Raise3D is expanding its dependable FDM portfolio to include SLS 3D printing as a manufacturer with industrial ambitions. Under Chief Operations Officer Fernando Hernandez, the company has channelled a large share of its workforce into engineering, while watching low-cost rivals push desktop extrusion into the professional tier. The launch of the RMS220, a 75 watt SLS system with integrated nitrogen generation, marks its first serious move into powder-bed production. The machine is aimed at the broad space between compact desktop units and six-figure industrial platforms, where Hernandez believes demand exists but product choice has been thin.
Speed race reshapes desktop 3D printing
Raise3D itself has spent the past ten years relying on its FDM line for the bulk of revenue. The company gained early traction by focusing on reliability at a time when many desktop systems struggled with consistency. Hernandez attributes the firm’s success in the crowded extrusion market to sustained investment in engineering. Out of roughly 350 employees, more than 100 work in R&D. “You don’t only bring products into the market, you bring innovation into a market,” he said, arguing that this provides a defensive position that low-cost competitors cannot easily erode.
He noted that the FDM landscape has shifted sharply as low-priced manufacturers expanded their reach into the professional tier, compressing margins and raising expectations around speed and material performance. He pointed to the rapid jump from 150 to 300 millimetres per second, and now beyond 500, within only a few years. According to Hernandez, companies that merely keep pace with these trends are already lagging. “If you are coping, you are behind already,” he said. Raise3D’s strategy has been to anticipate these shifts and maintain its focus on what he described as premium, reliable systems rather than chasing the lowest price point.
Although Raise3D remains predominantly an FDM business, accounting for roughly 90 percent of sales today, the company’s SLS programme is intended to broaden its technological base. Internal development had been underway for several years, but the public announcement arrived in March 2025 at TCT Asia. Hernandez said the transition from concept to product involved consolidating expertise from different teams and redirecting engineering resources toward a market segment still underserved between entry-level desktop sintering units and industrial systems costing well over one hundred thousand euros.
Filling the gap between desktop and industrial SLS
Companies such as Sinterit helped establish the compact SLS category, and Formlabs built a larger market by pairing hardware with a mature workflow. Hernandez accepts that these firms advanced access to SLS, but he argued that there remains a wide gap between desktop units and high-end industrial platforms such as EOS. Raise3D initially expected to target a mid-tier price of 50 to 60 thousand euros, but internal cost modelling revealed that the company could compete at a significantly lower level. The result was the RMS220 system, priced at around 27 thousand euros and positioned directly against the most affordable SLS machines on the market. “It was not intended to compete there,” he said, “but we ended up moving the window.”
The technical architecture of the system reflects that repositioning. Raise3D selected a 75 watt laser, well above the 10 to 30 watt sources used in many desktop machines. Matching the higher optical power required a redesign of the entire scanning assembly. The firm sourced industrial galvanometers capable of 30,000 millimetres per second, adapted them to a compact build envelope, and reworked the thermal environment accordingly. Hernandez argued that such performance places the system closer to industrial printers than to desktop devices.
Nitrogen and the real cost of SLS
Ease of use was another priority. The machine is designed so that most service tasks can be carried out without removing internal panels, and material changes can be completed in less than an hour once the operator is familiar with the process. Raise3D also incorporates a feature rarely offered at the lower end of the SLS market: an integrated nitrogen generator. Hernandez called this “the elephant in the room” because many vendors avoid highlighting the need for inert gas to maintain powder quality and prevent combustion. Without nitrogen, he said, “every time you print, you are throwing money into the garbage,” due to oxidation and poor refresh rates.
Instead of requiring customers to purchase external generators or handle gas cylinders, Raise3D built the unit into the chassis. Despite the laser power, heaters and inerting system, the machine runs on a standard 220 volt mains socket rather than a dedicated industrial supply. Hernandez framed this as an effort to remove barriers to adoption. The device is intended to stand between consumer-grade SLS and full industrial systems, while retaining sufficient performance to satisfy users who need repeatable, production-quality polymer parts.
Raise3D does not hide the practical drawbacks of polymer powder. Hernandez accepts that SLS is still somewhat messy, although he argues that engineering and enclosure choices can contain most of the nuisance. The RMS220 and its cleaning station use sealed compartments, controlled ventilation and a closed build chamber to reduce airborne powder. Nylon-based materials remain relatively benign if handled with basic protection, he said, and are less unpleasant than photopolymers. “For me, nothing beats the complexity of industrial resin printing,” he remarked. “It is smelly, it is sticky. Powder is messy, but it is not the messiest technology out there.”
The entry threshold for SLS remains high compared with extrusion. A usable lab requires the printer, a depowdering system, a vacuum unit and supporting equipment. Hernandez estimates a complete configuration at roughly thirty to thirty-six thousand euros, depending on options. That positions the system firmly in the professional bracket. An FDM printer can be acquired for “a couple of thousand”, he noted, but it will not deliver similar mechanical properties or throughput. Raise3D’s aim is to compress the gap between desktop systems and industrial SLS, while accepting that SLS will never be as simple to install as a single-box FDM unit.
Customers, he said, usually underestimate how far they can push the equipment. Many start with SLS for functional prototypes, then migrate to regular production once they see the economics and surface quality. “They come for the music, they stay for the food,” he said. The company is targeting small and medium-sized enterprises that need batches of hundreds or low thousands of parts but want to avoid the tooling, lead times and design constraints associated with injection moulding. For these users, the larger build volume and lower hourly costs of the RMS220 are central to the business case, particularly when compared with compact SLS units where limited capacity drives up cost per part.
Hernandez is explicit about the cost argument. Raise3D positions the system as a sweet spot between low-cost desktop SLS and six-figure industrial platforms. He said the company has already worked with customers benchmarking the RMS220 against established multi-jet fusion and industrial SLS machines. Power consumption, service contracts and part costs were all lower in Raise3D’s analysis, to the point where some users could run multiple RMS220 systems for the price of a single industrial printer. “We challenge any industrial machine to beat our cost per part ratio,” he said, citing hardware price, maintenance and energy consumption as the main levers.
Applications follow the economics. The firm sees strong traction in orthotics and prosthetics, including customised shoe insoles where SLS can deliver full build plates of parts overnight with properties closer to injection-moulded nylon than to FDM. The same pattern appears in low-volume industrial components, such as brackets, holders and enclosures for automotive and electronics. Many of these parts were previously sourced from service bureaus or produced with FDM. Hernandez argued that in-house SLS gives SMEs shorter lead times and more design flexibility, as engineers can iterate geometry without renegotiating tooling or sending repeated orders to third parties.
From prototypes to “micro-factories”
The shift is also organisational. Companies that once relied on service providers for small-batch production are starting to build internal “micro-factories” based on SLS, he suggested. This allows them to adjust designs late in the development cycle, accommodate customer-specific variants and reprint spares without maintaining large inventories. Hernandez said that in Raise3D’s current pipeline, “ninety-nine percent of the benchmark parts” supplied by prospective buyers are already functional components produced externally, not conceptual prototypes.
Reportedly, channel partners are “extremely pleased” with the RMS220 and looking forward to offering a new, competitive, SLS system. “We make people either extremely happy or extremely worried,” Hernandez said. He believes Raise3D’s network is broadly well covered and does not see value in slicing the “same cake” into too many territories, although the company remains open to new partners in specific regions.
Hernandez is keen to stress that Raise3D does not view SLS as a one-off extension. He describes the company as “the head of the spear” in its chosen segments, arguing that it is pulling the market toward higher performance and lower cost in both FDM and SLS. He insisted that the company does not intend a quick entry and exit. “We do not plan to do a hit and run,” he said. “We plan to come and stay, and we have many things to say and improve.”
Early adopters signal a production-focused strategy
The SLS system is currently in pre-order, with first shipments planned for the first quarter of 2026. Hernandez expects volume deliveries to begin around March, roughly a year after the public announcement at TCT Asia. He contrasted that timetable with rivals that have taken several years to move from unveiling to commercial availability, and acknowledged that some customers are impatient, given that Raise3D is a newcomer to SLS.
Raise3D is also using the platform to experiment with metal parts through the ColdMetalFusion process developed by Germany’s Headmade Materials. Metal powder bound in a polymer matrix is processed on the SLS system without hardware modifications, then passed through a debinding and sintering chain involving a water-based blasting cabinet, chemical treatment and a furnace cycle at around one thousand degrees Celsius. The sequence is elaborate, but Hernandez argued that Raise3D has cut the capital cost of the printing hardware, which lowers the overall barrier to entry for metal production using this route. The high-speed laser and galvanometer also shorten build times for metal green parts compared with slower SLS engines.
Initial customers reflect this diversity of use cases. Hernandez said the first RMS220 unit worldwide is going to a Japanese company, Kimboshi, which is transitioning from FDM to SLS for higher productivity. In Europe, early adopters include an automotive supplier in Germany, an ice cream equipment producer in Italy and a medical user in the United Kingdom. He sees this spread as deliberate rather than accidental, an indication that Raise3D’s SLS strategy is aimed at production-grade work across several verticals rather than a narrow niche.
If Raise3D’s reading of the market is correct, the next wave of growth in polymer printing will come less from hobbyist upgrades and more from SMEs turning prototyping labs into compact production cells. The company is wagering that a combination of industrial-grade optics, bundled nitrogen infrastructure and aggressive cost-per-part economics can support that shift, with ColdMetalFusion providing a low-capital route into metal components for some users. Early orders from Japan and Europe suggest interest across automotive, medical and even ice-cream equipment. The harder test will be whether Raise3D can hold its position once larger incumbents respond to a mid-market SLS segment it is now helping to define.
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