Business model
For home/hobby 3d printers the main use is printing parts for making your own 3d printer - not really a sustainable business.
3D printing pioneers Makerbot has culled roughly 80 employees at its Brooklyn headquarters, abolished three divisions, and closed three of its shops. "We at MakerBot are reorganizing our business in order to focus on what matters most to our customers. As part of this, we have implemented expense reductions, downsized our …
The parts of a 3D printer that can be 3D printed, plastic bits, amount to a tiny fraction of the total cost. At least they would be cheap if they were injection molded at 800 per hour, as opposed to slowly 3D printing them over a long weekend.
The other 95% (cost wise) cannot be 3D printed. Not now, and not for a hundred years.
Thank you for using the word "parts". Very precise. Too many BS headlines like "3D Printed Car", and too many dimwits actually thinking it's true.
My knock-off FlashForge Creator Pro is really good. :)
If MakerBot hadn't switched mid-stride to closed-source-only pricks, then I may have bought one of theirs instead.
However, since they've decided to fuck over everyone who helped them get up and running - purely to line their own pockets - fuck them. Hopefully they go bankrupt. :D
Totally agree! After looking at a lot of 3DPs I settled on the FF Creator Pro too - its very well made, totally open source.
I also think the Makerbot thought the Singularity had already come, the Culture had got in Contact at last and everyone wanted a 3D Printer.
Nope. 3D Printing is still at about the same level as aircraft in 1911 - strictly for hobbyists with cash.
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"rent time"
Edd China of Wheeler Dealer printed off a pair of small plastic bits to hold LEDs in the brass headlights of a 1903 car.
IT TOOK 15 HOURS!!
There's a business... Rent the machine for $100 an hour, and surprise the client with a $1500 bill.
Somebody needs to make a video that alternates between a factory cranking out 20 plastic things a second, and a 3D printer slowly sweeping back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Sound track would be somebody explaining how all mass manufacturing will be 3D Printer based "in five years".
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...has only just about reached the level of the TRS-80. Up till now it's been more like the MK14/SCaMP level. The problem is the manufacturers can't see back to the beginnings of the home microcomputer age when "huge" sales initially meant, at most, a few 1000 units for dedicated hobbyists. They think they are at the level of the Amiga/Atari ST and they aren't. That takes significant development and improvements in the quality and capabilities of the machine.
...has only just about reached the level of the TRS-80. Up till now it's been more like the MK14/SCaMP level. The problem is the manufacturers can't see back to the beginnings of the home microcomputer age when "huge" sales initially meant, at most, a few 1000 units for dedicated hobbyists.
That's true in more than the size of the market but also the range of applications. A few weekends ago my fiance brought home a stereolithographic front panel bezel for a prototype something to do the surface finishing on. I saw it before he started work - no, the finish wasn't perfect but you could see it didn't need more than final finishing - the accuracy and fine definition were there already. It also felt nice and robust. He can't have disappeared into his workshop for more than half an hour for a light sand and spray paint. When he'd finished it could easily have been made using injection moulding and high quality moulding at that. Commercial application, commercial process (from a bureau service), commercial price tag and a very quality result. You can see the applications straight away.
Now look at the home 3D printers, producing unconvincing plastic blobs that look and feel as if they are about to fall apart at any moment. Where are the applications? Oh, I can see why a home user might want such a device but they don't fit the bill - they lack the structural characteristics for DIY, the model engineers or the self-described "makers" and they lack the precision and finish for the fine scale model makers or the artisans. That leaves you with plastic toys, and expensive and poor quality toys at that. When the novelty wears off what is the real use?
Your comparison to the home computer market is a good one but it goes further than you initially drew it. Yes, call it around the TRS-80, Spectrum, C64 or whatever. I don't see there being a linear successor to today's 3D printers just as there wasn't to those computers. Instead you had a story of divergence - the gamers went off to the Amiga and Atari and the "serious" home users went off to the likes of the Amstrad PCW. They only reconverged later on the PC, by which time you could say the technology was truly ready. I think 3D printing has to go through a similar story in the short term, supporting larger prototypes and acceptable strength on one hand and much better accuracy on the other. It's only when they come back together again that the technology is genuinely ready for the mass market.
Put that way it isn't something that is almost ready for prime time, we're at least two generations away. Businesses that do not appreciate that and plan accordingly are doomed to the same end as many of the firms behind those pioneering machines of the 80s.
That's a well thought out commentary. :)
The FDM printers (like mine)... yeah, useful for some stuff, but they're definitely not where I'd them to be either. The current generation of "slicer" software - which turns physical models into actions for the printer to perform - are very limited as well (eg can't easily create density gradients in a part to adjust the physical characteristics of it in different areas). In part I think it's due to the primitive nature of the printers so far... but also it's just the software needs more time to mature and be adapted to more use-cases.
The non-bureau stereo-lithographic printers available do seem to have the quality/fine-detail aspect sorted... but the (toxic) materials they use really limit the products they can be used for. eg I wouldn't be making something with them that's for long-term skin contact.
but in the end they are still doing useless layered printing that has so many problems.
They need to realize that it is not an established industry it is a field getting some fresh innovation thus rapid changes and building a company on a first prototype is a bad idea. The field has so far to go before it can hold a market in their space and in the commercial space it is a whole new game.
Then there is http://carbon3d.com/ that is a real step forward in 3D printing.
....the utter, utter shyte that is the Makerbot 5th Gen, with its desperately unreliable extruders, has compounded their problems. The Replicator 2X was a reasonably decent machine when set up properly - but their current crop is so bad that as a reseller we sent all our demo machines back following a stack of in-warranty problems (mainly the piss poor extruders) and told them thanks, but no thanks....
They took the (then) state of the art and made a good open source product. Then they proceeded to pick up a 12 gauge shotgun and shoot themselves in the foot by going closed source and alienating most of their userbase. Then they kept shooting by being incompetent at actually designing a good product themselves.