s comprised of dentists, surgeons and medical device manufacturers.

In the healthcare sector, in particular, being a heavily regulated industry, how’s that working out for formlabs so far?

A lot of traction, and it is, as it should be a pretty regulated industry. One of the big advantages of Formlabs is that we make our own materials so we have a very stringent development process and we work with the FDA and other regulators to make sure that we’re producing stuff that top dentists and surgeons and doctors feel comfortable using for their patients.

To give you some examples of the type of products they’re using, if you’ve been to a dentist recently, you probably have had printed parts. A lot of what dentistry uses us for is for making models of people’s mouths – whether for a night guard, a retainer or something like an Invisalign – as well as dentures crowns and bridges, which can all be 3D printed.

On the medical side, a lot of it is for patient-specific surgical guides, patient education models, medical devices, single-use items and similar.

How long have you guys been in business?

We just started our 13th year in business.

Not a startup anymore!

No, not a startup anymore. We’ve sold 130,000 printers to date so we’re well past our Kickstarter days (which was how we got started). You can see our Form 3+ here (photo below), which is a significant upgrade from the very first model, the Form 1, which we sold on Kickstarter.

Now we’re producing more industrial-grade equipment that we’re selling to big manufacturers.

What’s the price point for the Form3+?

It starts at around US$2,500. While it’s designed with professional use in mind, we definitely have customers who are hobbyists, using it because they love the quality. 99% of our audience is professionals though.

What are your expectations for CES?

For starters, we love just talking to people. We did launch three new products today. We launched a new SLS powder called polypropylene which is a standard one to use for injection moulding and consumer parts and products. Speaking of dentistry we launched a new dental resin called Premium Teeth which is for dentures and other models like that and it has a shade that’s very realistic looking. Finally, we also launched an SLA Resin Pumping System which allows you to use five litres of resin at a time instead of one so you don’t have to change cartridges and you can save on plastic usage.

Mostly we just love getting the word out on these new products, having people come and stop by our booth and see what we do. We have hundreds of really cool sample parts, we have 45 different materials that people get to play with and we love learning what people are doing and what they’re looking for.

Final question: as far as the 3D printing industry is concerned, what excites you coming into 2024?

A lot of our customers are now using us for production. The resin pumping system mentioned before is an example of us making it easier for people to produce at scale. We’re excited to see manufacturers and product companies use us not just for prototyping but also for automated production. If you consider the dental industry, it’s now making dozens of models a day.

We’re focusing a lot on the whole ecosystem of not just the printer, not just the materials but also the software and automation and post-processing. We want to make it super easy – just press a button and have you remotely monitor your prints, making it really simple for people to get high-quality parts at scale.

Related reading: How a Kickstarter campaign raised $3 million for a printer: exclusive interview with Kevin Wang, CMO of ELEGOO at Formnext 2023

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