Formlabs aims to make industrial 3D printing feel less like industrial 3D printing. It is worth noting that the company has been developing printers for over 10 years to bring the cost and speed of professional prototyping down. Fuse X1 from Formlabs is bringing that playbook to larger industrial systems, where cost, installation, and daily operation have traditionally kept the technology out of scope for smaller manufacturers as well as engineering teams.
The Fuse X1 from Formlabs for engineering teams, manufacturers, and product developers as well as 3D printing service bureaus is a selective laser sintering printer which can produce production-quality components in less than 24 hours. It starts at $84,999 and is available to order currently and is projected to begin shipping in Q4 2026.
That price gap is the whole point for CEO Max Lobovsky. Formlabs was founded in 2011 as a spin-out of MIT and has long sought to make 3D printing more affordable and accessible. The objective was always to simplify the process from idea to real thing, the CEO says.
The Fuse X1 from Formlabs is also a statement of vision by Formlabs of where it sees 3D printing going. The company helped popularize professional desktop 3D printing and has since branched out into automated systems, materials, dental applications, and industrial prototyping as well as production. It is well to be noted that Formlabs has been named one of the most innovative companies in manufacturing for 2024 by Fast Company.
At this point Formlabs is trying to extend the same logic into a larger, more expensive, and increasingly demanding part of manufacturing. The company, which has been profitable for over two years, says it has roughly 700 employees and generates more than $250 million in annual revenue. It also raised significant amounts of venture capital, including a $150 million Series E round led by SoftBank in 2021, which valued the company at $2 billion. Previous investors include New Enterprise Associates and Foundry as well as Autodesk.
Formlabs customers have printed over 500 million parts with Formlabs printers and materials. Past products like the Form 4 and the Automation Ecosystem were all about rendering 3D printing faster, more dependable, and more repeatable. Fuse X1 takes that push into big-format SLS.
The new machine is a black cabinet that appears more like anonymous factory equipment instead of a futuristic robot and has been under development for about three years. It was about $50 million in R&D and had over 50 people working on the project, confirmed chief product officer Dávid Lakatos.
It is a kind of equal parts hardware and software, as well as materials, and building it was never just about designing hardware.
Once the powder gets hot, then the real work begins. SLS uses a laser to heat powdered material till the particles fuse into rugged solid parts. The process, referred to as sintering, can go on to create strong, intricate objects. But it requires careful control of heat. If the temperature fluctuates, parts can fail or come out inconsistent. Fuse X1 has 13 different thermal zones and a system that Formlabs describes as Adaptive Thermal Control so as to keep things consistent across the build chamber. This allows users to fit more parts in each print run, says Formlabs.
The printer also features an AI-powered tracking system called Print Intelligence, which employs computer vision along with thermal imaging to examine each layer during a print. If it finds a problem, it may remove the affected component from later layers, thereby saving the remainder of the build instead of wasting the whole task.
Early use cases give a glimpse of the range Formlabs is chasing. Radio Flyer turned to Fuse X1 to accelerate development of its Flyer Loop cargo e-bike, shifting away from slower, multi-part prototyping processes. The printer has been used at the Gigafactory Nevada of Tesla for tooling, end-use parts, and production-line parts, such as small shims utilized in the manufacture of batteries. Autotiv Manufacturing, a New Hampshire service bureau, has turned to it as a cheaper alternative to higher-end industrial machines.
Interestingly, one of the more extreme examples is Ukraine. Lobovsky, who has Ukrainian parentage, traveled to Ukrainian territory in November 2025 and saw Formlabs printers being used by Skyfall, which happens to be one of Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturers. Formlabs had not been focusing on the country as a major market, but consumer demand has taken off due to the war, he says.
He adds that Ukraine went from 0% of their global sales to 6%, which is quite uncommonly big for a country that is like 0.2% of the global GDP. And that’s like 100% drone production.
Formlabs is additionally attempting to make that procedure easier for customers that do not want to purchase a printer at all. Its Form Now service enables customers to upload a file and purchase printed parts directly, with turnaround periods as quick as 48 hours in certain markets. That, Lobovsky says, is the end of the attempt made by the company to make physical production easier and faster. That last one is not a printer at all, he asserts.
The Fuse X1 from Formlabs will be a test of how far Formlabs can advance that idea in factories, support bureaus, and engineering labs. The pitch is simple – faster parts, cheaper, less setup hassle, and a shorter distance from digital layout to physical material.