Field Notes 01 — A reader writes from Mexico City
A reader writes from
Mexico City.
An operator of a Fuse 1, in a smaller shop than ours, found our original review and wrote in with two practical workarounds. One: Micronics Kickstarter backers can claim the Open Material License for free. Two: Zongheng 3D in China sells Nylon 12 at $35/kg in 20 kg MOQ. Both verified against the Formlabs community forum. Both useful to anyone running a Fuse.
A reader's letter is not a press release. It is a field report.
In May 2026, an operator of a Fuse 1 in Mexico City wrote in after reading Expediente 01. They were experiencing similar issues. They had also, separately, found two practical workarounds that materially reduce the recurring cost of running a Fuse SLS machine. They offered to share both. With their permission, we publish the substance of the letter here, anonymised, with the underlying facts verified against the Formlabs community forum and against the supplier's public corporate identity.
The letter is short. The two workarounds it contains are the kind of operational tactical knowledge that, in industries with healthy ecosystems, would be in the vendor documentation. In this case it is not. It lives in the heads of operators who have figured it out by reading the small print of the manufacturer's own promises, by participating in the manufacturer's own community forum, and by sourcing from suppliers the manufacturer does not officially endorse.
This is the value of the field-notes format. We will publish more of these as readers write. The format is correspondence-with-commentary, not investigation. The standard for inclusion is: the workaround is real, the cost saving is material, and the underlying claim is verifiable against a public source we can cite.
The letter, paraphrased.
Reader and company anonymised. Direct contact details for the powder supplier removed. Public-record references preserved.
"I've just found your page related to the Fuse 1 problems. We are also a small — much smaller — company located in Mexico City, and have experienced similar issues."
"We recently found out that Chinese powder from Zongheng 3D works perfectly on the Fuse. Since you mentioned you are a backer from the Kickstarter from Micronics as well, every backer is eligible to have an OMM license for the Fuse. This will help you a lot. We requested it last year and we are now using Chinese powder priced at $35 USD per kg with MOQ of 20 kg."
"If you ever need anything, please let me know. We produce parts on a daily basis and luckily for now our machine has been working great. The 'industrial' segment is tricky. I know first hand people who own Stratasys machines that were defective also and unrepairable."
The two operational tips are independent of each other. The OML loophole reduces the legal cost of using third-party powder. The Zongheng 3D supplier reduces the per-kilogram price of the powder itself. Together they materially change the cost-per-part economics of running a Fuse 1 or Fuse 1+ for any operator who qualifies as a Micronics Kickstarter backer. We treat each one separately below.
If you backed Micronics on Kickstarter, the Open Material License is free.
Verified against the public forum thread. Confirmed by at least one operator who has received the license.
The history is documented in Expediente 02 and in the Wayback Machine. On 11 July 2024 Formlabs published a blog post announcing the Micronics acquisition. The post explicitly committed three things to Micron backers: a full refund, a $1,000 credit toward any current or future Formlabs printer, and a free Open Materials License. The Wayback Machine snapshot of that day's post is preserved at web.archive.org.
By late 2024 the live version of the same Formlabs blog post had been quietly edited to add the line "the Formlabs credit period has now ended" and to narrow the OML scope. The story of operators trying to redeem their promised compensation is documented in the Formlabs community forum thread forum.formlabs.com/t/40715, started by the user facfox on 26 November 2024 with the title "Formlabs' breach of promised Open Material License and $1000 credit to Micronics Kickstarter Backer."
What the Mexico City operator's letter adds, and what the forum thread independently confirms, is that the OML has been issued to at least some Micronics backers who pursued the form. On 27 December 2024, the same user facfox posted an update:
The condition that turns the promise into reality is paperwork and persistence: submit the Micronics-backer compensation form on the Formlabs blog post, follow up via support if no response within thirty to sixty days, and reference the public forum thread if the request is being ignored. The OML is a digital license issued per printer. Once issued, it is permanent.
The economic value of the loophole, for a Fuse owner who happens to be a Micronics backer, is approximately the value of the OML fee a non-backer would pay. The community-forum reported figure is roughly €12,000 (Kostbone, November 2024). That is the saving. Once unlocked, the Fuse 1/1+ is free to print with any 1064 nm-compatible powder.
Step 1. Locate your original Kickstarter pledge confirmation email.
Step 2. Submit the compensation form linked on the Formlabs blog post about the Micronics acquisition. If you cannot find the live form, link to the Wayback Machine snapshot of the original promise as evidence of the commitment.
Step 3. If you do not receive a response within sixty days, escalate via the Formlabs Support contact channel referencing forum thread 40715.
Step 4. Once the OML is issued, it activates on your specific printer serial number and is permanent.
Once the OML is in place, the powder market reopens.
Zongheng Additive Intelligent Technology (Zhuhai). Nylon 12. $35 USD/kg. 20 kg minimum order.
The Mexico City operator reports using Nylon 12 from Zongheng 3D — legal corporate name Zongheng Additive Intelligent Technology (Zhuhai) Co., Ltd. — at a price of $35 USD per kilogram with a minimum order quantity of 20 kg. That is a $700 floor for a starter order, against $1,980 for the same 20 kg of Formlabs-branded Nylon 12 at the published $99/kg rate.
The per-kilogram differential is roughly $64. Over the operating life of a Fuse machine running production duty cycles, that differential is the figure that dominates the unit-economics calculation. A shop running 100 kg of powder per year saves approximately $6,400 annually. A shop running 500 kg per year saves $32,000 annually. Both numbers are larger, every year, than the original printer's depreciation expense.
The operator who wrote in confirms the powder "works perfectly on the Fuse." That is one operator's report on their specific build conditions. We have not yet validated the powder on the Tactic-operated Fuse, but we will, and we will update this Field Notes entry with our own particle-size distribution data, refresh-rate behaviour, and surface-finish notes once a build cycle is completed.
What this does to the Fuse 1+ stack economics
Re-running the cost-per-part model from Expediente 02 with these two workarounds in place changes the calculus substantially for a Fuse operator who qualifies for the OML loophole:
| Scenario | Branded Formlabs PA12 | Zongheng 3D PA12 with OML | Annual saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 kg/year · standard bag pricing ($999/10 kg = $99.90/kg) | $24,975 | $8,750 | $16,225 |
| 250 kg/year · actual operator-reported bulk discount (30% off at 250 kg = $69.93/kg) | $17,483 | $8,750 | $8,733 |
| 250 kg/year · Formlabs marketed "as low as $45/kg" tier | $11,250 | $8,750 | $2,500 |
| Plus OML fee amortisation (one-time) | n/a | $0 for Micronics backers | ~€12,000 avoided one-time |
Formlabs publishes "as low as $45/kg" on its Nylon 12 Powder page. An operator running production at 250 kg/year reports the actual achievable discount tops out at 30% — or $69.93/kg — not $45/kg. The $45/kg figure presumably applies at higher commit volumes Formlabs does not publicly disclose. The buyer modelling unit economics from the marketing page should assume the actual operator-reported figure, not the marketing floor.
Three readings of the table above. One: at Formlabs' standard $999/10 kg bag the Zongheng-plus-OML route saves approximately $16,225 per year. Two: at the actual 30% bulk discount an operator can negotiate at 250 kg/year, the saving narrows to $8,733 per year — still material, still meaningful. Three: at Formlabs' marketed "as low as $45/kg" tier (if achievable), the saving would narrow further to $2,500. The operator-reported middle row is the one to plan against.
"The industrial segment is tricky."
A note from the Mexico City letter, paraphrased here, that deserves its own paragraph.
The letter closes with an observation worth quoting: "the 'industrial' segment is tricky. I know first hand people who own Stratasys machines that were defective also and unrepairable." We have not investigated the Stratasys account independently. The point is more general, and it is fair: Expediente 02 is not a claim that Formlabs is uniquely bad among industrial-grade additive manufacturers. It is a claim that Formlabs has a documented and reproducible public-record pattern of specific behaviours, in specific products, that buyers should be informed of before signing.
The same documentary standard applied to Stratasys, EOS, 3D Systems, Markforged, or any other vendor in the segment would likely yield similar dossiers with different specifics. The work of compiling those is open. If you operate a defective machine from any vendor and have receipts, write in.
If you operate a Fuse and have learned something useful, write to us.
Field Notes is the format for this kind of correspondence.
The standard for inclusion in future Field Notes entries is the same as for this one: the operational tip is concrete, the cost or quality impact is material, and the underlying claim can be verified against a public source we can cite. We anonymise the writer and the writer's company on request. We do not publish supplier contact details without consent. We do not pay for letters and we are not a referral business.
What we do offer in return for your effort is visibility. If you contribute a letter we publish, you get credit on your own terms — named, named with link, or anonymous, your call. We will link to your company, your portfolio, your social profile, or your shop, again your call. We will reference your contribution in subsequent Field Notes entries that build on the same theme. Tactic Engineering is a small Swiss company with growing readership on tacticengineering.com; the visibility is real and it is yours to direct.
Write to info@tacticengineering.com with the subject line "Field Notes". If you would like an editorial discussion before deciding whether to submit, write the same address with "Field Notes inquiry" and we will respond within five working days.
Sources.
Verifiable. Cited.
- Formlabs community forum, thread 40715: "Formlabs' breach of promised Open Material License and $1000 credit to Micronics Kickstarter Backer", started by user facfox on 26 November 2024. Includes the 27 December 2024 update confirming OML receipt: "We've finally received the promised Formlabs Open Material License for our Fuse printers." forum.formlabs.com/t/40715.
- Formlabs blog post, 11 July 2024, original Micronics-acquisition announcement preserved on the Wayback Machine: web.archive.org/web/20240711140237. Contains the verbatim original commitment: "anyone who backed a Micron will receive a $1,000 credit to Formlabs to use towards a purchase of any current or future printer as well as a free Open Materials License."
- Formlabs blog post, current edited version: formlabs.com/blog/formlabs-acquires-micronics.
- Formlabs store, Nylon 12 Powder published pricing: $99/kg standard, as low as $45/kg at 50 kg bulk. formlabs.com/store/materials/nylon-12-powder.
- Forum quote from Kostbone, 29 November 2024, on the OML fee: "It is outrageously arrogant for me to pay an additional 12,000 EUR for a license to keep the system open and allow me to use the printer as I see fit."
- Zongheng Additive Intelligent Technology (Zhuhai) Co., Ltd. — corporate identity confirmed via Chinese 3D-printing supplier registries. Specific product specifications and contact details to be evaluated by the prospective buyer.
- Expediente 02 — Formlabs Buyers Dossier, Tactic Engineering, May 2026, sections on Micronics acquisition and Open Material License.
- Expediente 01 — the original Fuse 1 review, Tactic Engineering. The article the reader was responding to.