Formlabs Has a 3D Printer for Normies

Form Studio 1 is a $699 desktop printer that sits on your tabletop and only gives off a slight bad smell.

Fourteen boxes are piled in front of my desk, stacked around me like a cardboard fortress. Inside one, the Form Studio 1, Formlabs' new, affordable, consumer-focused 3D printer has just been announced.

David Lakatos, product manager at the 3D printer manufacturer, assured me that the Form Studio 1 is a very economical size. "It doesn't take up a lot of space," Lakatosh said. "If you have a table, then I think you should be good to go." I have a table. Covered in boxes sent by his company.

Formlabs is one of the largest manufacturers of 3D printers, with nearly 200,000 printers in service. The company's customers are primarily professional businesses, such as assembly shops or dentists, who can spend $2,500 or more on a printer. (Its last affordable printer was $2,300.)

But the Form Studio 1 is Formlabs' first client-centric device. It prints with SLA (stereolithography) resins—a common 3D printing material that turns into solid plastic when exposed to UV light—and can use Formlabs-branded products or third-party resins. It costs $699 and is on sale now. Individual resin bottles start at $29.

Studio 1 takes up almost the same space as a mini fridge. You'll also likely need a wash unit, sold separately for $199 with a similar footprint (it cleans uncured liquid resin from the surface of the models). Then you will need space for all the tools and resin cartridges. Getting all those things can add up. Or at least when Formlabs sent over a dozen boxes of such wired notebooks for testing. Your gathering location may vary.

The front touch screen allows you to troubleshoot and prepare prints. When the printer starts up, it is relatively quiet and odorless. 3D printing with resin may be smelly, but Formlabs brand resins are UL GreenGuard certified, the same standard used to ensure that baby products are not harmful if they come in contact with the skin or are bitten. The idea, says Lakatos, is that Studio 1 can be used anywhere without the room being overwhelmed by the smell of resin.

"We know some people put it in their bedrooms," says Lakatosh. I don't sleep with my printers, but you could if you really wanted to.

After going through the stack of boxes, I launched Form Studio 1 and Form Studio Wash+Cure. They're stylish, with clear orange bezels that evoke the beauty of the old iMac. The printing process itself is apparently fast. Lakatos says you can print a case for mounting a Raspberry Pi in about eight minutes.

I've only printed a few items so far, but I've had a good experience with orders. (Full review coming soon.) I printed a clear cover for the toolbox that came with Studio 1. It took about 17 minutes and came out clean and intact. The process was relatively slow. There was a resin smell, but really only when lifting the hood after the process. I'm excited to use it more and see what kind of very detailed unholy abominations I can do.

SLA printing enables very precise constructions. In internal testing at Formlabs, the company says it has had a roughly 2 percent failure rate for its prints. If this is true in the real world, it will be a big leap over the competition. This is if you use its own resins.

"You can use any material," says Lakatos. "If you want to use toxic resin in the Amazon, you can. We don't recommend it, but you can."

Formlabs also has an app called Form Mobile that can control prints or send designs to Form Studio 1. The overall printer experience feels surprisingly simple.

"If you want to mess with some things, that's great," Lakatos says. "For serious, beautiful stuff and projects that really need better material properties, beautiful resolution and things like that, it's hard to compete."