3D Printing News: Formlabs Excites with Innovative New Tech in Spring Announcement
Formlabs unveils their latest hardware, materials and software releases
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Adding to a flurry of exciting 3D printing industry announcements in March, Formlabs hosted a special spring launch event hosted on YouTube, including speakers; Max Lobovsky, Kyle Mcnulty and Adrienne Bolger. The keynotes opening remarks focused on Formlabs growing efforts to be cost-effective compared to injection moulding focusing on three areas; 3D printing is better, 3D printing is competitive and 3D printing is worse.
Expanding their extensive range of SLA & SLS materials. Formlabs announced on 24th March 2025 in their keynote presentation the following additions to their materials library:
Formlabs first released Tough 1500 in February 2020, five years ago. They’ve improved the formula since then, making it even better. This material is great for making strong but flexible parts that can bend and snap back into shape over and over again. It’s perfect for creating prototypes, tools, and connectors that need to handle pressure without breaking – this material is branded as a ‘Polypropylene’ type material due to it’s similar characteristics.
Source: Formlabs
This Tough 1500 V2 formulation not only improves mechanical properties (including UV stability over an extended period), but also dimensional accuracy. Long & thick parts previously from the V1 in this tough and durable family struggled with distortion when post-processing, however, Formlabs promises to solve these issues with the new and improved V2 formulation!
Source: Formlabs
To test the durability of Tough 1500 V2, Max Lobovsky blended three test samples 3D printed in Tough 1500 V1, PLA and Tough 1500 V2 to demonstrate the toughness of their new V2 formulation.
Tough 1500 V2 is a new and improved material designed for the Form 4 Series (not available for Form 3 or Form 3L), offering 10 times more fracture toughness than the original version.
Following the anticipated Form 4 released in 2024, it’s no surprise that Formlabs in keeping with their mission for fast, printed parts have launched the new and improved Form Cure 2. Designed to work with optimised materials such as Rigid 10K, Tough 1500 and other engineering focused materials. The Form Cure promises rapid UV curing with instant heat-up ensures consistent, validated results and effortless post-curing for large Form 4 prints.
Mcnulty promised curing times as little as 11-minutes!
Source: Formlabs
Form Cure (2nd Generation) Features include:
Blazing Fast Curing, Nearly Instant Heat Up Time - Post-cure general purpose resins in just 60 seconds or cure engineering resins in less than 15 minutes with just 60 seconds required to heat to 60 °C (230 V version).
Consistent, Validated Results - 48 LED array and convective heating system ensure uniform UV and heat exposure, delivering 14.5 mW/cm² irradiance and a maximum temperature of 100 °C.
Post-Cure Large Form 4 Prints - Designed to fit any part on the Form 4, enabling curing of parts up to 200 x 125 x 245 mm on a 235 mm turntable.
Easier than Ever - Sleek new design with pre-programmed cure cycles, an easily cleaned glass turntable, and side-hinged door to allow easy access within a compact footprint.
Source: Formlabs
Source: Formlabs
Formlabs announced a flurry of updates to their extensive software PreForm. Including; bundled supports, native CAD file imports (10+ native formats accepted), rapid print time estimates, add to running job, group queue, cloud slicing and improved language support.
Formlabs latest Preform announcement indicates Fleet Control is being discontinued. Formlabs Fleet Control is a software feature in Formlabs’ Dashboard and PreForm that helps businesses manage multiple 3D printers at once. It’s designed for high-volume production and automated workflows, making it easier to scale up 3D printing operations.
Source: Formlabs
Fear not! Formlabs Fleet Control is being replaced with a new feature on PreForm called ‘Group Queues’.
Printers when added to Preform can be assigned into groups. These groups automatically assign uploaded jobs to available printers, similar to how Fleet Control worked but with better integration inside the Preform software UI.
Big standout was their recognition that SLS builds can take a long time to print with multiple parts. We’ve all been there, end of the day start the print and forget to include a print! Preform now allows users to upload single parts and add them to an existing current running build using ‘add to running job‘ feature.
At SGD, we’ll be running internal tests on this feature. As it would be interesting to see how this effects packing density, refresh rates, cycle times and success rates.
Formlabs unveils their latest hardware, materials and software releases
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