--- title: Formlabs Studio 1 $699 Resin Printer | daily.dev description: Formlabs is selling the Form Studio 1, a resin 3D printer aimed at hobbyists, starting at $699. It prints most parts in under two hours with mess-free resin... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/formlabs-studio-1-699-resin-printer-qjgpzxt6u twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Formlabs Studio 1 $699 Resin Printer | daily.dev og:description: Formlabs is selling the Form Studio 1, a resin 3D printer aimed at hobbyists, starting at $699. It prints most parts in under two hours with mess-free resin... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/formlabs-studio-1-699-resin-printer-qjgpzxt6u og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/qJgPzxT6u.png og:image:alt: Formlabs Studio 1 $699 Resin Printer og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Formlabs Studio 1 $699 Resin Printer **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Formlabs is selling the Form Studio 1, a resin 3D printer aimed at hobbyists, starting at $699. It prints most parts in under two hours with mess-free resin handling and an enclosed print chamber. The print engine reaches up to 130 mm/hour, and the backlight unit has a 35 µm pixel size. It supports Formlabs materials or third-party resins via Open Material Mode. Reliability testing is still in progress but is expected to match the Form 4's 98.7% figure. An optional VOC Extractor is available, and the printer is UL GREENGUARD Gold certified when used with it and Alpha Resins. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 131 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-29). **TL;DR:** Discussion is dominated by skepticism toward Formlabs' proprietary consumables and upselling (extra tanks, wash/cure stations), alongside a broader debate about whether resin printing is worth the mess, toxicity, and cost for hobbyists versus sticking with FDM. **Sentiment:** 20% positive · 25% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Some note the $699 price is a genuine breakthrough for mainstream resin printing. - Open Material Mode lets users run third-party resins out of the box, which some see as a positive step. - The new Alpha resins' UL GREENGUARD Gold certification and lower-irritant formulation are seen as a real safety improvement over typical resins. - Print speed (full volume in under two hours) is viewed as a major practical advantage over FDM for certain use cases. - Resin remains valued for fine detail work like miniatures and jewelry where FDM can't compete. **The pushback** - The required $79 proprietary tank for engineering resins and Open Material Mode is seen as an anti-consumer upsell. - Comparisons to inkjet printers' cheap-hardware/expensive-consumables model, criticizing the cost-per-print of Formlabs tanks versus generic FEP sheets. - Concerns about toxicity, carcinogenic resin exposure, and the mess of washing/curing uncured resin. - Several argue FDM printers are easier, cheaper, and sufficient for most hobbyists, making resin printers not worth it for a first printer. - Lack of any direct comparison to competing resin printers (Elegoo, Anycubic, etc.) despite heavy influencer coverage. - Skepticism about whether this is more marketing hype than a meaningfully improved product. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Heavy focus on proprietary tank costs, upselling accessories, and the hassle/toxicity of resin printing, with FDM repeatedly recommended as the simpler alternative for most people. **Hottest debate:** Whether the extra $79 proprietary resin tank (needed for engineering resins and Open Material Mode) represents reasonable business practice or anti-consumer lock-in. **Open questions** - How does this printer actually compare in specs, reliability, and value to existing budget resin printers from Elegoo, Anycubic, and similar brands? - What is the real long-term cost per print once tank replacement, resin, and wash/cure consumables are factored in? - How consistent and low-failure is the printing experience in practice, outside of sponsored reviews? **Highlights** > Formlabs uses a proprietary resin cartridge... it's the paper printers situation all over again, the printers themselves are not that expensive but the disposable ink costs an arm and a leg. Don't go with Formlabs, support any of the open-platform alternatives. And also, be aware that these printers require some serious development work (you need solvent to wash away uncured resin (if you ask me, this basically necessitates a chemical hood... Formlabs will happily upsell the "Form Wash" for this for another 699). If uncured resin falls on your floor (which has happened to me a little too many times), boy is it a horror cleaning it up even if you have industrial grade solvents; FDM printers are easier and their "ink" is much, much less expensive by comparison. > — [pen2l on hackernews · 12 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281279) > The $79 addon is also needed to use all of Formlabs existing engineering grade resins, which are more expensive than the Alpha resins. The engineering grade Tough 1500 is already validated on the Studio 1, and requires the $79 tank, plus is a major selling point of this printer. There no reason for FormLabs to limit supply of the $79 tanks, it would also limit their ability to sell their more expensive resins to Studio 1 customers, and also removes a clear pathway to get people to upgrade to their more expensive machines, capable of working with their even more complex, and expensive, engineering resins. > — [avianlyric on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282229) > $79 per consumable tank, yes, which is rated for 75000 layers (according to [0]) which is "approximately 190 prints with an average height of 39 mm at a layer height of 100 µm" - not that long if you're printing regularly. In contrast, I can get 6 FEP sheets for my Mars 2 Pro for $21 which don't appear to have any official lifetimes but generic internet advice says "40-50 prints" on the low side. That'd be 240 prints for $21 compared with 190 prints for $79. [0] https://www.igo3d.com/en/formlabs-form-studio-1-resin-tank-p... > — [zimpenfish on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50286821) > This thing is all over YouTube, they really backed up the truck to the Influencer Club and started handing out the goods. Lots of people I like and respect have showcased it, like Applied Science, Jeff Geerling, among others. But although there's a lot of discussion about how large a discount this is from FormLab's 8 billion dollar printers, there is absolutely NO comparison that I can find to other brands! OK, it's a cheaper Bentley - but how does it compare to the Toyota or Honda that we can get down the street? There are loads of options with --on paper-- better specs for half this price or less. > — [rfrey on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284316) > "A tad messy" really undersells it. You need a solid process to manage the (sticky, carcinogenic, smelly) liquid resin both as an input and waste product, along with having to dispose of (carcinogenic, smelly, flammable) cleaning solvent. The problem isn't so much the process of a successful print as how you deal with a failed one. At that point you've got a vat full of resin with some solid parts stuck to the bottom, so you need to filter and clean the damn thing which means taking it out of whatever containment you've got. And that step you can't use the usual solvent for because it damages the sheet. But you'll have ample time to figure all this out because you'll get loads of failed prints as you figure out how slicing and supporting for resin works: it's different to FDM, some knowledge carries over but not that much. Focusing on the 10-30 minute curing process ignores the part prep step: SLA is much more reliant on supports than FDM in general, so there will be either rough surfaces hopefully out of sight, or (if it's not a model that orients well) scraping/sanding/filling. And you want to do support separation and get that as clean as possible before curing, while the resin is still a bit soft, but that means it's only partially cured and you need to be PPE'd up. When I'm doing anything with my resin printer I don't even go into the room without a breathing filter, don't touch anything without gloves. It really is a very different experience to FDM. > — [regularfry on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50286819) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50281044) · 185 points · 131 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Formlabs dropped the Raspberry Pi on the way to a $699 SLA printer](https://daily.dev/posts/formlabs-dropped-the-raspberry-pi-on-the-way-to-a-699-sla-printer-lnc4oz21o) · Jeff Geerling · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Giving Resin 3D Printers Another Shot After Six Years](https://daily.dev/posts/giving-resin-3d-printers-another-shot-after-six-years-txalqynx5) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [LightMake L4 3D printer features four independent heads for simultaneous or multi-color printing \(Crowdfunding\)](https://daily.dev/posts/lightmake-l4-3d-printer-features-four-independent-heads-for-simultaneous-or-multi-color-printing-cr-qfis72vhq) · CNX Software · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Freeform raises $67M Series B to scale up laser AI manufacturing](https://daily.dev/posts/freeform-raises-67m-series-b-to-scale-up-laser-ai-manufacturing-p4sobp00f) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/formlabs-studio-1-699-resin-printer-qjgpzxt6u) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Formlabs Studio 1 $699 Resin Printer","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/formlabs-studio-1-699-resin-printer-qjgpzxt6u","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/formlabs-studio-1-699-resin-printer-qjgpzxt6u"},"datePublished":"2026-10-28T22:23:09.726Z","dateModified":"2026-10-29T10:20:56.195Z","description":"Formlabs is selling the Form Studio 1, a resin 3D printer aimed at hobbyists, starting at $699. 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