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MakerBot Merging With Stratasys
MakerBot Industries, creators of the popular Thing-O-Matic and Replicator line of 3-D printers, is being acquired by Stratasys, a company that's been working on 3-D printing and production systems since 1989. '[Stratasys] facilitates the printing of prototypes, concepts, components, parts and more on an industrial scale and for commercial applications. ... Stratasys has demonstrated it’s going to be aggressive about owning the 3D printing space, and the MakerBot buy is the consumer-focused piece in that puzzle. For MakerBot, it gives the startup access to Stratasys’ wealth of industry experience.' According to the official news release, 'MakerBot will operate as a separate subsidiary of Stratasys, maintaining its own identity, products and go-to-market strategy.' MakerBot has sold 11,000 of its Replicator 2 devices in the past 9 months, accounting for half of all its 3-D printer sales since 2009.
Stratasys has some patents on 3D printing, so that might be relevant here. One of their more important patents is about making a 3D FDM printer (like the makerbot) with an enclosed build area. Nobody but stratasys is allowed to enclose the build area (existing printers normally have the build area open-air to avoid this patent). Obvious, yes, but nobody has bothered to challenge it yet.
Perhaps makerbot realized that if they wanted to continue to improve their product, they'd start running afoul of such patents, hence the merger?
more about the stores, brand and Thingiverse than anything else, thought it does give them a great platform to litigate like crazy, all they have to do is threaten.. no one in the RepRap community has the money to defend... now. Makerbot was the biggest player with the most money. Now nothing.
Makerbot have been releasing more and more expensive machines, using more and more custom components (e.g. custom geared steppers) with less ability to repair, and more difficult to customise without replacing large portions of the machine. Stratasys are well known for charging massive amounts for basic feedstock, 'renting' printers (that you still need to buy for full-price), waving their patents on fairly basing things at anyone who wants to compete with them, and basically being massive asses.
So stay tuned for a new, even more expensive Makerbot, with minimal pretence to being DIY/self assembled (just plug it together!), feedstock purchased directly from them is some odd packing and diameter/cross-section (for superior quality!), etc.
I bought a Thing-o-matic at the beginning of Bre's PR blitz a year and a half ago. I was excited about it. Then I needed more stuff from theIr store, and they were out of stock... for months... While Bre was still going on every talk show that would have him.
I began to think that this whole venture was just about Bre's self-aggrandizement and there was no follow through for the DIY product itself.
For sale: lightly used Replicator 2 with extruder and build plate upgrades, 3 months old. Or trade for any other 3d printer not controlled by thieving money-grubbing parent company..
As a Dutchman (*le hinting cough*), I don't really consider Makerbot to be desktop 3D printing anyway. I'm much more partial to the original RepRap project, housing a great variety of different styles of printer with their own mechanics. I built my own for about 550 euros, perhaps 700 dollars or so. I know one person has managed to build a Reprap for $300, and it should be fairly doable to build them for $400 or similar. With welding tools, bulk deals on the electronics, a supply of broken scanners and printers, and an existing 3D printer, you could probably churn out improvised machines for near $250 or less. Not counting labour costs, since I'm assuming this would be a charity or diy type thing.
So no. I don't think only about myself, and I don't consider myself to be particularly American. But you may be right about Stratasys trying to sell a high-end printing service, I don't know enough to really make an educated guess about -that- particular possibility.
Why? its not like they have any credibility left. Bre sold out a long time ago, it all started with Thingiverse EULA.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Back in may 2012, more people used RepRap style printers than Makerbot-produced ones (even though Makerbots should, by all means, counts as RepRap-style, but let's not get into that). I'm not sure if the tables would've turned so much in one year. Perhaps they have. And yeah, I'm aware that RepRap might not count as part of the industry due to its DIY nature. But still, the article implies that most desktop 3D printers that people acquire/use are Makerbots and that just irks me.
I'd appreciate if you people had a gaze at http://surveys.peerproduction.net/2012/05/manufacturing-in-motion/3/, one page in a set of results from a survey back in may 2012. It may provide some useful insights.
Bre has abandoned the people who gave him his start. Sorry, but abandoning the first-gen "Cupcake" bot, 3 MONTHS after the next bot came out, and doing the same to the Thing-O-Matic folks, is a slap in the face to the open-source community who gave him his start. He's nothing other than a money-seeking whore, who betrayed his early supporters for the Almighty Buck. Even today's software updates, which have nothing different from the Whatzitplicator mark 1 and 2 other than a volumetric envelope setting, Makerbot Industries have abandoned the ones who gave them their start and turned into the entity that they pretended to not be part of. I wonder how many months before Bre adds some DRM crap to his supplies so you can only print stuff on Makerbot printers if you buy their own branded, DRM'd, overpriced filaments. And to think that I supported you, Bre. What an idiot I was. You seemed so sincere.
I'm sorry for calling you American