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."
Of course they don't want the teardown. They were bought by a huge company because they were going to disrupt the market and now the project is killed. Great move by formlabs to be honest... Just shitty move for everyone else.
makes perfect sense and obviously a very reasonable request. Would be great if you could however do your thing and fit some strange parts to make it work, and then print some next level gadgets that only nerds would appreciate. 😀
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.
@@Pyromancers if you're gonna count on... a whole nationality of people(?) to make a technology accessible to you, you could at least show some basic respect when talking about them
@@spambot7110 I would talk about my own people the Americans and the Mexicans in the same generalizing vague referential terms. You out here putting the dig in indignation. Hugs brah.
@@ZachareSylvestre Sometimes its a limitation of the technology and material; particularly laser tech Specific materials need different activating wavelengths; could get biproducts/no products at all at the wrong wavelength but overall totally agree, if the machine is capable of it, then its so scummy not to and if they have bought out micronics to prevent competition like it looks then that’s even scummier
@@BirnieMac1 thats BS as there is nothing special about getting the exact same powder from a different company will mean it wont work. its just the ink printer model on expensive machines.
It seems likely that it's even worse than that. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a stick and carrot approach where they were threatening to go after them for patent violations (I'm sure Formlabs has a sizable patent portfolio) and then made a low ball offer. Since it was public knowledge that Micronics were out of startup runway a lawsuit from Formlabs would likely have been the end of them. I don't know how much ownership the founders of Micronics had but when factoring in the Micronics investors I'd say it's likely that the founders had no real say in this matter.
@@Error404_Handle How do you think Formlabs products are produced.. do you really think they engineered every cogwheel and screw themselves instead of taking off the shelve parts for 80% of the systems? Formlabs themselves sell an SLS printer for 30.000$, releasing a product for 1/6 of the price will hurt a lot of companies, so its best for them to aquire startups like Micronomics, also I feel like way to many people keep shitting on the guys not thinking about that they only sold 350 units, and missed the kickstarter campaign goal, all that while working tirelessly from their tiny appartment which they converted to a sleep/working enviroment. In all honesty, I think 99% of people would've picked up the offer, I don't know how much they were offered, but I am pretty fucking sure they are exhausted and this deal gives them a break, and will probably make formlabs release a cheaper SLS printer, I am guessing around 10k, maybe I am wrong, but they still did something incredible here.
HP have form for buying up start ups who have developed a game changing product with a lot of potential for their IP, with David Laser Scanner. HP seemingly wanted the IP for some totally bizarre PC they were working on which 3d scanning ability, which went nowhere. Although they did rebrand the David 4 structured light system and sell it under the HP name, it seemed to me like it was a product they never really wanted - they never did any further development on it, and it died. It's such a shame - the German guys running David were probably over 10 years ahead of the current crop of budget 3d scanners. I can't imagine how good David would be now if they'd put another 10+ years development into it.
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 :)
The two companies goals do not align. Formlabs makes expensive machines and sells to businesses and likes vendor lock in, hence the open materials license even existing. Micronics wanted to make SLS affordable for many more people, mainly hobbyists, and were going to let you use any materials anyway. If Formlabs releases a budget machine then it will undercut their existing machines. Also very odd to buy out a startup made of two recent graduates and make them the head of an already established department. I wonder if that is confirmed.
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.
Formlabs would definitely love to make (money from) a budget SLS, but the complexities of operating one make *supporting* a budget SLS financially irresponsible. Formlabs does have a good reputation, so the cost of supporting a $5,000 SLS would turn it into a $15,000 SLS.
@@SupremeRuleroftheWorld I could see them licensing the tech to a new subsidiary that offers it as a "hobbyist" printer with basic support (not the enterprise-level support expected of formlabs). Let the hobbyists be your beta testers for a few years before making a formlabs fuse-mini for $5,000 that is optimized for and only works 2-3 of their materials.
They are buying their competitor, so no they have no interest in losing sales of their 30k sls printer to a much cheaper one. If anything, they will incorporate whatever cost saving tech Micronics developed into their line up so they can save their costs but leaving the MRSP unchanged.
@@TheOfficialOriginalChad this didn’t fail though did it? The Kickstarter went very well, according to Micronics the printer was pretty much finished and near perfect going by their scoring.
@@DaveEtchellspossibly but hopefully 2x the efficiency. Price isn’t everything would you really want to be fixing the machine this much to save some money? The wasted powder alone would cost more
Yeah, it's another example of anti-competitive behavior and should be investigated by every government Formlabs sells their printers in. The fact that they're able to "unlock" this ability if they're paid a huge amount of money says there are no technical restrictions using 3rd party materials. It's a money restriction from a greedy company who hates their customers and only sees them as cash faucets.
@@AviatorXD From a business standpoint I assume they count their machine as less of a profit center than the recurring buy of consumables so price it accordingly and the license is you paying the difference of their assumptions but it definitly comes off really fucking bad from a PR standpoint haha
@@TurtleKwitty there's actually a competition law/ anti-trust Law they're breaking by doing anti-competitive business practices. I'm surprised the FTC isnt on their case about it.
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 💢
that's their marketing idealogy, I don't think their resin are so superior if comparing it to the consumer grade resin from other brand even after I checked up their data sheet. Funny thing is, formlab insists their printer are high end while calling all chinese printer amateurs but they compare their Formlab 4 speed to FDM lmao(3 times faster they said). meanwhile anyone with basic idea of 3D printing knows resin printer is doing 1 axis less than FDM.
@@MrKiar1611If you think that SLA is easier than FDM because it has one fewer axis of movement to care about, please stop participating in these kinds of discussions
@@MrKiar1611 If you ever tried calibrating galvos in an SLA printer, I think you'd have a completely different perspective. Formlabs' business model works because they control every step in the process. This isn't compatible with the average DIY hobbyist, but it is a very smart business decision. An example of how important this is to their success is when the Form 1 circuit board designs were leaked and a company used those files to clone the Form 1. Formlabs survived that because building a machine isn't the difficult part.
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.
Ya I totally agree. They saw the writing on the wall and they had an opportunity to save themselves. Probably for the best. Even if 1% of the KS backers had problems like StrangeParts, that could be devastating to those backers and the company. Plus fixing the machine requires use of a mask, which most people probably wouldn't use, and it would raise health concerns around the technology.
@@tristan4337 exactly, Formlabs have experience making SLS printers, they don’t need Micronics. Likely Micronics have done nothing that Formlabs couldn’t have easily done if they had wanted too.
Judging by Micronics own videos and their scoring system they showed off, they thought their printer was pretty much finished and near perfect hence sending it for review and marketing and not for testing. They were likely trying to run before they could walk. Not even a shipping test before sending review units all over the place? They weren’t prepared for putting the product into production and seemed far too optimistic. All their machines so far were hand built, I wonder if they started looking into how much it would cost to get those parts mass produced or compromises and design changes they would have to make and realised it just isn’t feasible. Their attitude towards safety wasn’t great either, on their about page they showed off how they started off in a college apartment. They had milling machines right next to beds without enough space to work safely in and admitted to being woken up at night due to metal shavings in the bed. They basically tried to turn a college apartment where they lived into a workshop, which definitely isn’t safe.
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.
Please do, it's really a shame that they showed their true colors here that they don't care about hobbiests by selling out, we need to find a company who does actually care
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.
not really sure cause at the end they got something for what they had started and could have ended in a fast bankrupcy. The whole video was about a company with a big gap between anouncement of products and the delivery of what had been promised. And the video made me feel their success was on the verge to break the whole company. Therefore they had achieved a lot and lot more backers had been able to save their money cause the more videos I saw here the more doubts I had.
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.
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!
If anything came out of this that's usable, I'd think their slicer would be the best thing to have available. Since the video with formlabs showed their slicer several times though, I don't think they'll give it up.
If two college graduates and a professor can do this in a few years then a fully open source version should be possible too. Even though this has been bought out maybe it will give the community a push to build SLS printers.
I don't know, I reckon this kind of thing needs higher precision manufactured parts and much less of the shelf than a typical FDM printer. I suppose a RepRap style one where you use nylon parts could work but someone who has access to such a machine, and the time and skills to begin such a project is probably rare
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.
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.
I don't think it's similar at all. MakerBot had already attempted to end itself by the time the acquisition happened. They turned their back on open source pushing one of the founders out in the process. They patented community contributions. In order to prevent companies like Flash Forge who produced copies of the ThingoMatic and the Replicator from taking them out they took themselves out instead. Stratasys got themselves a well known name to slap on contract fulfilling garbage. But given Lulzbot in the US, Ultimaker in Europe etc, they didn't exactly do anything that affected competition from consumer and prosumer machines.
Stratasys couldn't stop the reprap community and now we have sub-$200 printers that perform about as good as their old $50,000 printers (no idea how they are now, its been over a decade since I've used one of theirs). I don't know if the community could band together to build an open source SLS printer. There's still no OSHW resin printer that's viable.
@@Spicethere are a couple of open source sls printers, they aren't as refined as micronics was. As for open source resin printers, prometheus is one that comes to mind
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.
Eh I don't blame them, they had the choice of trying to bring a product to market that people were absolutely shitting on them for prototype stuff, or get solid financial backing and resources from an industry giant. Less of the easy way and more of not wanting to deal with the vitriol being thrown at them before they even reached production. And I don't mean Scotty, I mean RUclips commenters and Redditors who jump to calling it a scam for the mortal sin of working through prototypes. People assumed the worst and not the reality that it was two inexperienced guys trying to do something novel and hitting some roadblocks, instead of support they got hate and now the hobbyist community is worse for it.
@@spicy_mint it wasn’t totally undeserved though. They did not make clear that these were early samples, they sent them as review units and in their own videos where they showed their scoring system for the printer it scored nearly perfect with the few non perfect parts being the problems Scotty had. It seems in their eyes the printer was very nearly finished, not just early prototypes. You claim people assume the worst but at the same time you are here assuming the best. Maybe other people just saw things that you didn’t. Being overly optimistic is as much of a problem as being overly negative and any startup should be ready to receive criticism, especially when a lot of it is valid.
Exactly, they abandoned their goal of making SLS affordable and accessible. Their Kickstarter was going very well and going by what they said the printer was near finished. So they likely realised they couldn’t make it work out in production or Formlabs gave them a very nice offer, either way though they took the easy way out.
@conorstewart2214 people calling it a scam when no person was ever scammed is not criticism that's just straight up slander. If someone can show proof that they paid for a machine and had their money taken with nothing back or an unusable machine then I'm all ears. As far as I can see all backers got a free $1000 gift card out of it with no money actually spent.
I think it's clear there was just too much fud and hype for them to deal with, and they felt they could do a better job by joining an established company. I don't blame them. Getting the perfect messaging with a new company is hard, and if they have the kind of anxiety I have, it makes sense for them to take the more stable path.
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
Yeah, micronics clearly had a lot more work to do to have a product ready for mass production, and if they couldn't find the cash to fund that work, then it's hard to see how they could have ever bridged that gap. Obviously there are a lot of us who would have loved to see the product succeed, but we'll have to sadly accept that practical considerations prevented that. Funny to think that when I walked by the micronics booth at OpenSauce, what I didn't know at the time was that I was getting a glimpse of what was effectively their last public showing :(. At the time I was hopeful they'd find some way to navigate the next few years of progress.
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 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.
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.
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.
I have to disagree with your commendations here. I had quite a few discussions in the comments on Scotty's initial video talking about how he was positively scathing in his review of his unit. It was clear he expected far too much from a release-candidate product from a nascent company, and misreprensented and minimalized the communication and efforts undertaken by micronics to resolve the situation. MIcronics even made their own video telling the rest of the story and it was very clear that, while they made mistakes, they were being raked through the mud despite doing everything they could think of. Remember, they're young and relatively inexperienced. Scotty is someone I've watched for years and have a lot of respect for, but as a person who works in product development, RUclipsrs like him tend to know just enough to be dangerous and inadvertently (or maliciously in the case of some channels) torpedo public sentiment surrounding new products. We have to ask ourselves as viewers of this content: Is the content we choose to view really keeping companies accountable in the interest of receiving a better product? And is feedback presented honestly and fairly?
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.
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.
Bro wants creality to release sls machine? Hahaha they can't even release a properly working fdm printer after 10 years. Do you even know how many different variations of printers they got? It has to be in the 50s by now
Also. You probably haven't been in the 3d printing world for very long, but first prusas were very finicky and made out of fucking wood. But these days, prusas are one of the best.
@@biziluxgames8924 I’ve been printing for nearly a decade, and even if I hadn’t, what relevance does that have? The printing industry today is not even remotely similar to when the first Prusa came out. Prusa’s are reliable machines, but are not price competitive when compared to Bambu. I said “someone like creality” to mean a large company that actually has the money and experience in mass production to pull this off. Why would a company selling 50 different printers be a negative? To me that proves they clearly know how to make printers, and have the money to back it up. Micronics left because they realized they were in way over their heads.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Why would you be happy for the Kickstarter backers? They were sold on the idea of affordable and accessible SLS printers and invested a not insignificant amount of money into it, now all that has been scrapped. It’s good that they didn’t get burned or lose all of their money but they invested because they wanted to support the product.
@@conorstewart2214 Simple really they got their money back. I was sold on the idea, and was going to join this Kickstarter on launch, as had been following Micronics since their early work, even shared it with a few people I knew, but realised after the review, it wasn't ready, so I decided not to bother, besides they'd raised a stack of coin to develop it further, so I cut my losses. I was pretty sure after they had development issuer they might get swallowed up, as you see this all the time, even if it to lock up IP.. BTW, I have lost money on Kickstarter, had a project cancelled (remember the Lily drone), so I get your POV re disappointment, but it's a sweeter taste getting your money back than not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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…
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.
Stallone when he wrote rocky was on the slab. They offered him $300,000 for the script, but he would not act in it. He objected, refusing the money and insisting on being the lead actor. He shot the film in debt, and with enormous difficulty. We all know how that turned out... Here I seem to be seeing the same thing again, except that here the script is sold, and the person who conceived it will never again be the protagonist...
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?
"You say that they are now the head of the Formlabs SLS division, is that actually confirmed?" This is what Henry told me a few days ago: "the current plan is for me to lead the SLS team". But I didn't see that confirmed by anything from Formlabs today, so I'm not totally sure. And yes, Formlabs now owns all their IP, and I imagine there's a noncompete in place, as part of the sale.
@@strangerparts good for Henry if that works out long term but it still seems odd to make a university graduate with very little if any experience in industry the head of a department, especially when the department is well established and likely has lots of good and experienced engineers working for it. What happened to the guy that Henry is replacing? As for non compete agreements and Formlabs owning all the IP, I doubt we will ever see the two guys again, especially not in another company making SLS printers. As much as I criticised them I did still hope they would succeed, more for what it meant for the community rather than for their product working out. I hope for Micronics sake that Formlabs aren’t taking advantage of them and their ambitions. I hope Formlabs aren’t just giving them a high up role just to keep them happy whilst not actually doing all that much, or giving them a high up role so they can fire or replace them at some point, just using the role to get them to accept the deal.
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.
"Open source" but everything on this printer is closed source and "IP Protected". What a joke to the 3d printing community/hobbiests. Nowhere near consumer friendly. Prusa printers are close but even those aren't 100%. Imagine adding toxic powder to all that. Nah
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.
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 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.
Micronics sold out, let's not make it like Formlabs is the only bad guy here. "From the beginning, our goal has been to build accessible, versatile, and reliable SLS 3D printers. Initially we believed the best way to do this was to do everything ourselves. A few weeks ago, however, we met Max Lobovsky, co-founder and CEO of Formlabs, and quickly realized our shared mission and the immense value that Formlabs’ decade of R&D and robust infrastructure could help us make incredible progress on our goal in a much shorter time." Translation: it was A LOT of money
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
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.
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.
A lot of hobbyists weld or build entire engines. This really isn't that bad. It's just a lot for people who want Bambu Lab FDM levels of learning investment into a hobby. 🤷♂️
@@802Garage True. And even mastering Bambu FDM isn't that simple (even without the CAD-related part). Needless to say that printing process is just a relatively small part of making a final product. The hobbyist product is rarely a 3d-benchy: you have to know electronics, PCB layout and manufacturing, MCU firmware programming, protocols, interfaces, maths and physics fundamentals and many more. So, making any part of the toolchain a bit less complex is priceless.
So, Micronics was further from making it work than they thought, got cold feet and formlabs saw an opportunity to eliminate some competition that cluld significantly lower prices? Great!
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.
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.
I wasnt a fan of your original review of this unit. But this video was a really good follow up and your ending statements were really well said. I hope to see you work on this in the future.
100% the right move for them, like you mentioned this is pretty much the best case scenario for them, their uncertain project turned into a career at a stable company. Unfortunately the 3D Printing community as a whole takes the loss on this innovation being stifled.
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 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...
Also.. can I take a moment to thank you for all your hard work in going through the issues diligently. There aren't many people willing to do this sort of thing (I also test prototype equipment, and develop stuff myself as well so fully understand the time, effort and money for this), so thank you!!! I know it didn't pan out due to formlabs, but what a great series of videos :)
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.
Remember, being critical of something isn't a bad thing. Sometimes when people look to you for advice, you have to be honest and tell people when you think something isn't ready.
@@jonmayer I’d argue that creators have a responsibility to be honest and not be overly optimistic. Too many creators sell out or don’t say anything negative for fear of the company not working with them again. We need more honest creators who just say exactly what they think, especially when an expensive Kickstarter is involved. If Scotty hadn’t made his video then the printer would have only got positive attention and people would have been lead to think it works much better than it actually does.
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.
SAD. Formlab did this to kill off their competition. They have no intention of making a low-cost SLA printer, and now they don't have to. Tell Henry not to spend all the sale money, because they hired him now, but during the next layoff, hell be the first to go.
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 think that formlabs was a huge component in bringing resin printing into the hobbyist market, even if they didn't necessarily offer it themselves. A high end, functional system with all of the little issues worked out gives hobbyist machine manufacturers targets to hit. They decide what is important and what areas they can make cheaper, then they start competing with other hobbyist level machine manufacturers doing the same. I think this acquisition is pure upside, even if everything formlabs has ever made is well outside of my budget.
I always viewed 3D printing the same way I view making printed circuit boards. Yes, it's _possible_ to make your own, but so much easier to send the data to an industrial site that has equipment you'll never be able to afford, and is committed to a successful print (as long as your model meets their specs). So for me, the real tragedy is that Shapeways went under. Yes, I know other 3D print-on-demand houses exist, but I was a Shapeways customer for over a decade.
This is tricky. On the one hand we can feel sad there isn't a super cheap SLS printer... But, based on yours and other peoples videos, we KNOW this was going to be a disaster and leave a lot of angry customers with machines that never worked well. This might be the best outcome for cheap SLS in the ends, even if "cheap" ends up 6-8k instead of 3-4k for now. On the tear down, I would wait a fair amount of time then do it. Just to keep everything friendly.
It was definitely the best move for them. I was excited for the machine, but was clearly not ready to be sold. It's at best a hobby kit, not a product. Seems unlikely Formlabs wants to sell 3k machines when they don't have issues selling 20k machines.
Sad I don't get my printer and my affordable SLS champions. Happy the boys got accuired and regardless of what they do it will be great. Now we just need somebody to make that nexus product.
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."
Of course they don't want the teardown. They were bought by a huge company because they were going to disrupt the market and now the project is killed. Great move by formlabs to be honest... Just shitty move for everyone else.
@@biziluxgames8924 yup!
makes perfect sense and obviously a very reasonable request. Would be great if you could however do your thing and fit some strange parts to make it work, and then print some next level gadgets that only nerds would appreciate. 😀
Hahaha YOU don't need to tear it down, it just needs to get lost in shipping and find its way to Southeast Asia somehow.
They were just for the money then, what a shame
Sooo basically Formlabs bought the potential competition to kill it.
they were already dead. They bought the list of bakers (potential formlabs customers) and their software. Plus 2 engineers with interest in that field
@@firedeveloper Probably a fair bit of truth to that
Pretty much, yes. So, now thinking about this outcome.
I don't know how good this actually is.
capitalism creates competition and innovation
@@Nobody-NowhereLol. Lmao
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.
Idk. The preproduction units are out there. Prolly in the hands of the Chinese. Might get done faster by them.
search SLS4All
try looking into SLS4All...it's a bit more expensive but it might work
@@Pyromancers if you're gonna count on... a whole nationality of people(?) to make a technology accessible to you, you could at least show some basic respect when talking about them
@@spambot7110 I would talk about my own people the Americans and the Mexicans in the same generalizing vague referential terms. You out here putting the dig in indignation. Hugs brah.
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
Yeah, any company that hard locks printers to only one specific material or ink is a terrible company. These practices should be banned.
@@ZachareSylvestre Sometimes its a limitation of the technology and material; particularly laser tech
Specific materials need different activating wavelengths; could get biproducts/no products at all at the wrong wavelength
but overall totally agree, if the machine is capable of it, then its so scummy not to
and if they have bought out micronics to prevent competition like it looks then that’s even scummier
@@BirnieMac1 thats BS as there is nothing special about getting the exact same powder from a different company will mean it wont work. its just the ink printer model on expensive machines.
Formlabs realised they had competition and a blank cheque would make it go away.
It seems likely that it's even worse than that. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a stick and carrot approach where they were threatening to go after them for patent violations (I'm sure Formlabs has a sizable patent portfolio) and then made a low ball offer. Since it was public knowledge that Micronics were out of startup runway a lawsuit from Formlabs would likely have been the end of them. I don't know how much ownership the founders of Micronics had but when factoring in the Micronics investors I'd say it's likely that the founders had no real say in this matter.
The printer in the video is 80% aliexpress parts :) why would anyone consider this as competition?
@@Error404_Handleevidence?
@@Error404_Handle it shows that you don't need to spend 5 digits on SLA printing, which hurts their bottom line hard.
@@Error404_Handle How do you think Formlabs products are produced.. do you really think they engineered every cogwheel and screw themselves instead of taking off the shelve parts for 80% of the systems?
Formlabs themselves sell an SLS printer for 30.000$, releasing a product for 1/6 of the price will hurt a lot of companies, so its best for them to aquire startups like Micronomics, also I feel like way to many people keep shitting on the guys not thinking about that they only sold 350 units, and missed the kickstarter campaign goal, all that while working tirelessly from their tiny appartment which they converted to a sleep/working enviroment.
In all honesty, I think 99% of people would've picked up the offer, I don't know how much they were offered, but I am pretty fucking sure they are exhausted and this deal gives them a break, and will probably make formlabs release a cheaper SLS printer, I am guessing around 10k, maybe I am wrong, but they still did something incredible here.
"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.
They gave it a nice sounding name for what's an evil business practice. 😂
HP have form for buying up start ups who have developed a game changing product with a lot of potential for their IP, with David Laser Scanner. HP seemingly wanted the IP for some totally bizarre PC they were working on which 3d scanning ability, which went nowhere. Although they did rebrand the David 4 structured light system and sell it under the HP name, it seemed to me like it was a product they never really wanted - they never did any further development on it, and it died. It's such a shame - the German guys running David were probably over 10 years ahead of the current crop of budget 3d scanners. I can't imagine how good David would be now if they'd put another 10+ years development into it.
Exactly. And like Stratasys does until the recent day.
Acquisition by supersized company means they are going to be trashed. No more affordable printer for us.
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 :)
The two companies goals do not align. Formlabs makes expensive machines and sells to businesses and likes vendor lock in, hence the open materials license even existing. Micronics wanted to make SLS affordable for many more people, mainly hobbyists, and were going to let you use any materials anyway.
If Formlabs releases a budget machine then it will undercut their existing machines.
Also very odd to buy out a startup made of two recent graduates and make them the head of an already established department. I wonder if that is confirmed.
Pebble was already a bankrupt company when Fitbit bought a portion of their assets. So it's not really comparable.
I still miss my pebble/pebble 2. Still by fair the best smart watch I have ever owned.
I think you are right.
If it can be built for 3k and formlaba is charging 30k someone else is going to step up. Formlabs can't buy everyone
Not exactly the same, pebble crashed then was sold, rather than just sell. I still wear my pebble steel and classic
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.
depends, it can also mean that formlabs will try to corner the budget side of the market.
Formlabs would definitely love to make (money from) a budget SLS, but the complexities of operating one make *supporting* a budget SLS financially irresponsible. Formlabs does have a good reputation, so the cost of supporting a $5,000 SLS would turn it into a $15,000 SLS.
@@SupremeRuleroftheWorld in the history of acquisitions this has almost never happened.
@@SupremeRuleroftheWorld I could see them licensing the tech to a new subsidiary that offers it as a "hobbyist" printer with basic support (not the enterprise-level support expected of formlabs). Let the hobbyists be your beta testers for a few years before making a formlabs fuse-mini for $5,000 that is optimized for and only works 2-3 of their materials.
They are buying their competitor, so no they have no interest in losing sales of their 30k sls printer to a much cheaper one. If anything, they will incorporate whatever cost saving tech Micronics developed into their line up so they can save their costs but leaving the MRSP unchanged.
there it goes the dream of accessible sls printer
The dream is still there. Just look at how many FDM printers failed in the beginning.
@@TheOfficialOriginalChad this didn’t fail though did it? The Kickstarter went very well, according to Micronics the printer was pretty much finished and near perfect going by their scoring.
I hope it’s not the case, but we can probably at least 2x the price now ☹️
let me cook
@@DaveEtchellspossibly but hopefully 2x the efficiency. Price isn’t everything would you really want to be fixing the machine this much to save some money? The wasted powder alone would cost more
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.
Yeah, it's another example of anti-competitive behavior and should be investigated by every government Formlabs sells their printers in.
The fact that they're able to "unlock" this ability if they're paid a huge amount of money says there are no technical restrictions using 3rd party materials. It's a money restriction from a greedy company who hates their customers and only sees them as cash faucets.
@@MasterThief117 Exactly, and their license could cost 2x the price of most of their printers. Insane cost.
@@AviatorXD From a business standpoint I assume they count their machine as less of a profit center than the recurring buy of consumables so price it accordingly and the license is you paying the difference of their assumptions but it definitly comes off really fucking bad from a PR standpoint haha
@@TurtleKwitty there's actually a competition law/ anti-trust Law they're breaking by doing anti-competitive business practices. I'm surprised the FTC isnt on their case about it.
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 💢
The HP of 3d printing 🤣
@@emanggitulah4319 except HP does make multi color resin printer that cost 70000 while it worth every pennies.
that's their marketing idealogy, I don't think their resin are so superior if comparing it to the consumer grade resin from other brand even after I checked up their data sheet. Funny thing is, formlab insists their printer are high end while calling all chinese printer amateurs but they compare their Formlab 4 speed to FDM lmao(3 times faster they said).
meanwhile anyone with basic idea of 3D printing knows resin printer is doing 1 axis less than FDM.
@@MrKiar1611If you think that SLA is easier than FDM because it has one fewer axis of movement to care about, please stop participating in these kinds of discussions
@@MrKiar1611 If you ever tried calibrating galvos in an SLA printer, I think you'd have a completely different perspective. Formlabs' business model works because they control every step in the process. This isn't compatible with the average DIY hobbyist, but it is a very smart business decision. An example of how important this is to their success is when the Form 1 circuit board designs were leaked and a company used those files to clone the Form 1. Formlabs survived that because building a machine isn't the difficult part.
I threw up in my mouth hearing the open material licence cost. Fromlabs sounds the worst. Sad news for everyone.
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.
You put my thoughts into words perfectly… Great work Strange Parts on giving honest feedback with respect and passion. 👏
Ya I totally agree. They saw the writing on the wall and they had an opportunity to save themselves.
Probably for the best. Even if 1% of the KS backers had problems like StrangeParts, that could be devastating to those backers and the company. Plus fixing the machine requires use of a mask, which most people probably wouldn't use, and it would raise health concerns around the technology.
Nope, this is an acquisition to eliminate competition. Formlabs could have just made their own.
@@tristan4337 exactly, Formlabs have experience making SLS printers, they don’t need Micronics. Likely Micronics have done nothing that Formlabs couldn’t have easily done if they had wanted too.
Judging by Micronics own videos and their scoring system they showed off, they thought their printer was pretty much finished and near perfect hence sending it for review and marketing and not for testing. They were likely trying to run before they could walk. Not even a shipping test before sending review units all over the place?
They weren’t prepared for putting the product into production and seemed far too optimistic.
All their machines so far were hand built, I wonder if they started looking into how much it would cost to get those parts mass produced or compromises and design changes they would have to make and realised it just isn’t feasible.
Their attitude towards safety wasn’t great either, on their about page they showed off how they started off in a college apartment. They had milling machines right next to beds without enough space to work safely in and admitted to being woken up at night due to metal shavings in the bed. They basically tried to turn a college apartment where they lived into a workshop, which definitely isn’t safe.
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.
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+.
Please do, it's really a shame that they showed their true colors here that they don't care about hobbiests by selling out, we need to find a company who does actually care
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.
formlabs is a private company. how do you find their stock price?
June 2021 $95 a share, June 2024 $43 a share.
not really sure cause at the end they got something for what they had started and could have ended in a fast bankrupcy.
The whole video was about a company with a big gap between anouncement of products and the delivery of what had been promised.
And the video made me feel their success was on the verge to break the whole company.
Therefore they had achieved a lot
and lot more backers had been able to save their money cause the more videos I saw here the more doubts I had.
What documentary? I've only seen "print the legend", great doc.
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.
How has no one said "oh shit, it's Clive" yet lol. Keep doing what you're doing, love the channel.
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!
Refunding the Kickstarter backers is about the 3rd best outcome, behind shipping on time and shipping late, so you can't really complain.
We need a Voron style OSHW project for benchtop SLS, not a crowdfunding daydream.
If anything came out of this that's usable, I'd think their slicer would be the best thing to have available. Since the video with formlabs showed their slicer several times though, I don't think they'll give it up.
If two college graduates and a professor can do this in a few years then a fully open source version should be possible too.
Even though this has been bought out maybe it will give the community a push to build SLS printers.
I don't know, I reckon this kind of thing needs higher precision manufactured parts and much less of the shelf than a typical FDM printer. I suppose a RepRap style one where you use nylon parts could work but someone who has access to such a machine, and the time and skills to begin such a project is probably rare
that project exists an its called sls4all
Not holding my breath
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.
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.
It's like when Makerbot was acquired by Stratasys in 2013... It was snuffed right out.
I don't think it's similar at all. MakerBot had already attempted to end itself by the time the acquisition happened. They turned their back on open source pushing one of the founders out in the process. They patented community contributions. In order to prevent companies like Flash Forge who produced copies of the ThingoMatic and the Replicator from taking them out they took themselves out instead. Stratasys got themselves a well known name to slap on contract fulfilling garbage. But given Lulzbot in the US, Ultimaker in Europe etc, they didn't exactly do anything that affected competition from consumer and prosumer machines.
Stratasys couldn't stop the reprap community and now we have sub-$200 printers that perform about as good as their old $50,000 printers (no idea how they are now, its been over a decade since I've used one of theirs). I don't know if the community could band together to build an open source SLS printer. There's still no OSHW resin printer that's viable.
@@Spicethere are a couple of open source sls printers, they aren't as refined as micronics was. As for open source resin printers, prometheus is one that comes to mind
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.
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.
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.
Eh I don't blame them, they had the choice of trying to bring a product to market that people were absolutely shitting on them for prototype stuff, or get solid financial backing and resources from an industry giant.
Less of the easy way and more of not wanting to deal with the vitriol being thrown at them before they even reached production.
And I don't mean Scotty, I mean RUclips commenters and Redditors who jump to calling it a scam for the mortal sin of working through prototypes.
People assumed the worst and not the reality that it was two inexperienced guys trying to do something novel and hitting some roadblocks, instead of support they got hate and now the hobbyist community is worse for it.
@@spicy_mint it wasn’t totally undeserved though. They did not make clear that these were early samples, they sent them as review units and in their own videos where they showed their scoring system for the printer it scored nearly perfect with the few non perfect parts being the problems Scotty had. It seems in their eyes the printer was very nearly finished, not just early prototypes.
You claim people assume the worst but at the same time you are here assuming the best. Maybe other people just saw things that you didn’t. Being overly optimistic is as much of a problem as being overly negative and any startup should be ready to receive criticism, especially when a lot of it is valid.
Exactly, they abandoned their goal of making SLS affordable and accessible. Their Kickstarter was going very well and going by what they said the printer was near finished. So they likely realised they couldn’t make it work out in production or Formlabs gave them a very nice offer, either way though they took the easy way out.
@conorstewart2214 people calling it a scam when no person was ever scammed is not criticism that's just straight up slander. If someone can show proof that they paid for a machine and had their money taken with nothing back or an unusable machine then I'm all ears.
As far as I can see all backers got a free $1000 gift card out of it with no money actually spent.
I think it's clear there was just too much fud and hype for them to deal with, and they felt they could do a better job by joining an established company. I don't blame them. Getting the perfect messaging with a new company is hard, and if they have the kind of anxiety I have, it makes sense for them to take the more stable path.
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.
Meanwhile... an open source SLS printer : ruclips.net/video/yqpo7LGhjlk/видео.html
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
Yeah, micronics clearly had a lot more work to do to have a product ready for mass production, and if they couldn't find the cash to fund that work, then it's hard to see how they could have ever bridged that gap. Obviously there are a lot of us who would have loved to see the product succeed, but we'll have to sadly accept that practical considerations prevented that.
Funny to think that when I walked by the micronics booth at OpenSauce, what I didn't know at the time was that I was getting a glimpse of what was effectively their last public showing :(. At the time I was hopeful they'd find some way to navigate the next few years of progress.
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 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.
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.
Once they hold the patents to key design features, that idea will be met with lawsuit after lawsuit.
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.
I have to disagree with your commendations here. I had quite a few discussions in the comments on Scotty's initial video talking about how he was positively scathing in his review of his unit. It was clear he expected far too much from a release-candidate product from a nascent company, and misreprensented and minimalized the communication and efforts undertaken by micronics to resolve the situation. MIcronics even made their own video telling the rest of the story and it was very clear that, while they made mistakes, they were being raked through the mud despite doing everything they could think of. Remember, they're young and relatively inexperienced. Scotty is someone I've watched for years and have a lot of respect for, but as a person who works in product development, RUclipsrs like him tend to know just enough to be dangerous and inadvertently (or maliciously in the case of some channels) torpedo public sentiment surrounding new products. We have to ask ourselves as viewers of this content: Is the content we choose to view really keeping companies accountable in the interest of receiving a better product? And is feedback presented honestly and fairly?
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.
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.
Bro wants creality to release sls machine? Hahaha they can't even release a properly working fdm printer after 10 years. Do you even know how many different variations of printers they got? It has to be in the 50s by now
Also. You probably haven't been in the 3d printing world for very long, but first prusas were very finicky and made out of fucking wood. But these days, prusas are one of the best.
@@biziluxgames8924 I’ve been printing for nearly a decade, and even if I hadn’t, what relevance does that have? The printing industry today is not even remotely similar to when the first Prusa came out. Prusa’s are reliable machines, but are not price competitive when compared to Bambu. I said “someone like creality” to mean a large company that actually has the money and experience in mass production to pull this off. Why would a company selling 50 different printers be a negative? To me that proves they clearly know how to make printers, and have the money to back it up. Micronics left because they realized they were in way over their heads.
@@biziluxgames8924what this "best" may be? They priced like premium while delivering like budget.
@@maxdefire that sounds like formlab tbh.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
Why would you be happy for the Kickstarter backers? They were sold on the idea of affordable and accessible SLS printers and invested a not insignificant amount of money into it, now all that has been scrapped. It’s good that they didn’t get burned or lose all of their money but they invested because they wanted to support the product.
@@conorstewart2214 Simple really they got their money back. I was sold on the idea, and was going to join this Kickstarter on launch, as had been following Micronics since their early work, even shared it with a few people I knew, but realised after the review, it wasn't ready, so I decided not to bother, besides they'd raised a stack of coin to develop it further, so I cut my losses. I was pretty sure after they had development issuer they might get swallowed up, as you see this all the time, even if it to lock up IP.. BTW, I have lost money on Kickstarter, had a project cancelled (remember the Lily drone), so I get your POV re disappointment, but it's a sweeter taste getting your money back than not.
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.
It is not about the production being done in China or local machine stop. It is about their bad design which didn't account for ease of production.
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.
Now all my faith is in SLS4ALL to bring us a consumer SLS :>
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.
There is already. The RUclips channel SLS4all
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.
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.
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
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.
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…
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.
They just betrayed the trust people had in them - worse than blowing a Kickstarter.
There is still the open source project SLS4all. They have also a RUclips channel
Stallone when he wrote rocky was on the slab. They offered him $300,000 for the script, but he would not act in it. He objected, refusing the money and insisting on being the lead actor. He shot the film in debt, and with enormous difficulty. We all know how that turned out...
Here I seem to be seeing the same thing again, except that here the script is sold, and the person who conceived it will never again be the protagonist...
Terrible move for the hobbyists. Unless Formlabs is entering the hobby market, we're not going to see a
What about sls4all?
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?
"You say that they are now the head of the Formlabs SLS division, is that actually confirmed?" This is what Henry told me a few days ago: "the current plan is for me to lead the SLS team". But I didn't see that confirmed by anything from Formlabs today, so I'm not totally sure.
And yes, Formlabs now owns all their IP, and I imagine there's a noncompete in place, as part of the sale.
@@strangerparts good for Henry if that works out long term but it still seems odd to make a university graduate with very little if any experience in industry the head of a department, especially when the department is well established and likely has lots of good and experienced engineers working for it. What happened to the guy that Henry is replacing?
As for non compete agreements and Formlabs owning all the IP, I doubt we will ever see the two guys again, especially not in another company making SLS printers. As much as I criticised them I did still hope they would succeed, more for what it meant for the community rather than for their product working out.
I hope for Micronics sake that Formlabs aren’t taking advantage of them and their ambitions. I hope Formlabs aren’t just giving them a high up role just to keep them happy whilst not actually doing all that much, or giving them a high up role so they can fire or replace them at some point, just using the role to get them to accept the deal.
We can only hope that Formlabs will be working on a sub-$10k SLS printer, but hopefully with Formlabs' reliability and hardware quality.
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.
"Open source" but everything on this printer is closed source and "IP Protected". What a joke to the 3d printing community/hobbiests. Nowhere near consumer friendly. Prusa printers are close but even those aren't 100%. Imagine adding toxic powder to all that. Nah
It was never open source. The real open source project is SLS4all youtube.com/@sls4all
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.
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.
The teardown sounds like a really cool idea
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 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.
Micronics sold out, let's not make it like Formlabs is the only bad guy here.
"From the beginning, our goal has been to build accessible, versatile, and reliable SLS 3D printers. Initially we believed the best way to do this was to do everything ourselves. A few weeks ago, however, we met Max Lobovsky, co-founder and CEO of Formlabs, and quickly realized our shared mission and the immense value that Formlabs’ decade of R&D and robust infrastructure could help us make incredible progress on our goal in a much shorter time."
Translation: it was A LOT of money
The amount of patience you have is insane. I would've given up on this thing five times over.
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
This is a sad day for all 3d printing enthusiasts. This would of been the perfect time for SLS to start reaching the general public
Wait for the Temu sls printer
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.
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.
A lot of hobbyists weld or build entire engines. This really isn't that bad. It's just a lot for people who want Bambu Lab FDM levels of learning investment into a hobby. 🤷♂️
@@802Garage True. And even mastering Bambu FDM isn't that simple (even without the CAD-related part). Needless to say that printing process is just a relatively small part of making a final product. The hobbyist product is rarely a 3d-benchy: you have to know electronics, PCB layout and manufacturing, MCU firmware programming, protocols, interfaces, maths and physics fundamentals and many more. So, making any part of the toolchain a bit less complex is priceless.
Nothing but respect for the team working on bringing these machines to market.
Probably the best possible realistic outcome. You were patient, supportive, and fair. If this was easy everyone would be doing it.
Out of all of the initial reviews yours stands the test of time. Especially so in the situation we've ended up with, bravo.
"dont show so it wont be reverse engineered" sounds so silly... If I am a competitor I can just buy it and disassemble the heck out of it...
So, Micronics was further from making it work than they thought, got cold feet and formlabs saw an opportunity to eliminate some competition that cluld significantly lower prices? Great!
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.
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.
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 believe that’s called ‘a good business decision’
I wasnt a fan of your original review of this unit. But this video was a really good follow up and your ending statements were really well said. I hope to see you work on this in the future.
100% the right move for them, like you mentioned this is pretty much the best case scenario for them, their uncertain project turned into a career at a stable company.
Unfortunately the 3D Printing community as a whole takes the loss on this innovation being stifled.
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 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...
Also.. can I take a moment to thank you for all your hard work in going through the issues diligently. There aren't many people willing to do this sort of thing (I also test prototype equipment, and develop stuff myself as well so fully understand the time, effort and money for this), so thank you!!! I know it didn't pan out due to formlabs, but what a great series of videos :)
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.
I am sorry for thinking of you badly after the way you made the first video, turns out you were right all along
Remember, being critical of something isn't a bad thing. Sometimes when people look to you for advice, you have to be honest and tell people when you think something isn't ready.
@@jonmayer I’d argue that creators have a responsibility to be honest and not be overly optimistic. Too many creators sell out or don’t say anything negative for fear of the company not working with them again. We need more honest creators who just say exactly what they think, especially when an expensive Kickstarter is involved.
If Scotty hadn’t made his video then the printer would have only got positive attention and people would have been lead to think it works much better than it actually does.
of course he was, it was obvious...
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.
shits fucked. hope someone who got one of the review samples reverse engineers and releases it, because formlabs sure as hell won't be.
They'll shelve it for sure. Gotta keep those commercial prices sky high!
No no they have "top men working on it now"
I'd be ringing up Creality and see how much they'd offer to take it off my hands...
SAD. Formlab did this to kill off their competition. They have no intention of making a low-cost SLA printer, and now they don't have to. Tell Henry not to spend all the sale money, because they hired him now, but during the next layoff, hell be the first to go.
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 think that formlabs was a huge component in bringing resin printing into the hobbyist market, even if they didn't necessarily offer it themselves. A high end, functional system with all of the little issues worked out gives hobbyist machine manufacturers targets to hit. They decide what is important and what areas they can make cheaper, then they start competing with other hobbyist level machine manufacturers doing the same. I think this acquisition is pure upside, even if everything formlabs has ever made is well outside of my budget.
So much for this project. Promising innovative product, down the drain to avoid disrupting the industry.
I always viewed 3D printing the same way I view making printed circuit boards. Yes, it's _possible_ to make your own, but so much easier to send the data to an industrial site that has equipment you'll never be able to afford, and is committed to a successful print (as long as your model meets their specs).
So for me, the real tragedy is that Shapeways went under. Yes, I know other 3D print-on-demand houses exist, but I was a Shapeways customer for over a decade.
My two cents are that this guys were on to something and they got bought before they could become a problem for the competition. That’s just me. 🤷🏻♂️
This is tricky. On the one hand we can feel sad there isn't a super cheap SLS printer... But, based on yours and other peoples videos, we KNOW this was going to be a disaster and leave a lot of angry customers with machines that never worked well. This might be the best outcome for cheap SLS in the ends, even if "cheap" ends up 6-8k instead of 3-4k for now.
On the tear down, I would wait a fair amount of time then do it. Just to keep everything friendly.
It was definitely the best move for them. I was excited for the machine, but was clearly not ready to be sold. It's at best a hobby kit, not a product.
Seems unlikely Formlabs wants to sell 3k machines when they don't have issues selling 20k machines.
Sad I don't get my printer and my affordable SLS champions.
Happy the boys got accuired and regardless of what they do it will be great.
Now we just need somebody to make that nexus product.