The Formlabs Form 4 is the latest professional-grade resin 3D printer from the Massachusetts-based manufacturer. Starting at $3,499, it's far above the budget of most hobbyists, and the tested configuration with the Form Wash and Form Cure stations pushes the total price to nearly $7,000. But you get a lot for the money: This package delivers an end-to-end workflow solution designed to move from CAD model to finished, production-ready part with minimal tinkering. The Form 4 is best suited for professionals, engineers, and entrepreneurs who value speed, reliability, and accuracy. Hobbyists, especially those who don't want to be locked into the proprietary and pricey Formlabs resin system, should instead look to the much cheaper (but less accurate) Anycubic Photon Mono M7 Max, our Editors' Choice pick for resin 3D printers.

Features and Setup: It's Not a Printer, It's an Ecosystem

I first came across Formlabs as a young engineer looking for ways to speed up my company's fabrication process. Back then, our shop was filled with machinists cutting billets of aluminum on CNC and milling machines, slowly carving CAD drawings into finished parts. Then I read about a small company that had built a resin printer capable of producing engineering-grade components in hours, strong enough that the US Army was mounting them directly onto tanks. I begged my boss to buy one, only to be told it was too expensive—a decision wrapped in excuses and half-hearted listening.

That machine was the Formlabs Form 1, a printer that turned heads and set imaginations racing with the possibilities of UV-cured resin and lasers. My company never adopted it, and eventually was sold off, unable to compete with its more nimble competitors. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if things might have turned out differently had it taken a chance on that first Formlabs machine.

Now, nearly 20 years later, the Form 4 has the same characteristic orange glow and iconic branding of the Form 1, but it's laden with 2025 technology. There are a lot of improvements over the last-generation Form 3+, not to mention the Form 1. It’s a whole new machine in many respects. In fact, most prospective Form 4 owners should really consider the Form 4 (shown below at center) as just one component in an ecosystem that also includes the curing station (shown at left) and washing station.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

When you get a shipment from Formlabs, you get a shipment. Aside from the three boxes for the printer, the Form Cure curing station, and the Form Wash wash station, the shipment included many other boxes containing the resin, the individual resin trays and wipers, and a finishing kit with sanders and Dremel grinders. My wife raised an eyebrow at me with increasing consternation at the arrival of the rapidly rising cardboard skyline in our foyer. It’s a lot of boxes. Be sure to tip your UPS driver.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

As I do for most 3D printers I test, I wanted to see how quickly I could set up the Form 4 and print the first object—in this case, a GPS holder for my Toyota Land Cruiser. I decided to use transparent resin, which I thought would look cool on the dashboard, and got started.

I quickly discovered that the Form 4 is the fastest, simplest resin printer from box to print that I’ve ever used. It has fully automated leveling and calibration—simply snap in the resin cartridge and build platform, then start printing. At no point in the process are you likely to make a mistake. I put the resin cartridge in the back, which slides in and exposes a valve on the bottom of the canister. You can see through a viewfinder which resin you’re using for fast visual confirmation. Cartridges automatically dispense resin into the tank, with RFID chips tracking resin type, volume, and expiration date—no manual pouring, less mess.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I chose the 0.1mm layer option in the PreForm slicer software, and a few hours later, I was holding this in my hands:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

My Garmin InReach Mini slid perfectly into the sleeve of the print. I was a little surprised at how well it fit – with prints like these using other resin printers (including the M7 Max), I often need to scale up parts that I had downloaded to work in the real world or fine-tune for the resin I’m using.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I was honestly a little excited when this first print came out. I walked (really quickly) out to the truck and installed it. I didn’t polish the resin or apply any type of secondary clear coats, but I could see through the walls easily enough to see every detail of the unit on the inside. And I couldn't get over how quickly it finished printing, either. Thanks to Formlabs’ new Low Force Display (LFD) light engine, the Form 4 achieves speeds up to 3.94 inches (100 mm) per hour, making it one of the fastest resin printers available in its class.

One of the many boxes I received contained examples of every type of resin Formlabs supplies for its printers. I was overwhelmed by the number of resins the company makes (in the US, no less) for all manner of applications. Even more remarkable is that a printer setting exists for each of these resins, pre-tuned to produce high-quality prints.

I was especially looking forward to using the specialty Grey Resin and Tough Resin, and set about on my printing journey.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I started small (remembering that this printer has a 4K LCD), printing a tiny rook first and then a larger standard-size rook.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Up close, the tiny rook (I’d forgotten to scale it) was as precise as you’d expect, with no errors in the print.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Inside the larger rook, the staircase and detailed “DNA” chain printed perfectly with this Tough resin.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then printed the Ameralabs test print we use for all resin printers (a model of a city), with good (but not great) results. Some of the details of this print actually show up more prominently on consumer-grade units like the M7 Max.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Up close, I saw the smallest of the protrusions had issues with their exposures, compared with the same print made on the Proton M7 Max (shown at right in the photo below).

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I wondered how these missing details would translate to figurine printing, something this machine admittedly isn't designed for. As it turned out, my retired neighbor, who is an avid baker, was making a theme cake for her grandson’s birthday on one of the days I was testing the Form 4. She texted me and wanted to know if I could make her a wizard, and a dragon to go along with the castle cake she had made. (I'm not kidding about the coincidental timing of all this.) I shot out the prints, and the results were actually much better than the Ameralabs output. I couldn’t fault the Form 4 with these real-world figurines:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I printed these at the 0.1mm level, with automatically generated supports from the PreForm software. They finished printing in a few hours. The Form 4 offers 50-micrometer XY resolution with excellent edge sharpness and smooth surface finishes, which makes it ideal for dental and prototyping applications.

Software: An Intuitive Slicer

I find the Formlabs PreForm slicing software to be the most intuitive slicer I’ve ever used. It provides powerful automation (automatic orientation, support generation, fleet management, and remote monitoring), which makes it easy for you to get a print loaded and sent to the printer (the Form 4 has Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and USB connectivity), confident that the part is oriented and supported correctly.

It's easier and simpler, in fact, than the PrusaSlicer, which I think is almost too simple. Because Formlabs pre-tunes the slicer with its selection of resins, you don't have many settings to tweak. You simply choose the layer height you want (0.1mm, 0.050mm, or 0.025mm, in most cases). You can then choose the one-click option in the upper left corner, and the slicer will automatically position and support your model, which I found to be the way I would have manually positioned and supported myself most of the time.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Print Quality: Impressive Detail

After I printed the cake decorations, I set about making the rest of our standard test prints. The output continued to impress, as shown by this Geometry Detail Test from Thingiverse:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then ran an exposure test print and found no loss in detail from the largest to the smallest towers and holes in the print. While detail in the smallest of features was not the crispest, everything was legible and clear:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Next, I ran the Cones of Calibration print with the same slicer settings, which exposed some exposure issues relative to printers like the Photon M7 Max. In this print, the cones on the "Success" side of the print should all be touching, top and bottom. You can see the difference compared with the M7 Max's print (shown at bottom in the photo below).

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then set up the Siraya Tech test print (shown at right in the photo below), and once again found that while satisfactory, it was still not as concise as I would expect from printers with higher-resolution LCDs—the Photon M7 Max, whose identical print is also shown below, has a 7K LCD. But above the tiniest level, everything printed fine. The bridge was fine, and the measured dimensions were literally spot-on from the 0.15 to the 2.0 blocks. But as you can see, in the lattice block, things were a little “drunk:”

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Other prints with less-wispy features produced dimensionally accurate output, like the 3D Benchy. The top tower is supposed to be 7mm, and measured out to 6.94 millimeters. The overall height is supposed to be 48mm, and measured out to 48.19mm.

Finally, I ran our screw thread test, measuring the Formlabs 4's ability to accurately print machine threads for screws ranging from 4mm to 10mm. Using an Allen key, I was able (with light back tension) to screw each of the fasteners into the bottom of their respective holes without undue force or pressure.

It is worth noting that at this point in testing, I hadn’t had one failed print. All of the samples came out without the usual anxiety I have with other resin machines. There's often a 30-minute window where I wonder if I’m going to have to scrape around in the goo to fish out a failed print with not-quite-tuned exposure settings or maybe a bad batch of resin to blame. My experience with the Form 4, however, was completely different. Just like you expect your refrigerator to be cold when you open it, or your stove to boil your water, prints come out of the Form 4 like clockwork. The light engine, in conjunction with the innovative release film (which allows air to come under the film as it peels away, in turn "bubbling" below the layer and peeling away easily), is largely responsible for this hassle-free printing experience.

Real-World Use Case: Making a Windshield With Clear Resin

Many of our test prints don't showcase the commercial applications to which the Form 4 is suited, so I cobbled together a few more advanced tests. I wanted to reverse-engineer an auxiliary wind deflector for my Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Pro adventure motorcycle. I put myself in the shoes of someone who could theoretically go into business selling aftermarket automotive and motorcycle parts. I was particularly annoyed with the stock windshield of my bike, and I theorized that I could scan the deflectors, reverse-engineer them, modify them using CAD software (in my case, Fusion 360), and then print marketable transparent replacements.

I started by scanning the part with a Creality Otter NIR 3D scanner and saved the file to my laptop. I also scanned the support bracket. I got a very high-resolution point cloud to work with, converting it to a mesh that I would print for accuracy testing.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then loaded the Clear V5 Resin ($79 per liter) into the Form 4 and set about printing the two pieces for a fit test on my bike. Formlabs sent me a separate resin tray ($99) and wiper/mixer ($25) for each of the resins to prevent accidental mixing of any two resins due to improper cleaning of the tray. Resin tanks, mixers, and even the glass optical window for the light processing unit need periodic maintenance and replacement in some cases, adding to total cost of ownership. The costs start to add up the more resins you print with.

It was at this point in my testing that I truly appreciated who this printer is for: prosumers and professionals who can stomach the costs. Still, the costs are worth it: Every part I put in the printer from this point forward was dimensionally accurate to incredible standards, including the bracket I had scanned (the black one in the photo below), which lined up exactly with the windscreen print.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The process was also something I was falling in love with. The printer lets you know with a very happy noise that your print is ready, raising the part upwards with the print bed for you to easily detach and remove from the printer. Normally, I’d be reaching for a scraper to wedge between the print surface and my part to claw away at a corner that I could get my scraper underneath. Not with the Form 4: My review unit has the optional Flex Build Platform ($250), which has side handles you squeeze that cause the print to pop off. It's worth the additional cost.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

As I mentioned above, the Form 4’s build volume isn't the largest. At 1.39 gallons (5.25 liters), it’s generous but much smaller than large-format printers like the Photon M7 Max (3.88 gallons). (For larger prints, Formlabs offers the Form 4L, starting at $9,999.)

Where should you squeeze your build plate? Over the optional Formlabs washing station:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The station has arms on which you can rest the build plate above a mesh basket. Pop your part from the plate into your isopropyl below. You'll appreciate the slots for adjusting the height of the build plate above the solution so the build plate can be cleaned without submerging the entire assembly.

You can choose the amount of time you want the solution to circulate, prompting the basket and the build plate to drop—covered—into the alcohol for the appropriate amount of time. No fumes escape during this process. When the basket rises again, a door rises from below and seals the top from the alcohol a second time. Resin need never touch your fingers.

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The station looks and feels industrial and complements the look of the Form 4 when it's sitting next to it:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

It’s a very vigorous wash. I never once had a pocket or face that still felt slick from unwashed resin.

Once the part is washed, you bring it to the curing station, which glows orange when it is bringing the parts to 140 degrees F (60 degrees C) prior to the UV cycle.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The plate circulates the part around the three UV light strips, at the top, bottom, and side walls of the unit.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Per the instructions on the Formlabs website, I lightly wet-sanded the surface of the deflector. I started at 800 grit, working my way up with the buffing wheel to 1,000-, 2,000-, and then 3,000-grit polishing pads. I then cleaned the surface off with Invisible Glass spray cleaner and added a 3M protective clear coat from the included wipes in my headlight restoration kit. The results were phenomenal:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

When I test-mounted the parts, I sent my friend a photo showing a printed page behind the part to demonstrate the clarity of the finished piece:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then asked my friend, who owns the same bike, if he would pay $200 for the part, to which he immediately texted back, “How quickly can you make me a set ???” These parts were dimensionally perfect. They fit on the motorcycle perfectly. They printed without issue, washed off completely clean, and cured without any guesswork.

So if you're planning on using the Form 4 for this type of manufacturing, here's how the numbers might shake out: You could print three sets of deflectors a day, plus one overnight, which is 28 sets per week. You could sell them for $200 each (based on similarly priced products). Each 1-liter bottle of Clear Resin V5 costs $79, and you could print four deflectors per bottle, for a cost of $20 per deflector. I estimate a total resin cost of $50 per set, for a net profit somewhere between $125 and $150 each. Selling 50 sets in the first manufacturing round would cover the cost of the entire Formlabs 4 system.

If I were to make the part again, I would use a clear acrylic gloss spray, as opposed to the 3M clear coat wipe, which was hard to get a smooth, consistent finish with. I would use the circular sandpaper pads with my drill every time, from 800-grit to 3,000-grit, as I wet-sanded. The Clear Resin V5 was crystal clear at that stage, and I know I could have done a better job.

Real-World Use Case: Constructing an Air Intake With Tough Resin

My next engineering project involved making a pre-filter assembly for the same motorcycle. Right now, to change the air filter on these bikes, you need to take some 20 parts off the motorcycle to expose it. This isn't good for owners who are driving on consistently dusty gravel roads, but it's very good if you’re an authorized shop owner who charges $300 for changing out the filters. I wanted to know if I could use the Form 4 to make production-quality parts that look and feel injection-molded (i.e., without FDM printer lines) so I could theoretically charge a premium for my kits to make up for the high materials costs.

Formlabs sells multiple versions of tough resin at $149 to $199 per liter, significantly more than generic resins available for open machines. However, it’s worth noting that none of the Formlabs resins have the volatile chemicals that the less-expensive brands have. Budget resins are packed with volatile monomers and solvents that off-gas heavily and will have you running around with a respirator on as if you're in an apocalypse movie. All the resins I used were designed to be low-odor and low-VOC, and are made with ISO-certified processes. My wife really appreciated the fact that our house didn’t smell like Jesse Pinkman’s house from Breaking Bad when I was testing the printer. It also means that if you're using the Form 4 for manufacturing, the resin in the first batch will match the resin in the 100th batch.

I scanned the part and printed it, this time with the Formlabs Tough 2000 Resin. I printed this part at the 0.1mm fast setting to see if it was in the ballpark of viability, and again, I was just amazed at the quality:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I did a side-by-side comparison – and aside from my not-perfect scan job on the lower part (that was me learning how to use the scanner), I had a hard time discerning which piece was which at first:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I could easily pass this off as injection molded – especially if I reverse engineered it and cleaned it up in Fusion 360. I placed the part into the original clips, and it snapped into place. I was absolutely amazed at the dimensional accuracy of the Form 4 at this point, and my measurements confirmed it: I measured three times, each time getting 1.96mm for each intake rib as opposed to the 2mm measured on the original part:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

At this point, I was really beginning to understand that this system, while intended for and marketed to professionals—architects, medical professionals, dentists, and engineers—is actually great for budding entrepreneurs, too: people like me who have a garage, or workshop, or basement that they could put machines like this in and start a business overnight.

Real-World Use Case: Printing a Fishing Lure Mold With High-Temperature Resin

Another friend just purchased a tackle store on an island in the Outer Banks. He’s asked me multiple times for ideas he can use to increase his profits and help the store do better. I told him about videos I’d seen of people making their own soft plastic lures for saltwater fishing using expensive machined aluminum molds to pour the hot melted plastic into. He told me that he didn’t have the extra cash to do that starting out, but when and if he ever did, it sounded like a great idea.

To me, it also sounded like something the Form 4 could handle. We decided to use a simple "paddle tail" lure design that would be printed with Formlabs High Temperature resin to make our own molds. I designed a mold in Fusion 360 and sliced the file in PreForm at the 0.025mm resolution. Shortly after, I had the first half of the mold:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then set about washing them for 20 minutes to make sure I got every last drop of resin off the mold before curing to get a smooth surface finish on the lures:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I cured them in the curing station for 30 minutes each:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then set to work assembling everything I'd need: the molds, a form-releasing agent that I'd use to coat the inside with, some chopped-up plastic for this purpose, a Pyrex cup to melt the plastic in the microwave with, and an injector I would use to pump the melted plastic into the mold with:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then clamped the mold together, ensuring there were no gaps anywhere and the plates were perfectly seated:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I injected the molds with the melted plastic and watched the high-temperature resin receive the plastic through the translucent faces. I stopped pressing when I saw the small bleeder holes and tracks (which I had engineered into the molds) filling up with excess plastic and squirting back into the top of the mold:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

After about 30 minutes, I opened the clamps and released the lures:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Each of the test lures was perfect on its face—completely smooth—and released easily from the molds. I sent this photo to my friend, and he almost didn’t believe that I had made it instead of buying it from a retailer:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The Formlabs High Temp V2 resin costs $199 per liter, and I had used approximately $100 worth of it to make the mold. My friend would only have to sell five sets of the lures to pay for that first mold, and everything else would just be the cost of the plastic, time, and electricity to power the microwave.

Open Material Mode: Stepping Outside the Ecosystem

Open Material Mode is an option available to all Form 4 users who wish to work outside the Formlabs resin ecosystem. It’s currently listed at an eye-opening $2,499. Buying it lets you use third-party resins and opens up the slicer software to more options regarding exposure times and other parameters that are commonly available in consumer-grade SLA printers.

To test Open Material Mode, I decided to work with a common consumer-grade resin and print a tricky black model: an adapter bracket for my Starlink Mini mount. Black absorbs light the least, and so errors with prints sticking to the bed or dimensional accuracy are more common, in my experience.

To activate Open Material Mode, you purchase a code via the Formlabs website and enter it in the printer's 7-inch touch-screen control panel. (Tap General > Advanced capabilities > Activate new capability.) In addition to removing the restriction of using only Formlabs resin, the mode also disables resin tracking, so you have to keep track of how much resin is in the tray before and during your print.

I worked with an advisor at Formlabs, who told me that I could create a new printer profile in the PreForm software and tell the Form 4 which material in the existing lineup the resin was most akin to to start with—in this case, Formlabs Black Resin.

(Credit: Formlabs)

The model I selected is a tight-tolerance part, and I printed it with four different materials on three different printers to comparatively judge how well the Form 4 can handle third-party resin: I printed it with PETG on the Prusa Core One, gray resin on the Photon M7 Max, Tough 1500 resin from Formlabs on the Form 4, and third-party black resin also on the Form 4.

I loaded the file and applied some best practices I learned while watching Formlabs training videos, making sure to keep all surfaces close to a 30-to-45-degree angle.

(Credit: Formlabs)

The result from Tough 15000 Resin was completely dimensionally accurate, compared with the print from the M7 Max, which was deformed on one side—an edge critical to the functional fit of the part into the satellite dish. You can clearly see the straight edge versus the warped edge from the M7 Max on this solid print:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The M7 Max was really showing its limitations in this higher-level test. When I went to put the part into the receiver of the Starlink Mini, I had no joy. The clips would not fall into place. But the Form 4 print using Formlabs resin had no problems whatsoever.

I then output the part using the third-party black resin in Open Material Mode, fully expecting to see the same warped edges and mismatched dimensions. To my surprise, it came out perfect:

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I measured the tabs that fall into place to lock the adapter into the dish, watching for 3mm. My average measurement was 2.94mm. (I printed the model three times.)

I lined up all four prints for a final photo (shown below). From left: Core One, Photo M7 Max, Form 4 (third-party black), Form 4 (Tough Resin 1500).

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

This test suggests that the Form 4 can work wonders even without using the proprietary resin designed for it. It also dismisses the idea that you could buy five other resin printers for the same price as the Form 4. If you did, you'd simply have five printers that couldn’t make a professional-grade, ready-to-ship part with the dimensional accuracy and consistency the Form 4 can produce using the exact same resin.