Kickstarter Canceled! What’s Next for Micronics?

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."

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

the micronics printer needed more time and money to make it work, and the community was not willing to give it that, so this is the inevitable result.

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

OMG! What a PITA.

Thanks for the update!

It's a simple anti competitive move by the guys with the biggest chequebook. Affordable SLS hurts the grossly inflated price tag of FormLabs gear, so they made it go away. The Micronics team get a paycheque, the rest of us get screwed. I don'1 really blame them at all for taking the offer, as you said starting a company is insanely hard with no guarantee of success.
That said, for two individuals so passionate about their project, the alacrity with which they gave it up It does make me wonder if they had come to the conclusion that they were never going to be able to make their product commercially viable and were glad to be shot of it.

This is such a disappointment... Formlabs is awful.
Clearly a move to kill competition. The open material license cost is pure greed.

But i think sls is still not easy use.

Formlabs did everyone a favor and bought this dumpster fire before it hit the market

dude. fix it.. and make a very detailed video about it

Henry should partner with Flashforge and relax be a millionaire.

Many of the failed printers this past decade failed not because it couldn't print, but because they failed to build a company. Micronic is just the lasted. It failed to launch. After all the hype, we got wise. It probably could print. You just need a lab with a filtration system and space suits.

Wish Micronics could have held out on being bought. Making an excuse about your 'competition' when you're most real competitor is the one that scooped you up? Sad

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.

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

For everyone slagging Formlabs for acquiring Micronics... To acquire something, first an offer must be made. Then that offer must be accepted. Not accepted? No acquisition. It's an unpleasant truth.

so will you be refunded all the money people donated to the kick starter?

Well that's fucked up

They could not have ended in a better situation cause honestly the performance to supply and support this prototype was not any buyer would have expected. It was a pre alpha version , not a beta and the whole video I felt its getting even worser and not better. Till the acquisition had been announced.
Backers are safe and have not lost much - except time and opportunities maybe.
These both guys have saved their company which otherwise would have gone bankruupt based on that performance shown in the video here.

If you can not deliver a product to a reviewer you are not a production company , rather a gambling group.

Nothing but respect for the team working on bringing these machines to market.

Yeah no, this is quite frankly atrocious news and just out of spite as much as anything, people will no longer look at any of your work in the future. Formlabs have a long history of overcharging and using hostile licencing to kill off competition. 'Two teams working on the same thing means slower progress' Yes, because you'll do things in different ways and actually ensure that people have to compete with each other. Could not possibly have handled this in a worse way. As an opensource software and hardware advocate, working with formlabs with their bullshit open materials licence is one of the most disgusting things you could do short of selling out to apple or someone like the patent hording slime at Stratasys Inc.

Gotta love the corporate sell out culture. Quash the competition, kill innovation.

I can't say whether the acquisition was good or bad - but doing a full refund to Kickstarter backers is definitely a good thing. This isn't something Kickstarter itself does or asks of its projects, and once a project has been successfully funded, Kickstarter collects a 5% fee from those funds.

In the grand scheme of things, that ~$68,000 is just part of the check Formlabs cut to Micronics, but it's still money they could have chosen to not spend.

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.

I'm much more concerned about the public health and environmental consequences of enabling hundreds of thousands of consumers to work with powdered industrial plastics at home.

All the way through the video it looks from the outside as if you are working with an open printer toner cartridge, the dust is that fine.

Wearing a respirator as not to get the dust into the lungs 👍
Wearing eye goggles as not to get the dust into the eyes 🤓

This is why i love China. They dgaf about IP. Form may be trying to kill off the competition and make overpriced subscriptions but China will save the day for us proles. We may not get perfect machines but our community will be able to continually improve upon each other's successes

If the guy that put a USB port on an iPhone couldn’t get this thing figured out, how could they expect the rest of us imbeciles to do it…

Now lets support sls4all

formlabs lost a customer, I'll steer everyone away from them too. Actively seeking to keep these types of technologies out of the hands of the common person means you are an enemy of the people. Edit and yes i was a backer.

Kudos for the patience to go through all the steps and try again 👍🏼 I hope formlabs didn’t just acquire the business to remove potential competition but to get the printer to market with their expertise and resources

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.

USE LATEX GLOVES and you forget the eys are most susceptible to exposure to the powder in the air.

well.. the new formlabs one could be based on the micronics. and cost 18k.

I am VERY VERY bummed about this outcome. I use formlabs machines to produce final parts at work, and they are also have MANY issues. Other than the $300 every 2 months (max) for a new tank, and the $300 per liter of resin, I have to babysit every machine for 30min to make sure the prints dont fail at the start. The final prints are very impressive, and the range of resins they have come up with are wonderful, but they are truly a professional machine because of it. Seeing them buy out competition so they can continue to hock their TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND dollar machine that is bound to be just as finicky and expensive as the sls machines is a gut punch. That being said, Its probably for the best for micronics, seeing as they will be able to have a life and a solid career/pay for now. But they also could have legitimately revolutionized the 3d printing market and made much more money by doing so. But that would have been a gamble on their end.

Lol….formlabs killed the competition by acquiring it. Such a shameful thing to do for Micronics…now we know they just wanted money and didn’t care of taking SLS 3D printers closer to hobbyists.

If theres a desktop sls printer, then people dont need to pay manufacturers for stuff anymore.

Its just capitalism doing its normal, shitty thing. But you knew that.

Don't take this personally but my feed is cluttered enough already. Good luck.

Someone needs to "accidentally" leak the plans....

Nah, this is a company absorbing competition because it's more effective for market capture than having to compete. Sad times overall.

The acquisition is terrible for consumers. There needs to be more competition.

Do people even trust Kisckstarter anymore?

I thought you were being too harsh in the last video on Micronics -- but you were definitely right. What a huge shame.

1. FormLabs is struggling to grow. Their last year revenue is ~$85M while Elegoo's $200M, Anycubic $140M, and Creality $50M.
2. FormLabs got a series E funding of $150M from SoftBank 3 years ago.
3. I think they use a tiny portion of that money to acquire the Micronics and hire two key persons, which is cheap to eliminate a potential competitor in their more profitable business area.

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.

it's good for them in terms of company but I doubt Formlabs will drop the price below 10k

Look for SLS4All