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MakerBot Industries Brings Manufacturing Back To Brooklyn

Posted by samzenpus on from the back-in-the-saddle dept.

pacopico writes "A few decades ago, Brooklyn was filled with manufacturing companies. Today? Er, not so much. It's mostly restaurants and condos. That is, except for MakerBot Industries, which is assembling 3D printers for consumers by hand at a real, live factory. Businessweek profiled the MakerBot founder Bre Pettis and his goal of revitalizing manufacturing in New York, describing him as a weird 'throwback who lives in the future.'"

2 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. manufacturing in brooklyn by self+assembled+struc · · Score: 5, Informative

    "condos and restaurants...Except for MakerBot Industries"

    Nope...you know, aside from three operating breweries, and hundreds of machine shops that dot my neighborhood. Or the medical instruments manufacturers, or the concrete and cement factories, or the furniture companies...

    Just because it's not electronics, doesn't mean there's no manufacturing. A simple google search shows at least hundreds of companies.

    PS - you must not go outside the gentrified parts of Brooklyn because the majority of the borough is still non-condo and sparsely restauranted.

    1. Re:manufacturing in brooklyn by Defenestrar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Rule 34 by Stross (yes, it's in reference to that Rule 34) has some interesting side content about the speculative future of a maker community. Printers and feedstock are relatively common, but most printers have embedded DRM related to IP purchase of the models.

      With the current legal/IP trend it's a reasonable speculation as many companies would (with some justification) fear a consumer who could print physical devices as easily as they illegally download an MP3. So, from that perspective, clearly anyone with a DRM free printer has got to be some sort of criminal (yeah, yeah, there's that whole infringer/criminal thing, whatever).