Formlabs announced the acquisition of 3D printing company Micronics on Thursday. The Wisconsin-based startup is a bold move with just two employees. Co-founders Henry Chan and Luke Boppart are joining the more established company as Formlabs works to bring Micronics' easy-to-use SLS method to 3D printing.
There are many similarities between the two: Formlabs was founded as an MIT spinout to significantly lower the barrier of entry to SLA printing, something that was previously only feasible on large, prohibitively priced industrial systems; Micronics, founded in 2021, was created by recent grads committed to the problem of democratizing access to industrial printing technology.
SLA (Stereolithography) is a form of 3D printing that dates back to the 1980s. It utilizes a light source to harden liquid resin layer by layer. The technique is acclaimed for producing prints with extremely high resolution compared to those created with FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) technology, which dominates the desktop 3D printing market.
SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) was invented around the same time. This technique uses a high-powered laser to shoot resin at it to create a print. The strength and speed of this technique have made it a popular choice for industrial use. Formlabs' SLA systems have a strong presence in the dental industry, but SLS is also used in medical applications such as orthotics and prosthetics.
Formlabs has already been exploring SLS with its Fuse 1 printer, which it introduced in 2017. That system was a step toward making the technology more accessible, but it still costs about as much as a used car, and the company is confident that Micronics will take the technology the rest of the way.
“The Fuse 1 has raised the starting price of SLS systems by five times,” Formlabs founder and CEO Max Lobovsky told TechCrunch. “Micronics is now looking to raise it by another five times.”
What this means for the future of the Fuse series remains to be seen, but the companies confirmed to TechCrunch that the Micronics brand will be going away.
So far, Micronix has done a lot with little: Chang says the two-person company has raised about $400,000 so far and manufactures many of its machining tools in-house. As of press time, the company has a few days left in its Kickstarter campaign, having raised more than $1.3 million of its $100,000 goal.
The timing of Thursday's news is unusual in that respect, because all of this happened so quickly: Lobovsky and Zhang first met three weeks ago, at this year's Open Source Maker event, held in the Bay Area on June 15 and 16.
“We started talking and realized our visions were really well aligned,” Chan said.[With] With the two CEOs working together, things can move forward quickly.