I heard back from Henry: "I think we would prefer to keep the printer's design close to ourselves for now to not help our competitors too much, so let's not do a teardown."

Sooo basically Formlabs bought the potential competition to kill it.

This is an neat example of an established brand buying potential future competition. To bad we most likely won't see any Hobby grade SLS machines anytime soon.

A company that charges thousands just so you can use any material in their SLA printers will never release any affordable SLS printer anytime soon

Formlabs realised they had competition and a blank cheque would make it go away.

"Open Material License" sounds like HP business model. Hopefully it does not work out for them and they will face the same result as HP with this BS.

to bad... it will end like Pebble. FormLabs bought it to not undermine their market. They will take and possibly patent whats usable for them and then end the machine. My prediction: There will not be a consumer focused machine from FormLabs anytime. Maybe this machine inspires some unknown Chinese company to give it a try and we'll have it that way but other than that it is over for now. Great video and update, would really love to see a teardown, so we can learn a thing or two for maybe a one day open source design :)

Acquisition by supersized company means they are going to be trashed. No more affordable printer for us.

Unless it isn't obvious... The $2'000.- Formlabs Open Material License for a $3'200.- Printer is a friggin' Joke only serving to protect their like 5-7x as expensive Resins from the Competition 💢

I threw up in my mouth hearing the open material licence cost. Fromlabs sounds the worst. Sad news for everyone.

I’m happy for them, but that’s an unfortunate outcome for the makerscene. I can’t imagine Formlabs is interested in creating a budget sls printer, so we won’t see sls come down in price anytime soon. I’m not sure what formlabs intends with this acquisition. It sounds a little bit like an acquihire, it could also just be to protect the revenue of their more expensive machines. Either way I’m a little bit bummed. I didn’t back the kickstarter, but I was interested in buying one later on.

Its insane to me that you have to pay for a license in order to use what ever resin you want especially THAT much, 2 to 4k dollars is a crazy amount.

there it goes the dream of accessible sls printer

Please cover the sls4all project. It is not a desktop sls in any sense but it is open and needs the exposure. Kit goes for 6k+.

Things they should have done.. 1. Watched the formlabs documentary (Max fucked over his founder friends) 2. Watched the makerbot documentary ("i'm going to be the steve jobs of 3d printing" 12 months later... unemployed) 3. Looked up the stock price of formlabs over the last few years (it's halved in 3 years) $. Realised formlabs were just killing competition.

Knowing the cost and time involved in prototyping a product, I'm hoping this wasn't an excessively stressful time for them. Mechanical components and fine powder are a complicated thing to deal with.

My guess is they probably started to realize how unprepared to scale they were and this acquisition was a great way to dodge a lot of the pain/stress that entails while still getting a personal win. I am/have been a mechanical engineer/product designer in many startups myself and I can say that a rapid explosion of growth from a huge kickstarter to launch a complex product like this at such an early stage is almost never a good idea. It is clear to me that they should have spent more time at the internal testing stage, I would not be shipping low quality fragile 3d printed pre-production parts to youtube channels. A slower process might have produced a better outcome. It is wild to read some of these youtube comments and see people supporting micronics decision to launch a half baked product, but then I consider that most people can't really appreciate how much work/time/risk it is going from a couple working prototypes to hundreds of consistently working units at production scale. You are a class act and I think you have done an amazing job navigating a tricky moral situation. Nice to see a youtuber with the depth of knowledge to appreciate the complexity. You neither defaulted to the hype-train mentality nor put them on blast for more views but rather you pointed out some obvious flaws and feedback that ideally would have come from someone internal to their company. Instead this fiasco was thrust into the public and they were lucky to have someone like you point out their lack of readiness in a professional and polite manner. Definitely sad to see the loss of a potentially cool product but I think this concept needed a bit more time in the oven either way.

Meanwhile... an open source SLS printer : kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r9egopp9rM7OnJ8.html

Refunding the Kickstarter backers is about the 3rd best outcome, behind shipping on time and shipping late, so you can't really complain.

You are the only reviewer who has been honest in acknowledging the disappointment the Formlabs acquisition means there will not be an innovative, relatively low-cost SLS for the market anytime soon. Thank you for your honesty and willingness to discuss the flaws and challenges Micronics was also facing. Watching you work on the machine also suggests that safety is a huge factor. I wouldn't be comfortable without a separate, walled-off room with adequate ventilation.

Probably an unpopular opinion here: you don't want to have a desktop SLS printer as a hobbyist. The powder handling is a mess if you can't afford the auxilliary equipment and facility that can do it safely. You're probably conscious of that to an extent - I saw you upgraded your mask while working with this printer. But mask is not enough - over time everything will be coated in powder in your shop and it will be terrible for your lungs long term. And I don't trust the majority of hobbyists to be able to do any better either. So in the long run, this would hurt the industry and the maker community while giving no real advantage... Just use an SLA printer (safely!) and forget about SLS.

We need a Voron style OSHW project for benchtop SLS, not a crowdfunding daydream.

It's like when Makerbot was acquired by Stratasys in 2013... It was snuffed right out.

The transition from working prototype to a mass manufacture product is difficult. I have my own experience where I have designed and built a device for music production that works really well, people like it, prototypes are reliable and being used right now but that next step from hand-built to manufactured item has stopped me in my tracks. I considered launching a Kickstarter to get people to fund the manufacture process but the risk was huge if I even hit the smallest problem with getting them built. I have a day job and a comfortable family life, the potential for failure and losing everything is too great to expect my loved ones to take that risk with me. One day I might launch it as an open source project and see where it goes, I did design it from the start to be hackable and user modified.

This happened to a friend too. He was building an alternative to Zbrush called Sculptris, but Pixelogic swooped in, bought it, then gave him a job.

It's honestly incredible how much time you have spent with this printer. The back and forth with potential fixes, taking it apart and putting it back together, waiting for prints that end up failing. It was great to watch, thank you!

Well this is a bummer. If some overseas company offers you a sizeable sum for this prototype and it happens to get stolen out of your garage, you might be doing us all a favor. Kidding, mostly, but I would like to see another company pick up the mantle now.

What about sls4all?

This is sad for us, but good for them. They could be the new "Prusa" of affordable SLS printers, but they choose the easy path.

One of the people that got the pre-production needs to reverse engineer it, as Formlabs aquired them just to get rid of competition. And we shouldn't allow that to happen.

They knew the issues were going to cost them a ton of money and time and that their Kickstarter was likely in jeopardy as a result and they took the easy exit. Formlabs has to be laughing at how easy that was.

I’m not a fan of Chinese knockoffs. I would have never bought this machine. However, since formlabs acquired it, I’ll buy a Chinese knockoff of it just to spit in the face of formlabs.

I am happy for the guys for pulling basicly perfect business circle. But then it's Form lab s and if you really need to pay $4,000-5,000 to use other material than theirs, yeah, that's the story of a cheap desktop SLS printer for now and probably for 25 years depending on patents. It's rare for established businesses to change their ways and no matter how good their products are, that license for third party materials is a tombstone and red flag big enough to challenge the Le Genereux -flag in size for hobbyist SLS printer.

they weren't ready and as you said in a previous video, they were running out of money. If anything, it was a lifeline to those guys. But there will be more people who can learn from this and pick up where they left off

This really looks to push back the dream of a semi-affordable SLS printer by several years at a minimum. FL bought their competition, thus ensuring that there's no menace to their expensive, proprietary printers. Really, it’s more about protecting their current and future market than buying anything of value with the acquisition. They now have ample time to perfect a lower-priced (But still very expensive) series of printers without any direct competition. Patenting any IP they've acquired also helps to lock down that market. It will be interesting to see if there are any Prusa or even Creality-style SLS printers any time in the near future, but I'm not holding my breath just based on the patent angle, which is the only reason SLA and FDM printers were able to be produced for the hobbyist market.

I would still love to see you try to fix it yourself. I'm so invested in the troubleshooting at this point and I would like to see it work for you.

Reminds me of some of the kickstarter FDM printers years ago. They had a prototype they were able to make work at the office or garage, then sent drawings to China because its cheaper than having a local machine shop cut parts for them, then none of the printers shipped would work. A few nerds got theirs to work while ordinary people sent a $1,000 machine to a landfill.

Most of those problems sounded like teething issues. They probably could have been avoided with small design changes, but it's one of those things where they need to have people test units to sus it out. Too bad they won't be getting to do that.

I just saw that all this was going on when I watched your video 2 days ago. Those lads desperately needed someone to help with management/PR. I hope things turn out ok for everyone involved, and that we can get resonant priced SLS printers sometime soon.

I think you did good by showing the whole process including the failures. The printer way not have been finished for marked but it seems like it was not far from working as designed. For Formlabs to be acquiring the printer and giving Henry a job there is a clear indicator that Henry (and the team) are on to something good. We can only hope that Formlabs will expand their products for Makers and hobbyist.

How can anyone make an sls printer and sell in the usa with all the patents in the way?

What was the price for the Micronics material? I never heard any info about it, since that is what keeps these SLS printers out of the affordable range.

and now it went from a affordable entry level sls to a unaffordable one locked to formlabs overpriced powder and parts. on the low end I see it hitting market at $5000

Ultimately this is the best ending for micronics. No consumers go burnt on a printer that would’ve been finicky at best, companies saw there’s strong demand for a well priced SLS machine, and the micronics employees got jobs. There were about a million other ways this could’ve gone very poorly. Formlabs won’t release something like this, but hopefully someone like creality can make it happen.

Probably not a bad thing overall. Maybe we will not get any SLS printer for hobbyists, but at least no one will get hurt with this machine. It was not production ready, and even if it was I'm still concerned about the safety of this tech for hobbyists... This fine dust is no joke and I hope you didn't inhale too much.

One interesting twist here is that perhaps acquisition wouldn't have looked so sweet for Micronics if not for Scotty's first video. Of course we'll never know if a smoother launch to their kickstarter would have enabled them to get the company off the ground and (eventually) deliver, but it's somewhat ironic to see people who were criticizing Mirconics now bemoaning their dissolution. You can't really criticize Scotty for being honest about his experiences and his video probably wasn't the tipping point for the company, but if supporting affordable SLS is really a major priority for him, he could have perhaps chosen his words differently or not published a video at all. Sometimes the line between advocating for consumers and making a clickable videos or satiating the engineering ego is blurry. It's not an easy situation, but I wonder if he would do exactly the same thing again.

I think this acquisition has a bit more too it. Micronics wanted to make SLS affordable for everyone, almost the opposite of what Formlabs appears to want. I think Micronics realised they were getting out of their depth with all the issues with your printer and what they would need to do to make it production ready. They would have gotten lots of money from Kickstarter, enough to fund the rest of development if the printer was as finished as they seemed to think, it’s not like it was a failing Kickstarter. You say that they are now the head of the Formlabs SLS division, is that actually confirmed? It seems very odd to buy out a startup made of two university graduates and make them the head of an already established department. I do wonder if this was also just Formlabs wanting to get rid of Micronics so they would have less competition. I do wonder what the terms of the contract are, does Formlabs now own all of the IP? If so then the two graduates likely couldn’t leave and make another company making SLS printers. For Micronics to change their values so quickly isn’t a good sign, Formlabs is pretty much a business/industrial company with very expensive products that like vendor lock in (hence the open materials license even existing), Micronics was supposed to be to make SLS affordable, the two goals do not align. Offering $1000 credit plus an open materials license to backers seems like PR more than anything. It’s disappointing to see this acquisition. I doubt Formlabs will undercut their existing products. The Kickstarter was going very well and according to them and their scoring system the printer was nearly perfect (I always found this a bit odd and optimistic anyway) so why basically give up on their main goal that they used heavily to market their Kickstarter?

what about the open source project SLS4all?

Now all my faith is in SLS4ALL to bring us a consumer SLS :>

They didn't make him sign an NDA? It's probably good they got acquired before something really bad happened. Henry was working out of his bedroom - and they are so young they are going to have some great opportunities on the other side of this. Getting so many "freebies" out of formlabs for the backers was smart... it's right to try to keep even a fraction of the good will of their community is important.

As I said in your previous video, thanks for showing all of the effort you put in to trying to get this machine to work. Hopefully you will continue with this approach into the future as honest reviews are hard to come by, and it's fairly common for any new hardware upstart to have issues.

Given the issues seen with the early units I think it was unlikely this was going to be a viable company without a major cash infusion, given that it’s a great outcome for the team and hopefully a decently priced FormLabs SLS printer. If nothing else they showed you could build an affordable SLS printer…

Happy for the guys, as they get less stress, the Kickstarters too as they get their monies back with an escape route to other printers, but sad that the idea of lower cost SLS getting into the hands of more serious hobbyists has been lost, and there's no guarantees that the tech that the Micronics guys can be picked up by others, as they'll probably be patent ramifications. At least they showed it could be done in principle... and re Form Labs, we won't see a cheaper SLS printer from them that approaches the MSRP of a sorted Micronics machine.

The only reason form labs bought them is to stop a future competitor from completely undercutting their market that they own. It's obvious

I think that the technology itself isn't suitable for hobbyists. Too complex, too messy. Probably it's better to move towards homemade injection molding, where you produce the molds with temperature resistant plastics with classic FDM or resin printers and than inject into them with some new devices (maybe even just modified FDM-extruders) we don't have now.

Sorry Henry and Luke they will be cheated, Formlabs just wanted to get them off the market! Typical way to get ride of competition!

I commend you for how you've treated Micronics and how the situation has unfolded, it shows great character. Personally, I'm very disappointed that Micronics are no more, I suspect and fear it means affordable desktop SLS won't become reality any time soon.

The teardown sounds like a really cool idea

I'm so confused, did you get a 2nd Micronics printer that also didn't work didn't they asked you to return the printer to them?????

Bro. I thought I disappeared. I used to watch your channel like 6 years ago or something and just thought about it last week that I miss watching your content. Glad u r still doing it

I think the best system for handling powder i have seen so far is from alpha laser but their system only allows for smal prints and it takes up some space. But i think the basic concept of having containers that only open it's lid when inserted into a slot so you can handle them in normal environment and having a sandblast box like thing where you can work on stuff. (Filling the containers or removing the powder from the print) I think the basic concept would also be do able for other less expensive printers. I am also wondering if a Zyclone vacume system could be usedd to remove and filter the powder. (As i know you can seperate things by weight using multiple Zyclones.)

Curious what the issue with the shorting Wes but didn't get to see what that was. Semi-understandable but how many ways are there to make a car and how many times has tesla failed? Yeah it won't take long to be figured out. Security through obscurity is not at all Security.

I agree with you Scotty, bittersweet, but I am happy for the Micronics team. Bummed that this likely is the last we will see of the cheap SLS from them, but this is an amazing opportunity. Also, the cheapest money Formlabs could spend to turn likely one of their highest risk competitors to internal staff, so good on them too. I get backers are bummed and personally I am bummed because I had high hopes, but we all know the devil is in the execution of the kickstarter. This, as long as Micronics is happy, and they seem to be, is a good deal for the parties involved.

No worries! Now that the concept has been proven it shouldn’t be long before we have a nice open source version that addresses all the weaknesses in the design.

Given all the issues they had, the Kickstarter would have failed as they would have ran out of money trying to make it a shippable product.

am i the only one thinking that it's the print file that has an slicing error?? he printet the small t shaped tool just fine, try slicing and printing something new from thingiverse or whatever

From opensource to closedwallet..

Oh Fromlabs have a video out about it also. "Formlabs and Micronics: A Shared Vision for the Future of SLS 3D Printing". They got the goal that most set out for in this new land: a product you don't ship gets bought up by another, some sail away into the distance on that boatload of cash, and some try to do it again. The other side of it is... it is not as simple as a 3d printer, lots of faffing around required.

Acquisition is probably good for Henry and Luke, no question. It is a huge accomplishment and being able to work full time on the interesting things (engineering) with more sleep at night is wonderful. The resulting Formlabs product will probably not be affordable to the hobby consumer. In particular hearing that they have something like a license to allow _not_ to use their material lock-in is beyond sickening and emphasizes how hostile the world towards consumers actually became. It shows how important it is for us hobbyists to fully develop things in an open source fashion with licenses that make it impossible for any one entity to lock it down.

If formlabs doesn't go towards a desktop version release you could then do an in depth teardown / semi Foss it. So that there is a future prospect of getting an affordable desktop SLS by anybody.

Maaaan, you saved me so many headaches. I was ready to drop the money on the KS, which I did not after your last vid. Seeing how this unraveled, I am super happy I did not buy into it.

One thing that was revealed what that the system is not complex inside. This will inspire new developers to have a go. If two engineers who are underfunded can do it, then expect to see someone else enter this space very soon. I was really hoping that this was going to work. I had my eye on getting one... now we'll have to wait but good on them for the acquisition... I think they were quite stuck where they were and this was their way out. Good on them.

Sintratek does have an "affordable" SLAS printer, so it doesn't seem all too gleam. "Affordable", considering other alternatives are in the $20k range.

I love that you said you'll always celebrate a successful exit! I do as well, man.

Goes to show NOT to give kickstarter money unless there is some form of legal contract with the inventor and the investors. The investors believed the author's vision and wanted to support THAT vision. The author had a different plan in mind. Sold out to the first major company that came along and destroyed the vision. In the end, investors were played for suckers. If I invested money, i would demand interest on my loan.

Another amazing video - you have made a compelling fascinating video from a pre production machine that was basically a dud - and then cancelled . It’s hilarious really that you can make such a good video about a machine that doesn’t work. Watching you bug hunt with a skilled engineering mind was fascinating and instructive. I also am so impressed by your ethics which shine through. I would love to have you on A development team if I ever get that far with my stuff ! Thank you for the video.

shits fucked. hope someone who got one of the review samples reverse engineers and releases it, because formlabs sure as hell won't be.

its funny how henry doesnt want you to show the internals of the printer because people might steal the design. i dont think anyone will be reusing this broken design. better to steal a design that works better.

I’m curious how much it cost to acquire them. Presumably there was some good payout

Thankfully, the parts can be recreated is what they said , on what of their videos I messed up and could have gotten a open license but I’m happy for them but worry about not being able to use 3rd party martial without spending a couple of thousands

I guess they dodged the bullet in how things turned out. Thanks Scotty for exposing the problems with the project, specially when larger channels, with theoretically far more resources and personnel, couldn't find anything wrong and how not ready it was for the kickstarter campaign.

We can only hope that Formlabs will be working on a sub-$10k SLS printer, but hopefully with Formlabs' reliability and hardware quality.

Being acquired is great news. Getting a prototype to production is a lot of trial and errors that Formlabs will have plenty of experience. Henry and Luke seem amazing talented and passionate. And I expect they will do great work at Formlabs

I think Henry's "Fix Protocol" was well put together on instructions... With a little more tuning, I think it woulda been a fair machine to play with.. I say, keep at your gifted machine and get it running... And just have fun with the whole experience of learning, trouble shooting, then hopefully, working machine and rock and roll. The problem with an affordable machine that has a media or rather powder, and not having an additional $8000 USD in seals, lip seals, O-rings, vacuum assist, vibratory basin, and many other built in services into the machine, that, like any other mechanical devices, the powder is naturally going to get into every location you don't want it to, and over time, build up, wear critical part, bushings, ball bearings, optical view obstructions, and so on... And not unlike the automobile, foreign matter wants to naturally get into critical locations, and seals of all methodologies is designed to keep that out, away from areas that are required to be clean, likewise, those same sealing systems are serve as the methodology to keep various lubrication types contained with in the machines critical locations, like wheel bearing systems, motor crankshaft to engine block fitment, and so on, and over time, things do wear out, and start to leak out, and stuff can get into these places, to don't want in.. just the nature of a mechanical system, and maintenance is and always has been a defining factor of machines, your automobile, motorcycle, shop tools, and when maintenance is lacking or not implemented into the use of the machine, life expectancy of the device, vehicle, etc, is on a scale of time, performance, works or doesn't work.. So, after my novel, I think for what this is, for the price, and simplicity of it, to keep the costs down, I say, stay at it, and make it work... The proprietary sintering electronics sounds like that will be an issue... I also have concerns for the government "over-reach" no matter which country you live in, is a serious problem to me, the machine and or media powder licensing contract and the likely, "must have network" connection to play with the machine, in my opinion is a serious problem.. what I do with my machine, is nobody's business, especially not the government's business. So much so, I have had 6 patents stolen from me over the years, and this is just one more aspect of others seeing what you are prototyping, before you can even hit the sales floor, and see every part you are designing, letting you do all the hard R&D, trouble shooting, costs out of pocket, and all any agency, competing business needs to do, is watch you network, while you build.. This is something that needs to be fought against collectively, against the corrupted gov't's of the world... Pardon the political ranting, but it is a serious problem, and if we do not start fighting against it, the whole world will be in big trouble from the people unwilling to tame themselves or relinquish their self appointed power... And that is all I'm gonna say about that...

I personally think this is a perfect get-out-of-jail card for them, it really felt like this was a makerbot (yes, I picked makerbot for all it's historic reasons..) era product, not in anyway ready for general consumption but going out to a hobbyist market who are ready to tinker and prod and poke and make it work 10% of the time to great success.... but... we are well beyond the makerbot era, I don't think the appetite is strong anymore for something where you're back to watching first layers again. So I'm really pleased that they will likely follow a similar trajectory to other R&D-ers, to go into environments where they can help make those dreams more of an eventuality, this doesn't sound like a repeat of the Bre story and hopefully Formlabs are still very interested in bringing them in, seeing the root ideas and helping them productionise them to something for the home market. So, a little bit sad that Micronics is no more, but happy that the brains behind it have a proper chance to make their ideas a decent possibility of success.

First of all. Love you, have been a sub since you had less than 100 subscribers. Have always loved your content. However. You are being way way too nice about this. As you are looking at it from a perspective that backers are not. I have had nothing but issues with them throughout this whole ordeal. Only your video explained the issues. They kept acting like it wasn't an issue at all. Ty for your work, I hope maybe some day we will be able to get an sls that works at an actually affordable rate.

The amount of patience you have is insane. I would've given up on this thing five times over.

I saw the first video and my first thought was that it cannot be used for private use and that it absolutely could not run as a kickstarter, I would think that powder printers are only for companies and not for private use yet. but a super good attempt but far too difficult and dirty

Thanks for making these videos and your effort to get it running. I think selling the company was a smart move but we makers have lost the opportunity to get affordable SLS. Maybe sometime they will open source it? But probably very unlikely.

Scotty, once again you have demonstrated that you are the classiest of class acts. It's wild watching how much effort you put into their last mile production manufacturing effort. My brain was screaming that I seriously hope they send you a four-figure DigiKey gift card for your consulting services.

There is a time and place for everything. Affordable desktop sls will come soon, just not now.

Formlabs makes an SLS printer. It's $29k 😨

I'm a bit saddened by the acquisition. It seems like a simple buy-and-kill job by Formlabs who (rightly) suspected that Micronics was going to take the floor right out from under their SLS business. I hope I'm wrong and in a year or two an updated design launches under the Formlabs brand name in the same $3k price point. I'm also not happy because formlabs has a habit of being very closed-sourced about all their stuff (even requiring you to get a *license* to use third party materials in a printer that *you* own. So kind of the worst case for a company to do the acquisition vs someone like Prusa or Lulzbot.

I think the amount of time and money it can take to build something so different is always more than what people think it should be. And this makes it really hard for innovators to create the new tech we need. Their product has potential. They are obviously skilled engineers. But they need more time and money. Maybe more staff too. And maybe a break as well. Sometimes letting something sit for a bit helps more than anything else. I hope they dont see this as a failure. They did something great here and I have no doubt that it will contribute to the evolving 3d printer tech. Others will build off of the foundation they have made. I wish them the best in their future endeavors.

It totally makes sense but also kind of sad there’s not a new player in the market

I enjoyed this kind of content, so I'm glad you got at least something in return lol

Happy for the team at Micronics. Sad for the consumers, but hey, maybe formlabs will surprise us. They do cool stuff, it’s just not meant to be attainable by general consumers/hobbyists which has been the magic of the additive manufacturing revolution. I’m not confident that formlabs is going to be trying to drive the price down and release a general consumer desktop SLS machine at all, though, because that would likely almost completely cannibalize their sales and all they have put into their much more expensive machines. This has been an interesting development. Thanks for sharing about it all Scotty.

Thanks for the update!

Was really hopeful we would have new { affordable } printer technology to play with. Would have loved to expand my business model to offer sls printed parts.

Well FormLabs can't sell you a 30.000$ SLS Printer if they have competition that remove a zero... Sucks for consumers like always and personal greed won