Formlabs Releases New Form 4 MSLA Resin 3D Printer

Formlabs has long been a major player in the professional and prosumer resin 3D printing industry, and the company has played a substantial role in proliferating this technology. Their flagship Form series of 3D printers are a popular choice for businesses and engineering teams that need reliable performance without the tinkering typically necessary for consumer printers. Now Formlabs is back at it with the release of the new Form 4 MSLA resin 3D printer.

There is a common misconception in the hobbyist 3D printing community that the more expensive professional machines should offer better performance. In reality, that isn’t often the case. Consumer FDM (fused deposition modeling) and MSLA (masked stereolithography) resin 3D printers tend to perform just as well as — and sometimes better than — professional models when it comes to speed and detail/resolution. What professional models offer for the extra money is reliability and, more importantly, support. Those are far more important factors in business environments where labor is the most significant cost. A hobbyist can afford to spend a day tuning their printer, but that would cost a business a lot of money in labor, lost opportunity, and thwarted project plans.

For those reasons, the Form 4 puts a much greater emphasis on reliability, consistency, and speed than it does on specs like build volume and resolution. Those are 200×125×210mm and 50µm respectively, which are pretty unimpressive by consumer standards. Not bad by any means, but hardly groundbreaking.

However, the Form 4 has features galore that should appeal to professionals. First, it is fast with a stated average printing speed of 40mm/hr across all materials. In the marketing, Formlabs seems to be fond of saying that the Form 4 will finish most jobs in under 2 hours. That will, of course, depend on material, layer thickness, and overall print height. But the claim isn’t completely unreasonable, because the Form 4 has a maximum speed of 100mm/hr.

These speed claims aren’t arbitrary or wishful thinking, as Formlabs has put a lot of work into building a database of validated print settings. In theory, this means that users can select any validated resin and they’ll know exactly what settings to use. That alone should eliminate a great deal of the frustrations common to resin printing.

Most of the other features relate to common points of failure — particularly those caused by the resin and its tank. The Form 4 has an automatic resin dispensing system, an integrated tank mixer, a tank heater, a user-friendly quick-release tank, and a new film with a “release texture” that promises to provide a dramatic reduction in peeling forces. Together, those features should do a lot to prevent failures and quality issues. And Formlabs offers support and service plans to cater to professional customers, should any anomalous behavior arise.

If you want a Form 4, it starts at $4,499 for the Basic Package. That goes up to $8,699 for the Premium Package, which includes two Form Wash machines, a Form Cure machine, a three-year Pro Service Plan, and more.