Fuse X1 and „The Great Escape Forward”
Formlabs officially entered the industrial SLS market, triggering excitement among users, and horror among other manufacturers in the segment. And yet, I believe this latest launch is an escape...
Last week we witnessed the biggest product launch of the first half of 2026 in AM. Formlabs unveiled the Fuse X1, and it represents a breakthrough on several levels at once.
First, this is finally the company’s genuine entry into the industrial sector. For years, the Fuse 1 was marketed and sold as a desktop and low-cost machine, even though it had long been operating in an entirely different league. The X1 puts that pretense aside.
Second, we’re getting quite interesting technology at a price point that looks very attractive compared to the competition. That’s a rare combination in this segment.
Third - and this is where things get interesting - the X1 poses a serious threat to EOS, HP, and 3D Systems in their powder-bed polymer businesses. It reaches even further, challenging Chinese industrial manufacturers such as Farsoon and TPM3D by making their path into Western markets considerably more difficult. And for Sinterit, it’s simply a death sentence.
All of this sounds like the beginning of something great for Formlabs. At first glance, the future looks wonderful and bright.
And yet, I find it hard to be optimistic.
Because from the perspective of someone who has been watching this market for over thirteen years, the Fuse X1 launch looks less like a triumph and more like a great escape forward.
An escape from the growing pressure of FFF giga-farms that are already delivering, at scale, what SLS and MJF have been promising for a decade - and never fully achieved.
The machine is excellent.
The question is: what exactly is it running from?
What’s this Fuse all about?
Joris Peels has once again published a great analysis on 3DPrint.com that goes beyond the standard copy-and-paste press release. So instead of writing about the printer itself (I assume most of you already know everything there is to know about it), I’d encourage you to read Joris’ article.
I’ll also break down some of his most interesting observations, because they’re worth a closer look.
One of the more interesting observations is his argument that the X1’s low price will intensify competition in polymer PBF and should expand the market as a whole. It’s difficult to disagree. The Fuse X1 automatically puts significant pressure on EOS and even HP, while also making life more difficult for Farsoon, which is already handicapped in Western markets due to its Chinese origins.
Alongside the launch of the new printer, Formlabs also introduced its own manufacturing service. Peels sees this as a strong “try before you buy” model and recommends that everyone adopt something similar because it makes scaling easier for customers.
He does, however, add a caveat: Formlabs’ service competes directly with service bureaus, which may not be thrilled about the idea. His proposed solution is a partnership model where service providers operate Formlabs equipment while the service helps fill their excess capacity.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea for a 3D printer manufacturer and a terrible one for customers. Who, after buying the machines, will find themselves competing against their own supplier. But that’s just my opinion. I can only assume that it’s very tempting from a revenue perspective, and that certain people have decided it’s worth more than the criticism and complaints posted on social media and in comment sections.
Equally interesting is the fact that Formlabs officially disclosed its revenue for the first time. The company generated more than $250 million in revenue in 2025. That’s an impressive figure for a company of this type.
Peels interprets this transparency as a clear signal that an IPO may be on the horizon. And here’s the most unexpected twist: he suggests that the listing could take place in China.
Formlabs already manufactures its machines there and could potentially achieve a significantly higher valuation. If that happened, the implications for the global AM industry would be enormous.
Well, I’d say, we’ll see...
And then there’s the most important topic: materials.
Peels claims, that if the system is open to third-party materials and process parameters, Formlabs wins. If the ecosystem remains closed, it loses.
Delaying openness may preserve high short-term margins on powder sales, but it also creates opportunities for HP and emerging Chinese competitors. A closed ecosystem would also stifle advanced research because nobody could modify process parameters or integrate their own software.
That’s Peels’ view, and I recommend reading the full article.
My view is different and a bit pessimistic.
The biggest threat to Formlabs and the entire powder-bed industry is material cost.
Bigger than EOS and HP combined. Bigger even than the debate about open versus closed systems.
Because no matter how good a machine you build, how do you compete against a Chinese giga-farm operating 10,000 - 20,000 FFF printers and producing parts for RMB 0.2 per gram?
Will the best powder system lose to the FFF giga-farm?
For three decades, 3D printing has excelled at one-off parts and short production runs. Whenever production scales up, economics deteriorate dramatically.
This is described by the Second Market Law of Additive Manufacturing:
I’ve also written about this before as well in context of change of sentiment in AM production:
Today, that sounds almost heretical because it challenges a paradigm that the industry spent years building:
Rapid manufacturing = powder bed fusion.
which was reinforced by stereotype:
Desktop printers = cheap, low-volume junk.
The problem is that this stereotype has been dead for more than three years, and the old paradigm is beginning to crack.
Business owners are asking a simple question:
What’s the better investment?
one SLS machine - or one hundred Chinese FFF printers?
one build chamber with stacked parts - or one hundred build plates with no stacking required?
Young entrepreneurs entering additive manufacturing often don’t even consider SLS or MJF. To them, these technologies seem as distant and prohibitively expensive as anything else outside their budget.
They simply buy FFF.
If 3D printing is to make sense in serial production, low material cost is critical. Without it, scaling is impossible.
The machines themselves must also become cheaper.
China understands this, and prices across the ecosystem continue to fall.
The dominant business model is based on economies of scale: margins become razor-thin, but volume grows to levels that generate revenues and profits beyond the reach of traditional industrial solution providers.
That’s how you end up with quotations measured in tenths of a RMB per gram of processed material - something that appears completely absurd from the perspective of a Western AM company.
The Czech Guy can cry a river that all of this is unfair and driven by government subsidies, but regardless of whether he’s right or wrong, all he can really do is wipe the tears with a tissue bought on TEMU.
Either way, this is where things become uncomfortable for Formlabs.
The company started losing ground to Chinese desktop competitors already during the Fuse 1 era and, more recently, in the resin segment as well.
Where certification matters: dental, medical, regulated industries, where both process and material require approval, or where specialized materials are needed, such as jewelry casting and investment casting applications, Formlabs remains strong.
But in mainstream industrial production, both SLS and resin have increasingly lost ground to FFF farms: cheaper, easier to scale, and more frequently “good enough” in terms of quality.
That’s why I interpret the Fuse X1 as an escape forward into more specialized and advanced industrial applications.
In sectors where Chinese desktop FFF systems cannot easily enter due to regulatory, procedural, or process-related barriers - defense being an obvious example - the Fuse X1 will be highly competitive.
But mass adoption? That’s a different story.
The only real solution
There is only one solution, and it isn’t easy:
Keep reducing machine and material costs.
Everyone understands that SLS will never achieve cost parity with FFF, and powdered PA will never cost the same as PA filament (which itself can often be replaced by ordinary PETG as „good enough”).
But the difference between paying €100-150 per kilogram for PA powder and paying 30-40% of that amount for filament becomes enormous when production scales.
The conclusion is simple, and uncomfortable.
In the long run, Formlabs has no choice but to move further into industrial manufacturing because the desktop segment has already been largely captured by Chinese manufacturers.
The Fuse X1 is a good move.
Given the rules of this game, it’s a very good move.
But it remains an escape.
The real battle for high-volume manufacturing is already being fought on a different front.