Form 4 Review Roundup

On April 17, 2024, Formlabs announced Form 4, our next-generation resin 3D printer that redefines the industry standard for speed, accuracy, reliability, and material versatility. Form 4 and its biocompatible version, Form 4B are built upon years of groundbreaking hardware, software, and materials science innovations to deliver unmatched speed, accuracy, and reliability. 

Form 4/B redefines the standards of 3D printing — but you don’t have to take our word for it.  In this review roundup, we’ll take a look at what 3D printing experts are saying about Form 4.

Alastair Jennings wrote a glowing review of Form 4 for TechRadar. He starts by looking at the entire ecosystem, saying “The vast selection of specialist materials and a high-quality ecosystem that includes wash and cure machines as well as a finishing station make this one of the most complete and user-friendly options on the market.”  He also points out the ease of use and flexibility offered by the extensive materials library before breaking down the features.

Jennings details unboxing the Form 4, noting similarities to Form 3+ in terms of look, size, and ease of setup. Moving to testing prints, he found that larger pre-supported models could fail by falling from supports. However, he says that while this issue occurs with many high-speed printers, the advanced sensors of the Form 4 helped to mitigate this issue, and switching to PreForm-generated supports achieved a 100% print success rate. 

Jennings pitted Form 4 against the Creality K1C, finding that Form 4 reduces time when running small production runs. Printing nine 3DBenchy models took one hour and 12 minutes on Form 4, while printing the same task on the Creality K1C drastically increased to 15 hours and 47 minutes with supports. Plus, the prints from Form 4 were higher-quality, with better details and easier support removal. 

For post-processing, it was noted that “The Wash and Cure machines, while optional, are nearly essential for achieving the best results and are among the best in their class.” 

Ultimately, Jennings says that “the enhanced user experience and additional features make the Form 4 a worthwhile upgrade from the Form 3+” and “For those looking for one of the most reliable, high-quality, and least messy resin 3D printers on the market, the Form 4 has little competition at this price point.”

In a review titled “Fail Proof Business 3D Printing: Perfect prints are as easy as a game of connect the dots.” Denise Bertacchi walks through Form 4. As someone who never enjoyed resin printing, Bertacchi realizes this is a direct result of the printers she was using.

Bertacchi says that the technology of the tightly-locked Form 4 ecosystem is both its benefit and biggest flaw, as third-party resins require purchasing Open Material Mode and dialing in, yourself, “the perfectly orchestrated chain of events” users experience when printing with Formlabs materials.

From the guides and videos on the Formlabs website to the color, on-screen instructions on the Form 4 touchscreen, the ease of the Formlabs ecosystem is evident to Bertacchi. Unlike most printers she’s tested, the printer included what she needed to get started, except isopropyl alcohol (IPA). Even unpacking the printer was easy as it comes fully assembled. 

“The Formlabs Form 4 is a beautifully built machine with superior attention to detail,” says Bertacchi, noting the flip-top lid is easy to use and the non-stick surface that prevents the resin tank from getting stuck to the printer. 

Moving on to resin handling, Bertacchi highlights automated resin dispensing, easy resin tank storage, quick material changeovers, a resin mixer, debris detection, and RFID tags in both the resin cartridge and tank, eliminating the possibility of accidentally mixing materials. Additionally, the added sensors prevent mess when filling the resin tank, and in the case of print failures.

Additional callouts include: 

• Build Platform Flex, for easy removal of printed parts

• Form Wash automatic lid opening and automated wash basket lift

• Integrated camera for both still shots and time-lapse 

• PreForm software with presets for resin, support generation, model hollowing, and advanced settings editor 

• Dashboard to track print history and resin consumption

• Material clarity

Betacchi’s test prints exemplify that resolution is not the defining metric for print detail and quality. Rather, multiple stats and features affect final print quality. 

Ultimately, Bertacchi sees Form 4 as “a great tool for businesses who need perfect parts for production or prototyping, and don’t have time to waste on tinkering around with the printer.” And though the price tag pushes it out of the consumer market, “This kind of machine would also be an excellent tool for school and university programs where you want to spend time designing and producing parts. The helpful guides on the user interface and the constant reminders to follow procedures allow makers to concentrate on their design skills and less on their knowledge of chemistry.”

We shared a Form 4, Form Wash, Form Cure, and General Purpose Resins with Jay Rincher at 3DPrint.com to see what he thought. As someone new to resin 3D printing, he was a little nervous at first, but “found that the workflow is so simple and the slicer so intuitive, I doubt that there is anyone who couldn’t be trained to use one of these machines in about an hour.”

Rincher walks through the entire process of unboxing, setting up, printing, and post-processing. Unboxing and setup proved to be easy, with clear prompts from the printer touchscreen, but he ran into issues sourcing isopropyl alcohol for the Form Wash, which can hold up to 15 liters for the washing of large parts. 

While Rincher found PreForm to be intuitive, the biggest issue was with cups on his models, which he could not automatically vent via PreForm’s features. This aside, he says, “the printing process itself is painless. There really is no real learning curve to using this machine. It is as plug-and-play as they come and on-boarding employees unfamiliar with resin printing would be fairly simple.”

Rincher’s test prints included models, earrings, a fidget toy with working threads, and dental models. He found that components printed in multiples were identical and that the threads on the fidget toy worked in all the materials he tried.

We sent a Form 4 and resins to Adam Savage’s Tested team. In a 48-minute video, Norm Chan gives an extensive look at Form 4, including: 

• How 3D printing works on resin printers, including different curing systems

• The masked stereolithography (MSLA) technology of Form 4

• Setting up Form 4

• Comparing Form 4 to Form 3+

• A conversation with Formlabs Technical Program Manager Cole Durbin 

• A conversation with Formlabs Co-founder and CEO Max Lobovsky

• Experience printing hobby models on Form 4

• Review of Form 4

Chan breaks down SLA vs. MSLA technology before walking through the entire Form 4 setup process, explaining how each component works, and how it compares to Form 3+, as he sets up the printer. Chan’s experience with Form 3+ is evident, and will provide insights to existing Form 3+ users interested in the updates to the Form 4 technology and consumables.

Chan’s video goes beyond a traditional review, including footage of his visit to Formlabs HQ to dive into the technology of Form 4 with Technical Program Manager Cole Durbin. In an interview with Formlabs co-founder and CEO Max Lobovsky, the two discuss developing products in response to user feedback, including software and materials. 

After performing test prints, Chan dives into his experience and printer performance, saying, “First and foremost it’s about speed… The Form 4 is actually about three times faster… using grey resin to test at 100 microns.” Calling out the finer details on printed models, he notes incremental improvement seen via a macro lens and dimensional accuracy for parts that fit. 

While Chan is mostly focused on printing hobbyist parts, he says, “What I've learned over the years working with resin prints and working with 3D printing in general, iteration time, workflow time, the rate at which you can cycle a print really matters. And if you’re prototyping, if you're designing, you want to have a balance between how much time you have to spend in your modeling software and how much time you’re spending printing and iterating.” 

Ultimately, he says about Form 4, “It’s definitely not a printer made for printing tiny miniatures all day, It’s a printer made for printing engineering parts, your ceramic parts, your silicone parts, all the fancy and exotic materials that you can get in this ecosystem.”  

To dive into the details and hear the conversations, watch Chan’s entire Tested review of Form 4.

We sent two Form 4 printers to Andrew Shane Huang, a researcher who holds a PhD in electrical engineering from MIT, and creator of the blog bunnie : studios. Huang says, “I jumped on the chance to do a teardown of the printer; I’m grateful that I was able to do the same for the Form 1, Form 2, and Form 3 generations. In addition to learning a lot from the process of tearing down a single printer, I am also gaining a unique perspective on how a successful hardware startup matures into an established player in a cut-throat industry.”

In the extensive post, Huang starts by giving background on the SLA 3D printer market before moving onto explaining the evolution of Formlabs’ light processing engines with clear diagrams. On the light processing technology of Form 4, Huang says, “I’m definitely no expert in 3D printing technology – my primary exposure is through doing these teardowns – but from a first-principles perspective I can see many facial challenges around using LCDs as a light modulator for UV, such as reliability, uniformity, and build volume.”

Huang then takes readers through unboxing, setup, and the outwardly-visible features of Form 4 before diving inside. Huang says that, ”Formlabs is walking the walk by using their own printers to fabricate parts for their shipping products.” This includes, “the set of allen keys that come with the printer, hidden inside a nifty 3D printed holder” and a service plug. Huang adds, “Another minor detail I really enjoyed on the LCD panel is the 3D-printed retaining clip for the HDMI cable. I think this was probably made out of nylon on one of Formlabs’ own SLS printers.”

Then, the breakdown commences, with Huang diving into the printer, extensively detailing the hardware inside, including the LCD, light source assembly, drive electronics, and related components. Huang’s review includes both detailed photos and diagrams explaining how components work. For those looking for a technological deep dive other than one from Formlabs, Huang delivers. 

Huang ends with a few other features of note, saying, “I appreciated the new foam seal on the bottom of the case lid. [...] I have noticed that there is less smell from the printer as it’s running. For a small urban office like mine, the odor of the resin is a nuisance, so this quality of life improvement is appreciated.”

We are pleased by the thorough testing and comprehensive reviews of Form 4, of which these are just the beginning. If these reviews have piqued your interest, explore the Form 4 to learn more. To evaluate print quality for yourself, request a free sample part in the material of your choice.