Hey folks!  Just saw this new sub, Its cool reading similar stories from other users! Here is my rambling contribution: 

  
I have 0 formal background in Additive.  My background is music (DMA) and my day job mostly revolves around teaching.  A few years ago, I started a business focused on selling some of the products I have dreamed up over the years, some fairly mundane and others that push boundaries.   They started to take off which was cool at first, then I realized FDM would not cut it for serious production.  FDM also had certain insurmountable design limitations in my case.  

With no background in this technology, I googled "high end 3d printing" and this when I learned about SLS (no joke lol).  Long story short, I stumbled on Formlabs and began to interact with their people, who were so awesome.  They sent-out samples and answered hundreds of questions I had about the technology, the fuse, sift (there was no blast yet), workflow, supply chain, you name it.  I even had the sales rep contact the engineering people so I could get power use numbers for the fuse during the different stages of printing!  I made that poor guy work so hard lol. I ended up with one fuse and a sift. 

I seriously can't imagine not having SLS now.  90% of my designs rely on it exclusively and could not be printed with FDM.  Injection molds would cost as much as my whole printing setup several times over.  My (now two) Fuse1 continue to crank out parts with very few issues.  Not that there have been no issues, but the people at Formlabs have had my back every time. (if you are considering a purchase at this level, support quality is VERY important!)  I can't really think of a comparison, perhaps buying a new car but I have been treated way better by Formlabs than **any** car dealership.   

Anyway, if you want some input from a former non additive expert, I'm happy to provide input.  I think especially if you are like me and jumping into this cold I could have some helpful hints.  

BTW in the pic one of those is a real fuse1 and one is not. :)

Formlabs SLS Transformed my Business