Desktop 3-D printers are about to become available with higher-definition capabilities, with a new startup shipping its first model this month.
At $3,299, the Form 1 could expand the market for 3-D printing technology. It can produce much higher-fidelity plastic objects than the consumer desktop printers available today. But it is still cheap enough to be affordable to a wide swath of professional designers, engineers, and dedicated tinkerers. The Form 1 can, for example, create detailed functioning prototypes with mechanical parts, such as precise screw threads.
“We wanted a product with a discretionary price point,” says Formlabs cofounder Natan Linder, a PhD student at MIT’s Media Lab. “So you don’t think about it. You might not need a signature from your boss. Maybe you can order it like you do a laptop.”
The process the Form 1 printer uses—stereolithography—is not new. It was commercialized in the 1980s by the company 3-D Systems, which made $353 million in revenue last year selling 3-D printers, materials, and services. The process relies on a laser that, layer by layer, shapes a liquid plastic resin that hardens when exposed to a particular wavelength of light.
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