Just to address the Micronics stuff: this was filmed way before that situation happened (April 2024). I have no horse in this race, I don't even 3D print that often. So please keep the comments civil. I just wanted to nerd out with material scientists, engineers and resin chemists. Thanks 😊
Thanks for letting us know. That definitely changes things, a lot of us were really disappointed to see you working with the company that did that. But I’m very glad that isn’t the case. :)
That was a great tour. So interesting to see all the departments and hear the passion they had for their individual specialties. I think they were enjoying having someone like you come by with such a broad understanding of so many disparate fields. Thanks for taking us along!
If you want to nerd out with people, delete this video then. A company that only values in monopolizing and purposely stagnating an entire industry so they can sell overpriced powders are totally gonna show us innovation.
Formlabs, the leader in 3D printing, today announces the acquisition of Micronics, the Wisconsin-based 3D printing company, to continue paving the way for accessible SLS 3D printing. Killing competition is such a great business practice.
We make tiny robots that swim inside the body. PillBot and Endiatx (“ehn-dee-ah-tix”) wouldn’t exist without Formlabs. Their biocompatible resins are now even competing with their engineering resins! Our very first purchase in 2019 was a Form2. Thanks for posting!!!
@@BestFleetAdmiral Not to mention, promises are cheap. I could promise a cheap desktop SLS printer too, but making anything functional, reliable AND cheap aren't always as easy as the developers think even if their technology is good.
I love the fact that he's been there over a decade and it makes me wonder if he started with the manbun or if it's evolved into his current look ahahah
Have you heard of Spectroplast? I think it was a spinoff out of the RTH Zürich, they were doing some similiar inverted SLA printing with silicone for some time now
Wow really nice behind the scenes, looks like an awesome place to work. Looking forward to the next vid you briefly talked about at the end there. They grow up so fast !! your Stanless steel plant was just a seed and now it seems like only yesterday ! It's sprouted a door/view port, is it a comedy one or made from something very cool and strong? LOL ....cheers.
@MakeStuff Would love to but I think I'm not really living closely at any of your research locations. I already looked at your facility locations in Europe and you only have one in Berlin and Budapest.
@@BestFleetAdmiral they bought micronics, a somewhat open low cost sls printer startup (4000usd vs 30kusd), and immediately cancelled that 4000usd printer. instead, backers of that printer now get a 1000usd voucher for overpriced formlabs printers and a "third party material license" that allows you to use non-formlabs material in your formlabs printer. the existence of that license alone should tell you enough about why people hate formlabs.
As a company, it doesn't always make sense to make everything open source I could understand that when it came to hobby devices, but these are products for industry, so the whole thing is a bit different and even prusa no longer makes everything open source.
42:45 oh, there's a machine that makes the cuts uniform for impact tests? Interesting! Now I wonder how much error is induced by filament printers by creating that shape as a continuous outline. But I suppose it's usually relative comparisons of filament to filament when done like that, anyhow.
Wasted probably 9 months trying to get usable results out of Tough 2000, the 'creepiest' resin I've ever worked with. Their other 'engineering' resins don't have adequate properties for my needs. In the end, buying PCBWay glass filled nylon prints is far superior to Form's offerings at a much lower cost. And yes I'm pissed about Micronics too. Is Form still building printers that do repeated movement cycles using stranded wires? That's bad Form..
What exactly do you mean by saying that Tough 2000 is their creepiest resin? Because if you mean that getting accurate parts with it is really difficult, then I fully agree. I also need some Tough 2000 parts for a project and they are being printed on a Form 3+ and the accuracy is terrible. They somehow come out significantly too big and to get them to have the dimensions I need, I had to apply some quite big tolerances on the important surfaces and even scale the whole model down a bit. Definitely not what I expected from a machine that promises to be professional. Not having the option to do manual calibration in the slicer to adjust for this also really adds to my frustration.
@@airborne0x0 oh, thanks for the response. I wasn’t aware of that problem and it might also be problematic for the parts that I need. Really sad that such an amazing resin (from a properties standpoint) doesn’t simply work.
1) Replicator technology capable of 'printing' a complete SLS 3D printer, with the cut-out as shown in the video, is what? less -> 10 years away. 2) Oh no, and it also needed to print 'everything' else - now that will be: Never. Thanks for a glimpse in to a likely future 1ø)
Wow what an interesting place. I'd love to work there and but even with an MS in engineering a decade of experience in mechatronic product development and a (limited) history in an additive manufacturing lab, I feel like I'd be the dumbest and least qualified guy in the room. Thanks for taking us on this tour.
very indirectly, but yes. there were a series of conference rooms named after very hard to solve hardware and software bugs from Form 2 development. Snowcrash was the nickname of one of those bugs, which became the name of a conference room, which had labeled chairs so they wouldn't be stolen from that room, which this was :D
I'm not expert on this stuff, which is why I watch the various videos on UA-cam ... Can't say exactly why ? But I don't feel like I learned much, or fulfilled any curiosity I had ! 🤔
It’s not unreasonable for micronics to think that they were going to exist and not just be evaporated. Formlabs buying Micronics wasn’t the real problem, they bought under the premise of partnership, and then used the power of being the owner to annihilate them. Pretty two-faced, pistol or no.
@@zachbrown7272 I mean I obv don’t have the contract to hand, but I doubt formlabs told micronics “we’re going to yeet your product, business, and idea out of existence” beforehand…
@@xenotimeyt did formlabs yeet their product, idea and business out of existence though? Henry from micronics said in their discord that he didn't get rug-pulled and they're working on exactly what they were told they'd be working on at Formlabs.
@zachbrown7272 a) yes. All of that did get yeeted, there is an affordable desktop SLS printer no longer. b) where did you see that? if that’s true that would definitely change things imo…. (Formlabs is buying up companies to uphold a monopoly (which is bad) regardless)
The biggest insight for me was the pre-heat. That way the laser doesn't have to impart that much energy. Usually the melting point is so far off, that it's super easy to overshoot, and cause burning.
Killing micronics SLS forever stained formlabs for me. Disgustingly anti-competitive and shows they are not confident their product can survive competition.
POS company that doesn’t offer the slightest bit of useful support. “Oh, your resin tray spontaneously cracked in half and spilt 200ml of resin all over the internals?” “Just pack up the entire machine and ship it across the planet for us to charge you 1000 usd on a repair”
Everyone cry about that they bought micron... But that doesn't change anything as micron didn't do much anyway, it was lots of talking no much working. Anyone actually saw their strategy knew that it was just pure marketing as affordable and accessible tags had nothing to do with reality when it would hit market.
I really don't get this whole butthurt about big companies buying up their smaller competitors. I can't buy something that isn't for sale. If someone wants to sell it, I can buy it. So what's the problem? You wouldn't make a fuzz when someone bought a car from a dealer, would you?
To use the car analogy: the situation isn't that someone bought a car from a dealer, it's that an up-and-coming dealer was making a car that even poor people could afford, with good safety and features that were missing in everyday cars that were already exorbitantly expensive. and then a different dealer came and gobbled them up to prevent them from going to market. we were promised something good and then had it snatched away. At least, that's the take from most of the salty people. Personally I have a feeling we'll still get some version of that 'something good' in another few years, these things take a lot of time, but humans have a hard time with long-term patience, especially after already waiting so long.
@@StormBurnX Another car analogy when it comes to Formlabs: Imagine a car company which also have its own gas stations. You buy their car, some would say at a premium, it looks great, works about as good as the rest of them, but you can only use their gasoline. And if you happen to want to use another brand of gas, the car company will only let you do that if you pay them a subscription to allow it. That's another reason some are salty when it comes to Formlabs. Personally, I am ok with them being closed source but I think it's petty and possibly greedy to lock down ther printers to their own resin only. It's also possibly cocky as in: "We make the best resins and you have zero need to look anywhere else!"...
Your disrespect is misplaced. Micronics knew what they were doing. They didn't have what it takes to jostle with the big companies, so they bailed with the bag of cash. This isn't a mysterious process; it's a natural outcome in free markets.
idk if u mean a specific part of the video, but what do our 3 spacial dimensions have to do with time? Depending who you ask the fourth dimension is often considered time, so I presume that is what you meant? But if that is the case it still wouldn't make much sense, as the printer can make changes to our 3 spacial dimensions, it can not alter or effect the fourth dimension in any shape or form. All the fourth dimension does to the printer is the same it does to everything pass time (for a lack of better term).
Please don't take it in the wrong way but you invreassily are going the crazy scientific look 🤣. If at one moment you begging talking about cutting lasers and bring a white cat I will begging worrying about 😂😂😂
You can't attribute any physiognomy to any nationality - to ethnicity, yes but nationality and ethnicity are not the same. So, maybe this just you veiling your hate speech? Not defending the nation's policies, just that hate speech of any kind is not really my favorite thing.
Just to address the Micronics stuff: this was filmed way before that situation happened (April 2024). I have no horse in this race, I don't even 3D print that often. So please keep the comments civil. I just wanted to nerd out with material scientists, engineers and resin chemists. Thanks 😊
All good man, thanks for still releasing this:)
Thanks for letting us know. That definitely changes things, a lot of us were really disappointed to see you working with the company that did that. But I’m very glad that isn’t the case. :)
Nothing stopped you from adding to this video. It may have been filmed in April but it was released now.
That was a great tour. So interesting to see all the departments and hear the passion they had for their individual specialties. I think they were enjoying having someone like you come by with such a broad understanding of so many disparate fields. Thanks for taking us along!
If you want to nerd out with people, delete this video then. A company that only values in monopolizing and purposely stagnating an entire industry so they can sell overpriced powders are totally gonna show us innovation.
49:03 i know it's a curing station but the image of a pineapple being blasted in the microwave is too funny not to mention
Thank you for not making this feel in any way like an advertisement. It was really cool to get a look at their prototyping and validation setups.
Isn't this where Stuff Made Here used to work?
yup he was project lead for formlabs 2 iirc.
Thanks for the tour! Love to see the in-house prototype shop.
This place is a stones throw away from being the next bell labs or xerox parc. Thanks for sharing.
Formlabs, the leader in 3D printing, today announces the acquisition of Micronics, the Wisconsin-based 3D printing company, to continue paving the way for accessible SLS 3D printing.
Killing competition is such a great business practice.
Yeah not interested in this content at all because of the company involved.
It really takes LOTS of smart people and money
We make tiny robots that swim inside the body. PillBot and Endiatx (“ehn-dee-ah-tix”) wouldn’t exist without Formlabs. Their biocompatible resins are now even competing with their engineering resins! Our very first purchase in 2019 was a Form2. Thanks for posting!!!
so where is the micron? more and more it feels like they only bought micronics to kill lower cost competition, not to innovate
I could not agree more with this.
@@BestFleetAdmiral Not to mention, promises are cheap. I could promise a cheap desktop SLS printer too, but making anything functional, reliable AND cheap aren't always as easy as the developers think even if their technology is good.
this was shot before the micron was even announced.
Just wait for China to steal the design then flood the market with the open source version lol
Love hearing from people so passionate and proud of their work, thank you for this video :)
Thank you Formlabs!
Every trendy company is required by law to employ a manbun as their spokesman
Its obviously the correct choice of hair
:)
I love the fact that he's been there over a decade and it makes me wonder if he started with the manbun or if it's evolved into his current look ahahah
Ian has been there since the beginning, like he's in the kickstarter video. He's also a kickass engineer
@@StefanGotteswinter Time to put some action behind those words and change your profile pic!;)
Nice video! Formlabs printers and resins are more expensive and more properitary, but you can definitely see where the money from that is going!
Surprised they let anyone back in after Shan butchered a form 4. Thanks for taking us along, really interesting to see the inner workings:)
Another great video.
Nice tour, like how it shows gokd deal of the whole picture, seems quite well orgnised oiled machne we have here, which is nice to see.
Have you heard of Spectroplast? I think it was a spinoff out of the RTH Zürich, they were doing some similiar inverted SLA printing with silicone for some time now
Ooo I like the new thumbnail. Will check it out later, have some engagement in the meantime
love the pssword on the computer screen
Such a shame no one challenges formlabs regarding the micronics SLS tech they bought and buried.
It's a shame not everyone understands how mergers and acquisitions work and want to cry about a company choosing the route Micronics did. They sold.
Wow really nice behind the scenes, looks like an awesome place to work. Looking forward to the next vid you briefly talked about at the end there. They grow up so fast !! your Stanless steel plant was just a seed and now it seems like only yesterday ! It's sprouted a door/view port, is it a comedy one or made from something very cool and strong? LOL ....cheers.
Mecha-zilla and Mecha-kong was the cherry 🤙
Hmm, a grow tent inside the lab 😂
this is epic
Patagonia/formlabs branded jackets, where can I get one?
Come join us! it's the 4 year anniversary gift ;)
@MakeStuff Would love to but I think I'm not really living closely at any of your research locations. I already looked at your facility locations in Europe and you only have one in Berlin and Budapest.
really fascinating
Formlabs aka the death of open source
@@BestFleetAdmiralhe didnt say that...he wrote that ;)
@@BestFleetAdmiral they bought micronics, a somewhat open low cost sls printer startup (4000usd vs 30kusd), and immediately cancelled that 4000usd printer. instead, backers of that printer now get a 1000usd voucher for overpriced formlabs printers and a "third party material license" that allows you to use non-formlabs material in your formlabs printer. the existence of that license alone should tell you enough about why people hate formlabs.
Yeah what’s the reason for writing that comment?
As a company, it doesn't always make sense to make everything open source
I could understand that when it came to hobby devices, but these are products for industry, so the whole thing is a bit different and even prusa no longer makes everything open source.
They buy out open source company's @@BestFleetAdmiral
42:45 oh, there's a machine that makes the cuts uniform for impact tests? Interesting! Now I wonder how much error is induced by filament printers by creating that shape as a continuous outline. But I suppose it's usually relative comparisons of filament to filament when done like that, anyhow.
Thanks for making this! I love their products.
Wasted probably 9 months trying to get usable results out of Tough 2000, the 'creepiest' resin I've ever worked with. Their other 'engineering' resins don't have adequate properties for my needs. In the end, buying PCBWay glass filled nylon prints is far superior to Form's offerings at a much lower cost. And yes I'm pissed about Micronics too. Is Form still building printers that do repeated movement cycles using stranded wires? That's bad Form..
What exactly do you mean by saying that Tough 2000 is their creepiest resin? Because if you mean that getting accurate parts with it is really difficult, then I fully agree. I also need some Tough 2000 parts for a project and they are being printed on a Form 3+ and the accuracy is terrible. They somehow come out significantly too big and to get them to have the dimensions I need, I had to apply some quite big tolerances on the important surfaces and even scale the whole model down a bit. Definitely not what I expected from a machine that promises to be professional. Not having the option to do manual calibration in the slicer to adjust for this also really adds to my frustration.
@@OleBrouer The resin is not stable. It creeps out of shape over a period of months. At room temperature. Even after Form Cure treatment.
@@airborne0x0 oh, thanks for the response. I wasn’t aware of that problem and it might also be problematic for the parts that I need. Really sad that such an amazing resin (from a properties standpoint) doesn’t simply work.
Hopefully that three D scanner is airgapped. 🙃
1) Replicator technology capable of 'printing' a complete SLS 3D printer, with the cut-out as shown in the video, is what? less -> 10 years away.
2) Oh no, and it also needed to print 'everything' else - now that will be: Never.
Thanks for a glimpse in to a likely future 1ø)
A truly amazing work ! GG
Nice Tour. Love working with our Formlabs 3L. It is such a nice "plug and play" solution for professional work.
I've heard great things about them but my company's Form 3L has been a real disappointment.
Pretty exited to see
0:05 dont we all
Wow what an interesting place. I'd love to work there and but even with an MS in engineering a decade of experience in mechatronic product development and a (limited) history in an additive manufacturing lab, I feel like I'd be the dumbest and least qualified guy in the room. Thanks for taking us on this tour.
At 56:39 - "Snowcrash"?! Is this a Stephenson shoutout?
very indirectly, but yes. there were a series of conference rooms named after very hard to solve hardware and software bugs from Form 2 development. Snowcrash was the nickname of one of those bugs, which became the name of a conference room, which had labeled chairs so they wouldn't be stolen from that room, which this was :D
Awsome tour through Formlabs! Love it.
Only the frame rate is a bit straining on my eyes. i used SVP to upscale to 100 FPS. :)
I'm not expert on this stuff, which is why I watch the various videos on UA-cam ... Can't say exactly why ? But I don't feel like I learned much, or fulfilled any curiosity I had ! 🤔
Why do people cry about Formlabs buying and not Micronics selling? Did they put a pistol to their head forcing them to sell?
It’s not unreasonable for micronics to think that they were going to exist and not just be evaporated. Formlabs buying Micronics wasn’t the real problem, they bought under the premise of partnership, and then used the power of being the owner to annihilate them. Pretty two-faced, pistol or no.
@@xenotimeyt they did? it seems like that would all be presented in the buying contract.
@@zachbrown7272 I mean I obv don’t have the contract to hand, but I doubt formlabs told micronics “we’re going to yeet your product, business, and idea out of existence” beforehand…
@@xenotimeyt did formlabs yeet their product, idea and business out of existence though? Henry from micronics said in their discord that he didn't get rug-pulled and they're working on exactly what they were told they'd be working on at Formlabs.
@zachbrown7272 a) yes. All of that did get yeeted, there is an affordable desktop SLS printer no longer. b) where did you see that? if that’s true that would definitely change things imo…. (Formlabs is buying up companies to uphold a monopoly (which is bad) regardless)
Thanks it was cool to see the testing equipment they used, and the amount of testing to tune everything
Micronics you sellouts
When we can I print a house? ...please
The biggest insight for me was the pre-heat. That way the laser doesn't have to impart that much energy. Usually the melting point is so far off, that it's super easy to overshoot, and cause burning.
Also causes the powder to become less reusable so they can extract more money out of their customers.
Killing micronics SLS forever stained formlabs for me. Disgustingly anti-competitive and shows they are not confident their product can survive competition.
POS company that doesn’t offer the slightest bit of useful support.
“Oh, your resin tray spontaneously cracked in half and spilt 200ml of resin all over the internals?” “Just pack up the entire machine and ship it across the planet for us to charge you 1000 usd on a repair”
35:25 I was sad to see a ring on Adam's hand.😢
why?
Everyone cry about that they bought micron... But that doesn't change anything as micron didn't do much anyway, it was lots of talking no much working. Anyone actually saw their strategy knew that it was just pure marketing as affordable and accessible tags had nothing to do with reality when it would hit market.
Nice to see them improve there shot reputation with a shitty video after killing micronics SLS printer
Except, the video was shot before the buyout.
I really don't get this whole butthurt about big companies buying up their smaller competitors. I can't buy something that isn't for sale. If someone wants to sell it, I can buy it. So what's the problem? You wouldn't make a fuzz when someone bought a car from a dealer, would you?
:)
To use the car analogy: the situation isn't that someone bought a car from a dealer, it's that an up-and-coming dealer was making a car that even poor people could afford, with good safety and features that were missing in everyday cars that were already exorbitantly expensive. and then a different dealer came and gobbled them up to prevent them from going to market. we were promised something good and then had it snatched away.
At least, that's the take from most of the salty people. Personally I have a feeling we'll still get some version of that 'something good' in another few years, these things take a lot of time, but humans have a hard time with long-term patience, especially after already waiting so long.
@@StormBurnX The long history of the bought-out company just vanishing with no discernible product ever resulting... also doesn't help
@@StormBurnX Another car analogy when it comes to Formlabs: Imagine a car company which also have its own gas stations. You buy their car, some would say at a premium, it looks great, works about as good as the rest of them, but you can only use their gasoline. And if you happen to want to use another brand of gas, the car company will only let you do that if you pay them a subscription to allow it.
That's another reason some are salty when it comes to Formlabs.
Personally, I am ok with them being closed source but I think it's petty and possibly greedy to lock down ther printers to their own resin only. It's also possibly cocky as in: "We make the best resins and you have zero need to look anywhere else!"...
your analogy is utter trash and technologies are not comparable to second hand cars. Try harder next time shill.
I do not respect this company since micronics
Your disrespect is misplaced. Micronics knew what they were doing. They didn't have what it takes to jostle with the big companies, so they bailed with the bag of cash. This isn't a mysterious process; it's a natural outcome in free markets.
Dont they mean 4D printer because it doesnt print the part instantaneously?
idk if u mean a specific part of the video, but what do our 3 spacial dimensions have to do with time? Depending who you ask the fourth dimension is often considered time, so I presume that is what you meant?
But if that is the case it still wouldn't make much sense, as the printer can make changes to our 3 spacial dimensions, it can not alter or effect the fourth dimension in any shape or form. All the fourth dimension does to the printer is the same it does to everything pass time (for a lack of better term).
its obviously just about the spatial dimensions
Please don't take it in the wrong way but you invreassily are going the crazy scientific look 🤣. If at one moment you begging talking about cutting lasers and bring a white cat I will begging worrying about 😂😂😂
whoa did you know you can embed voice clips in comments now????? ▶︎•|၊|။||||။၊|။|||။|||04:58
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Im sorry, you just lost the game
seeing a lot of 'israeli physiognomy' if you know what i mean
You can't attribute any physiognomy to any nationality - to ethnicity, yes but nationality and ethnicity are not the same. So, maybe this just you veiling your hate speech?
Not defending the nation's policies, just that hate speech of any kind is not really my favorite thing.
@@AntiVaganza okay thanks for sharing
30:36 nice password 🫢