“Several weeks ago, we launched on Kickstarter to bring industrial-quality SLS printing to the desktop,” Micronics posted on its Kickstarter page. “Today we are excited to announce that we are closer to that mission than ever before, but not exactly in the way we set out to — we are joining Formlabs to help build the most accessible, reliable and intuitive SLS 3D printers the world has ever seen! Doing this means that we will be ending our Kickstarter and not charge any pledges so we can get to work as soon as possible.”

That work, however, will not be on the Micron, so don’t expect any sub $4K SLS machines to hit the market anytime soon.

“We can’t talk concretely about the roadmap, but what I can tell you is that making SLS more accessible is definitely the goal,” Formlabs’ global head of brand & communications Michael Baker told All3DP. “A lot of the work that we’ve done on the fuse, continuing to push in that same direction, is definitely what our SLS engineering team is focused on doing.”

There’s been several interesting acquisitions and mergers lately — Nano Dimensions and Desktop Metal, Nexa3D and Essentium  — but this acquisition is different, says Baker. “This opportunity was very unique. We haven’t made a deal like this in the past because there wasn’t one that fit as well as this. We’re not acquiring lots of adjacent technologies or trying to capture market share with acquisitions, we’re most excited about bringing on two very talented engineers in Henry and Luke.”

Formlabs acquired the co-founders, who built the Micron in their college apartment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and their intellectual property, including their interesting custom-built slicer software, MicroSlicer, to, presumably, enhance the Fuse line.

“While our mission to bring industrial-quality SLS to a much wider audience remains unchanged, we will not be continuing to work on Micron and will instead be integrating our ideas and research into Formlabs’ development roadmap,” Micron founders said.

Before the Micron’s Kickstarter campaign was suspended it has attracted 431 backers totalling about $1.35 million in pledges. Supporters’ funds won’t be used for for Micron or any printer going forward and Formlabs is offering them a$1,000 credit towards the purchase of any Formlabs printer, a free open material license on any SLA printer, or access to a refurbished Fuse 1 for only $9,999.

“Formlabs brought the Form 1 to market similarly with a Kickstarter, like Henry and Luke did Micronics,” notes Baker. “Ever since we’ve been working to make it even easier to use more powerful and ultimately less expensive over time.”