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Home Depot Begins Retail Store Pilot Program To Sell MakerBot 3-D Printers

Posted by samzenpus on from the maker-for-the-people dept.

ClockEndGooner writes Looking for a 3-D printer to help you out with a home project or two? If you're in one of the 12 pilot program areas in the U.S., stop into Home Depot to take a look at and purchase a MakerBot 3-D Replicator printer. "...The pilot program will offer the microwave-sized MakerBot Replicator printers, priced at $2,899, for sale, as well as the smaller Replicator Minis, which list for $1,375. 'This will open up the whole world of 3-D printing to people who wouldn't otherwise know about it—like moms and dads, electricians, contractors and DIY-home-improvement folks,' said MakerBot chief executive Bre Pettis. 'It's a good match.'"

16 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. and what would i do with it? by alen · · Score: 2

    the website makes it seem like i'm buying a $3000 machine to buy plans to print some orange toys for the kids

    1. Re:and what would i do with it? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Funny

      3D printer sales will be flat.

    2. Re:and what would i do with it? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Home Depot has a tool rental program. It would be really slick if they offered 3D printers for rental, either in-store (it could print your part while you shop), or take home for a weekend project.

      This past school year I helped out with an after-school programming class at my son's elementary school. One of the projects was to design a 3D part using Python and FreeCAD. We tried to have the parts printed at TechShop, but they wouldn't let kids under 18 into their facility. So we had them printed by an online service and mailed to us. It would have been really cool to have a 3D printer at the school, so the kids could see their parts being made, and maybe fine-tune the design and print again. One of the boys designed a working toilet for his sister's Barbie dollhouse.

    3. Re:and what would i do with it? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Custom cases for phones/electronics projects (Raspberry Pi comes to mind), prototypes of all sorts of things (custom rings is one I saw in their twitter feed, heck I read a story about a surgeon in the UK who used 3D printing to make models of bones and organs to practice surgery procedures on saving several thousand pounds and several weeks vs traditional hand made models.

      The question is "How much overlap is there between the MakerBot market and the Home Depot shopper market?" My anecdotal experience says there is not a lot of overlap. The pros are buying in bulk at a discount and for them time is money. Waiting hours to make a widget isn't what they are looking for. The average homeowner wants to fix a problem or do some upgrades and needs help and advice. Tinkering with a MB machine isn't really what they want either. Sure, some MB hobbyist also shop at HD but do enough do this to but what is essentially a bleeding edge toy vs a really useful tool for regular work. Toys are nice but the market is limited.

      --
      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
    4. Re:and what would i do with it? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      i think if you're practicing your surgery on hard plasticky 3-d printed organs, your skills aren't going to transfer over very well to real-world applications.

    5. Re:and what would i do with it? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 3, Funny

      a samsung phone?

    6. Re:and what would i do with it? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Actually plastic is pretty much the ONLY limit the average tinkerer had 'til recently. If it was made of wood, just turn it. If it was made of metal, put power to your lathe. If it was made of plastic, though, you were out of luck 'til now. Small numbers or even single items were pretty much anathema to plastic which is the king of mass production, but producing one piece was nearly as expensive as making a few thousands, since the tool was the expensive part, not the material.

      3D printing closes this gap.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:and what would i do with it? by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "I heard about a guy in another country who used one" doesnt really bode well for sales.

  2. A lot of them will be returned by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MakerBot has never before sold through a retail outlet that takes returns. A lot of those machines will come back.

    1. Re:A lot of them will be returned by alexander_686 · · Score: 2

      It is not retailers that take returns per se.

      What the OP is saying is that many novice people will wander by the display, think it is cool, and buy it on an impulse. They will then take it home, struggle with it, figure out it is not as cool as they though, and return it.

      Think of all those IBM PC jr and Colecovision collecting dust that people bought in the 80s thinking this would be the thing to solve all of their issue. Now, I know a good subset that put these things to good use or used them as a springboard but many where purchased with only vague ideas on how they would be used.

  3. Re:I wonder by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    Stores have been onto that trick for 20 years.

    Scammers still do it, but to people who think they are buying stolen goods.

    There _will_ be a metric buttload of returns.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  4. SciFri / Staples by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This was mentioned briefly on Science Friday last week. Also that some Staples are going to have them for "service bureau" printing.

    It's a neat idea and a potential reniassance for service bureaus - I haven't needed to go to one since 44-meg Syquest carts were in vogue.

    Eventually we'll all have high-strength 3D printers at home, but that's got to be at least a decade off.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  5. ...and oversell them on what they can do with it. by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 2

    I don't think the price point vs. quality is worth it for that crowd.

    For me I just send things out to shapeways because I need small, fine parts, not fused piles of spaghetti.

    Plus, how many people in the general population can do any solid modelling?

  6. Why the overpriced Makerbot? by Lumpy · · Score: 2

    Why not one of the many much more affordable ones out there? Home Depot is not about buying the most expensive tools, it's about buying tools that will work and enable you.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  7. What's the target audience? by timrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I don't get here is what target audience MakerBot hopes is going to buy these at a Home Depot. 3D printers are really only viable for purchase by businesses in most cases, because individual buyers generally don't have enough use for them to justify a four-digit purchase price. Most individuals who want to use a 3D printer are going to use one of the numerous places online where you can send them a design and have them print and ship it at a fraction of the cost of buying a printer, and most businesses are going to use something more reliable (injection molding and the like) rather than buy one of these.

    It seems like it would be more profitable to set up a "makerspace" kind of thing at the stores - charge people for materials and to use the printer to print out designs, rather than trying to sell them the printers themselves.

    1. Re:What's the target audience? by itzly · · Score: 2

      Quite a few people (myself included) bought first generation home computers for 4 digit purchase prices.