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Breaking Up With MakerBot
An anonymous reader writes "Sanders Kleinfeld explains how his experiences with a Makerbot device led him to the decision that 3-D printing hasn't quite arrived as a legitimate, consumer-friendly technology. Quoting: 'Waiting five hours for your Yoda feels like an eternity; you can play approximately sixty rounds of Candy Crush Saga in that same timeframe (although arguably, staring blankly at the MakerBot is equally intellectually stimulating). To make matters worse, I’d estimate MakerBot’s failure rate fell in the range of 25%–33%, which meant that there was around a one-in-three chance that two hours in, your Yoda print would fail, or that it would finish but once it was complete, you’d discover it was warped or otherwise defective. ... The first-generation MakerBot Replicator felt too much like a prototype, as opposed to a proven, refined piece of hardware. I look forward to the day when 3D printers are as cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts.'"
There are several other great 3d printers out there. The Up! I first started using is still a fantastic printer.
"I look forward to the day when 3D printers are as cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts.'"
Specifically
"Cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts.'"
I don't. :)
So some time in the 23rd century perhaps?
Maybe the solution to the 2D printing problem (http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2010/08/25/why-do-printers-still-suck/) is just to print every page as a 3D object.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Half of the fun of 3D printers is getting angry at them. If you want one to "Just Work" you are out of luck. Some are better than others, but they all are basically hot glue guns with some servo motors, there is no feedback, no control. You can however, print some really cool stuff. Sure I would not let my parents buy one, but I have loved mine personally.
I'm still waiting for my 2D inkjet printer to be as cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use as a pen and paper.
Even one the printing gets done, the job does not end there. It is like publishing a book using an inkjet. There are skilled steps that are required to finish the product. On the printer I used, it required that I manually removed supporting material. If the design does not take this into account, this process will lead to damage of the part. Other printers use ultrasonic cleaners to remove support material, but I hear this has issues as well.
I have been in the position to acquire some nice machines, but the support, cost, and payback never made since. I can image for the hobbying who wants to do something original it would be a good investment. I also imagine that, like my high speed color printer, it might see significantly decreased use after a period of time.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I remember the failure rates for burning CD's early on was probably around 40%. Now if I burn a CD or DVD I don't think I've had a failure in a couple years now.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"Waiting five hours for your Yoda feels like an eternity"
I just realized why online retail will never completely beat brick-and-mortar.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Stratasys, a company specializing in industrial 3d-printing will likely complete their acquisition of makerbot in the fall. For better or worse, this should change things in the consumer 3D printer space.
I look forward to the day when 3D printers are as cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts.'"
Super expensi... .. print head dried up, get a new one.
This is a technology in its infancy. We're just getting good at printing with one material at a time, we're just starting to mess with printing with multiple materials, 3d printing rigs generally only use a single technique in a given machine, etc etc. Give it some time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The first personal computers were on the order of about 3 to 6 grand in price. You can now buy one far beyond the capabilities of those systems for $50.00 bucks new. Even in that day the price tag was worth it for some processes. I know a guy in aerospace that was able to prototype load handling for engine mounts on a vector graphics system in a matter of hours instead of days it took on the main frame. That was back in the early 80's. Imagine where the capabilities of these systems will be in ten or twenty years. You already have systems that can use two different plastics and removable filler materials. You have systems that doctors are able to print out bones that need to be moved into position. You have systems that can print custom art on cupcakes and some that print living tissue. There is a system that will print actual walls and another that prints glass bowls using the sun. And another that prints wood objects. Shoot Jay Leno is using them to prototype out parts for cars that they no longer make parts for. The expansion and the innovative designs is amazing. To blow the current systems off as just making garbage seems short sighted about where this technology really is and where it will be shortly.
Well, that's a tiny bit of an exaggeration. The harsh reality is that a 3D printer is a cool, fun, convenient way to make one-off and limited runs of plastic parts that would otherwise have to be injection-molded or extruded.
Yes, I know some systems can print starch that dissolves so you can (sort of) end up with spaces and gaps in the finished item, but in the real world, it's basically up to you to drill the precision holes, sand the rough edges, remove the burrs, and do the actual assembly yourself. We're a LONG way from "download the plans to some finished consumer good & stick it to The Man(tm) by printing yourself an unauthorized copy".
Buying a hobby-grade 3D printer today is kind of like spending $800 to buy a copy of Sculpt-Animate 4D for the Amiga 3000 20 years ago -- full of promise, totally cool, and the greatest Christmas gift someone could possibly get you... but at the end of the day, frustrating as hell.
Back then, you'd spend days, if not WEEKS, defining 3D objects, start a render at 2am before going to bed, crawl out of bed the next morning for school, be happy that you weren't greeted by 30-40 scanlines of black (indicating that it didn't like your lighting for some reason), spend the day at school praying obsessively that you'd be greeted by 2/3 of a badly-rendered image when you got home instead of a guru meditation number, and if you hit the jackpot... your preview didn't look like total shit, and vaguely resembled whatever it was you were trying to render.
A few days later, you'd go to render a raytraced preview the size of a postage stamp, then go away for the weekend, because that's about how long a 16-25MHz A3000 took to render a 80x50 thumbnail. Assuming it didn't crash, and there wasn't a thunderstorm to reboot the computer. OK, months passed, and you're about to go take a 2-week family vacation, so you launch into the Holy Grail -- a 320x200 HAM animation with 8-16 frames. You start the rendering job, go away, come home a few weeks later... and to your despair (but non-surprise), are greeted by either a guru meditation number or a rebooted computer courtesy of Florida Power & Light.
You screwed with it a few more times after that, but the magic was gone. The blue smoke evaporated. It just took too damn long to render anything meaningful, and the program had an 80% chance of crashing before it finished anyway. And when it didn't crash, it was Florida before UPSes became affordable, so 2-second power outages were almost guaranteed to nuke any multi-day rendering job before it finished even if the program DIDN'T crash. Such was life on the bleeding razor's edge of computer graphics ~20 years ago. Sigh.
" 'PC Load Filament'? What the fuck does that mean?"
Extruder-based machines aren't a very good technology. The fundamental problem is that you're trying to weld a hot thing to a cold thing. Welding metals that way produces flawed joints, and soldering that way produces cold solder joints. Heating the build platform helps a little, but once you've built something of any height, the heater is too far from the action. Some of the machines have better temperature control of the build area than others, but they're all rather flaky. TechShop has tried four different brands, and they range from mediocre (Replicator2 ) to useless (the Up).
The UV polymerization machines seem to work quite well. The high-end machines produce consistent results and don't need to be watched while running. They're still slow, though. The Form1 printer may get there, if they ever really ship the thing in quantity. The ship date has slipped from April 2013 to October 2013, even though their Kickstarter funding was way oversubscribed. They also charge $149/liter for their custom resin. (I suspect that resin for 3D printers is going to be a similar racket as ink for inkjet printers. The stuff isn't inherently expensive; a slightly different formulation is routinely used for making printing plates, where it costs about a quarter of the price.)
When did rounds of Candy Crush become a measurement of time? I thought the reward of the maker movement was the process in which you can design and iterate and produce your own prototypes, not the end thing itself. Once you have your design nailed down there are more cost effective and quicker production methods.
I just can't be bothered.
easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts
There already are much faster printers, like the Ultimaker. The high failure rate might be from your individual setup, because that shouldn't happen that often.
5 hours is not so bad, it's a fast grow compared to some crops/trees which are 12 hours in farmville 2. Reminds me 10 years ago when you wanted to rip a DVD, would take about 8-12 hours on a Pentium 3, still, everybody was still doing it.
I chuck an absolute tantrum whenever I am exposed to an inkjet printer. They are hands down the most stupid and irritating piece of technology known to mankind. I eastimate the success rate of an average inkjet printer to be in the 7 - 9% range.
After a few decades of existence, they still can't get the printers to cancel the operation properly. Lol
After years of struggling with an inkjet I dumped it for a B/W laser printer. The ink was always dry every time I needed to print something and cartriges are worth their weight in gold. So should I need to print in color -- it's a trip to a local pharmacy.
So assuming that 3D printer is somewhat related to inkjet in principle but more complex, it is probably only meant for dedicated shops and some hobbyist garages, not for mass market. And even if the above mentioned issues are overcome, handling 3d designs is probably more complex than an average comsumer wants to deal with.
We geezers often get our decades confused.
Sintered metal 'printers' can make jet engine parts.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This is coming from someone who built his own lathe. My experience with building my own machine tools has taught me that not only does the algorithm (i.e. tool motion) matter, but also the properties of the material being machined.
With the traditional CNC machine, the method of material removal works the same irrespective of the stock material, with minor exceptions. A CNC mill can make parts from materials as soft as waxes to as hard as steel with little more than a bit change, and perhaps the addition of cooling lubricant.
A 3d printer, by contrast, is a deposition method which depends to a very large degree on the properties of the feed stock. Even at their best, they'll do no better than a mill.
And 3 hours to make a part is ridiculously long, especially given the failure rate. A trained machinist would instead choose the best tool(s) for the job and turn it out in short order.
Just for perspective: I spent one and a half hours building a molding machine from scratch. Rather than print out the part with a 3d printer, he could have made the molding machine and molds in the same amount of time, with the added advantage that he could make an almost arbitrary number of copies. Sometimes the old ways are just faster.
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Also the price difference between the low end uPrints and the Replicator 2X isn't that great. About 2.5X. Now that the company that makes uPrint owns MakerBot, I'm hoping we see consumer printers as robust as these high end machines (that are as large as a refrigerator!)
Still took 20+ hours to print my figure on both machines.
The kit scene reminds me of the personal computer scene in the '70s. I expect rapid progress in this area. We've already seen drastic improvements in quality on the consumer side with the Replicator 2X and Form1.
I still kind of don't like stereolithography because although it's way higher detail, you can't use a support material--right? You still have to print 'fluff' that you crack off by hand?
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New Thing Will Get Better Over Time
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Interestingly, I was talking to some Airbus designers, and they mentioned that they 3D print brackets used in ailerons out of sintered titanium. If they tried to machine the same part it would either weigh twice as much or cost twice as much for all the machining to lose the extra weight from its complex geometry. The 3D printing process let them only put material in the key loading directions the part had to be strong in, and nowhere it didn't. It made for a much better part.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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If you spent hours staring at a Makerbot - the problem is not the device. HINT: how long do you spend staring at your washing on the line?
Probably some outrageously sexy SGI machine, like a Crimson, or an Onyx. You can probably pick one up today second hand for a fraction of the cost of an Amiga 3000 toy.
Maybe the problem is that most people don't have a real use for a 3D printer and after the novelty wears off, boredom sets in. I mean really, how many 5 inch Yoda head does somebody really need? Now, on the other hand, I know many hobbyists who use 3D printing to make parts for various hobbies they are engaged in that would have used lost wax castings in the past, a milling machine, or some other time consuming or costly process. For these people, 3D printing is a faster, cheaper alternative to the traditional way.
So, yes, 3D printing probably isn't ready for the average consumer. But, that is probably because the average consumer doesn't have much need for 3D printing.
The whole notion is dumb. It's hit the peak now, it's downhill from here. [...] Then you get people comparing home 3D printing to word processing, as if they still don't get that you can't compare information processing to handling matter. It's not the same, and never will be.
I kindly disagree. Today's machines indeed are only really useful for a limited audience, but once the complexity of use - both in software and hardware - decreases sufficiently their usefulness will expand to fields not even thought of today. I am looking forward to using the 3D equivalent of facsimiles of historical material in history classes. Just consider the possibilities: Instead of showing a picture of a Stone Age arrowhead or a Pope's seal - or, looking at other subjects, molecules, DNA, bacteria, organs... - I could pass around a life-size replica. Not just one taken from the limited collection my school has seen fit to purchase, but one chosen specifically to fit into my topic.
Similarly we are currently evaluating different 3D printing options for the volunteer emergency service I am a member of for producing scaled models of damaged buildings, vehicle wrecks etc. for strategic training. It would open up scenarios currently infeasable to simulate with our hand-built models.
It still is a long way off. But so were ubiquous cheap colour print-outs just 20 years ago.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Wait, inkjet printers are "cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use?"
Could have fooled me.
If you play Candy Crush Saga, you probably shouldn't be messing with 3D printers anyway...
Cool story Bro, but 20 years ago the bleeding razor's edge of CGI was not an Amiga 3000.
and cgi cost back then what an objet printer costs today... so..?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Stratasys, a company specializing in industrial 3d-printing will likely complete their acquisition of makerbot in the fall. For better or worse, this should change things in the consumer 3D printer space.
I don't see it really changing anything.
makerbot lacks any unique technology and statasys bought them for their Wired(etc) visibility... there's a bunch of manufacturers in the makerbot grade(but cheaper) space now though.
there's literally dozens of companies now coming with better slicing sw and more user friendly electronics now though.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
We printed out dissertations in Graphics mode on needleprinters with Windows 1.03 which needed 10-12 hours and we liked it.
Kids nowadays can't wait a couple of hours until their new toys come out of the printer.
Get a grip.
I agree with AC, laser cutters are expensive. Which model did you buy, from which company and at what price?
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I would tend to agree with Mr. Kleinfeld. 3D printing is a tweaky, fiddly process that requires a lot of time, energy, and specialized knowledge to get to work properly. The machines are finicky, the software requires far too much knowledge of detailed printer specs and the raw materials that feed printers are produced with little or no quality control resulting in unpredictable performance from the printer and frequent recalibration.
The printer designs are not particularly well done either, especially the bed leveling. Most use screws at the corners of the bed to do the leveling. That makes no sense as anyone who has had a geometry class will tell you. 3 points define a plane. Since one point can be fixed, there need only be two leveling screws. That is what I designed into my printer and it works perfectly. One screw adjusts tilt along the Y axis and the other adjusts tilt around the X axis and neither affects the other. Leveling took about 1 minute and now I can completely remove the print bed and replace it and never have to tweak the settings.
My printer is designed to print big(ish) stuff. The print bed is 300x300mm and vertical print capacity is 280mm. I designed it so that I could print full-sized human skulls from CT scan data. If you're going to print big stuff you have to have everything working reliably. I ran into the extruder problem early on and have been working on that for a while.
There seems to be two problems with extruder failures. One is the variations in quality of the filament and the other is in the design of the extruder itself. I can't do anything about the quality variations in the filament but I can make changes to the extruder design to make it more immune to those variations. My original extruder used a gear on a stepper to push filament into the hot-end. I found that the filament would often got hung up in the hot-end and the extruder would keep trying to push and the gear would carve a divot into the filament assuring that the extruder could never push that filament again. It is notable that I have never had the nozzle actually clog- every time the extruder has hung up I have been able to manually push the filament and have it come out the nozzle. My reedesign mimics a wire feeder in a MIG welder and uses two steppers to push the filament. Preliminary tests indicate that it is working, but further tests are ongoing.
Progress can be monitored here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/milwaukeemakerspace and on the blog at http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/
Probably some outrageously sexy SGI machine, like a Crimson, or an Onyx. You can probably pick one up today second hand for a fraction of the cost of an Amiga 3000 toy.
People pay for them? I gave mine away...on the condition that they came and carried it out of my house all by themselves. Those things are damn heavy.
No sig today...
I look forward to the day when 3D printers are as cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts.
With a 25-33% print failure rate, it sounds like they're already there.
0 1 - just my two bits
Consumer-priced CGI. Very few people could afford an SGI workstation in those days.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
"cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to use" would not solve any of the issues that he describes.
When you ask for something different than you want, you are often unsatisfied.
Using the knowledge and experience you gained from that miserable makerbot, you now have the ability to reconsider your initial idea of printing a gun...
That is, assuming you haven't blown yourself up already.
The title of the article shows the author misunderstood what a 3D printer is for:
"Printing Plastic Tchotchkes Was Fun, but MakerBot Was Just Too High-Maintenance"
Don't buy a 3D printer to print trinkets. I use mine (mostly) to print gears, axles, motor mounts, custom train tracks, replacement parts, etc. If you want trinkets, buy them from China. This is similar to 2D printers: When color dot matrix printers and inkjet printers were cool, everyone bought one to print silly signs, banners, and jokes. But the novelty wore off and "Print Shop" is no longer a killer-app for your PC.
Hobbyist-level printers really are unreliable and high maintenance. Fortunately, the next generation might be a lot better in that area.
It seems they had reached the level of inkjet printers...
Yes, I'm sure they both use the same amount of brainpower
Actually this is quite similar to ham radio and the original computer hobbyists. A group of people start taking it as a hobby making changes and increasing the technology potential each time. A large amount of advanced in radio technology came from Ham radio. As well the original Apple 1 came about from Wozniak playing with what he could get his hands on. You all so saw it in the app store for the iphone. A large group of developers had access to all the sensors on the iphone and went nuts. The end result is apps the detect the song your listing to, or your heart rate, how far you have run, or taking credit card data. I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs never said. " I want to be able to process credit cards at fair grounds and flea markets on this phone." In just the first couple of years that this idea was made it has come tremendously. The amount of resolution on a piece is tremendous now. They are up to the point you can start making your own miniatures and thumb your nose at Games Workshop's prices. They have them automated now so they printing out, drop the part and start on the new one. The have them in koisks to print what you want and pick it up when its done. They have a home cable extruder so you can make your own print material. The advances are tremendous. To take this technology at its infancy and expect it to make you a cup of piping hot earl grey is a bit crazy. Just sit back and let it go. It will be fun to see what more amazing ideas come out of this. I'm looking forward to an automated cupcake koisk with custom messages on the cake.
All the makerbot does is find the lowest acceptable bar for accuracy and repeatability...which is pretty damn low when comared to even hobby CNC XYZ systems. They can get away with it because the maximum precision the can get from the medium is relatively low as well. At the end of the day the only think that makerbot has going for it is that it is an additive process instead of subtractive.
The real devil with all 3D printing (additive CNC) is that it is, at its core, a materials science problem. You can throw better software and hardware at the problem until the cows come home. Until you solve the fundemental material science problems you will always be better off with a 5 axis mill if you want to build stuff that is actually usefull.
Could chocolate be quiet and let me finish?
tl;dr. Waaaaah bleeding edge bleeds!!!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"easy to use as their 2D inkjet printer counterparts."
"PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?"
In a lot of ways, 3d printers already are as easy to use...
or, looking at other subjects, molecules, DNA, bacteria [...] - I could pass around a life-size replica.
I'm not sure that will be quite as useful as you think it will be.
I don't think the article writer was contesting that they're useful.
he was just contesting the quality of the mbi design out of box. the problem for him was that since he didn't want to buy a bearing and a spring he couldn't fix it. that one fix is something that everyone with the old plunger system pretty much has to do(and mbi sells a replacement now that is a copy of the community mod - that is actually mbi's entire r&d methodology right there).
and so, the most popular system out of the box if you don't want to print a mod for it that needs a bearing, a spring and a small screw in addition then it(rep1) is out of the box totally useless - or even worse because it almost works so you lose lots of time with it.
now why the machine that they sold as the easiest ever and n:th generation "MARK EIGHT EXTRUDER!" needed such user modifications? because they didn't test it, didn't care or thought the spring method was under patent. the way bre has been acting they just didn't care.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Good catch. I added the quoted parenthesis as an afterthought after writing the sentence and apparently did not pay as much attention during proof-reading as I should have. I probably should lay off posting after the third beer. :-)
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Yoda: Print me they can not; this generation has no patience.
Diembodied Obi-Wan Voice: They will learn patience.
Shoot Jay Leno ...
Can I use a 3d printed gun for that ???
I've tried a few times to do unattended long prints on my Solidoodle but often enough something goes wrong partway - not only is the print ruined but a heap of filament gets wasted. Generally I stay close by and work on something else, and a couple of those times I managed to catcha problem that might have damaged the printer (e.g. snagged filament). Anyway, it's not completely dead time, but it does require a fair bit of nursing. Im slowly improving some of the mechanics and operating parameters so maybe it will get better, but it's far from foolproof yet.http://computersbds.blogspot.com/">please visit it
It's interesting that the author uses a time killing game as a yard stick for the waiting period - as if the time spent while printing was 'dead' and couldn't possibly be used for anything productive. That's his point - for the purposes of using the makerbot, it is dead time. You can't iterate before you have something, and you can't have something for 5 hours with a 33% chance that hardware failure was the problem and not the design. What we're really seeing here is the impatience of the Now Generation. What? You have to wait -thirty minutes- for something to be produced?? OMG! That's basically the same as having to wait 5 hours, right? Have these people any idea how long it takes to produce something through conventional CNC, let alone hand fabrication? How many amateurs are willing to burn virtually all of their free time for a day to do those things? Very few. Comparing your professional abilities and patience to his amateur abilities and patience is unfair (to put it very kindly).http://computersbds.blogspot.com/">please visit it