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VP Anthony Moschella Shows Off Makerbot's Latest Printers and Materials (Video)
You may have read a few weeks ago about the new materials that MakerBot has introduced for its 3-D printers; earlier this month, I got a chance to see some of them in person, and have them explained by MakerBot VP of Product Anthony Moschella in a cramped demo closet — please excuse the lighting — at the company's booth at CES. Moschella had some things to say about materials, timelines, and what MakerBot is doing to try to salvage its open-source cred, despite being a very willing part of a corporate conspiracy to sell boxes of Martha Stewart-branded extruder filament — as well as a few unremarkable things that the company's ever-vigilant PR overseer decreed Moschella couldn't answer on the record for reasons like agreements between MakerBot parent Stratasys and their suppliers. The good news for owners of recent MakerBot models: they'll be upgradeable to use the new and interesting materials with a part swap, rather than a whole-machine swap (it takes a "smart extruder" rather than the current, dumber one). And the pretty good news for fans of open source, besides that the current generation of MakerBots are all Linux-based computers themselves, is that MakerBot's open API provides a broad path for 3-D makers to interact with the printers. (The bad news is that there's no move afoot to return the machines' guts to open source hardware, like the early generations of MakerBots, but STL files at least don't care whether you ship them to an FSF-approved printer to be made manifest.)
But what about social cohesion? We're 3D printing Yoda coffee cups while we're being robbed blind and lose every social structure we fought for for the last half century.
But hey, look, a coffee cup!
Yeah. Good luck with that salvage job.
do they plan Al Capone filament?
Who wrote that? I mean. Really. I haven't got a clue what they meant. The Makerbot was free software originally not "open source". The later implies that its likely have non-free software in it because the only thing that matters is the technical rather than the ethical. The prior would imply it does not, as they care about free software, but so many people abuse the language it's hard to really tell what anybody anywhere means.
A Filament Fetish Farm
and has been dead since 2012. I'm sorry, but when a company claws its way to existence using the maker/open-source movement, then turns around and tells them to fuck off by closing the source, they're dead as far as I'm concerned.
It's pretty well documented that Makerbot stole ideas from open source reprap forum and filed patents on them. They suck! Doesn't matter how shiny their printers look, the executives running the company are crooks. Just google and you'll lots of evidence showing how badly they behave.
When did you start auto-playing videos, slashdot? And have you stopped beating your wife, yet, also? You stupid fucking dildos.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.tridimake.com/2014/06/do-not-buy-makerbot-3d-printers.html
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Makerbot-RVW2750955.htm
These guys are basically using the open community to take what they want from it repackage and sell it as their own no one who cares about open technologies should support makerbot in anyway there are hundreds if not thousands of alternatives now find one of them and don't give makerbot a second look
What happend to mister asperger with the elvis hair-do that got a documentary on netflix? That guy was megakool
If this turns into one more out of control video site, I'm outta here.
I want to print Circuit Boards at home and ideally even be able to assemble components on them. PLEASE work towards that goal, even if it takes 2-5 years.
Printing & assembling prototypes with traditional vendors costs anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 PER 2 (identical) boards. It'd be nice to do it all for less than $500 per board at home, even if it takes 2-4 days to print it out & assemble it... which is still faster than 15-45 days via traditional printer & assemblers.
Thank you. That is all.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Embedded fucking videos??? With autoplay??? FUCK YOU Slashdot! My how far you have fallen. News for nerds my ass.
I hope the new "smart" extruders are a lot better than what they sell now. At work I have a two-year-old Replicator2, which I am quite happy with. This led to the purchase of a Z18, which I regret. The current generation "smart" extruder on the Z18 is terrible - underextrusion, spontaneous jams that you can't clear without taking it apart, if you raise the temperature enough to get the filament moving then you get strings showing up everywhere, and so on ad nauseum. We've had this thing for about a year, wasted I don't know how many person-hours systematically varying the customizable print settings to get it working at even moderately acceptable quality, swapped out the smart extruder for a new one, tried different nozzle diameters, different MakerBot branded filament, etc etc etc and at its absolute best it's still "meh" (and then it jams again). At this point the only way I can do the large prints that the Z18 was bought for is to print sections on the Rep2 and glue them together.
The Rep2 has an older style extruder that Just Worked right out of the box without any tuning (not-so-coincidentally much more similar to the open-source systems out there), but they decided to replace it with their own proprietary design, and all I can say is too many bugs, not enough eyeballs. I will not be buying any more MakerBot printers anytime soon (which probably means never, because now I will have to try other manufacturers).
Going from open source to close source really isn't really what hurt their reputation, it was the smart extruder used on their 5th generation printers. It simply fails way too often and cannot be repaired by customers requiring them to get a replacement from the company. As far as I know, it's still very problematic nearly a year after its release (check recent reviews online). All of the other fancy stuff the 5th generation printers offer mean nothing if your prints consistently fail due to the extruder. The idea is great, but they didn't have the team or the time to get a properly functioning smart extruder out by the CES deadline Bre repeatedly set. That said, because of the good reputation they had built from their previous printers, they were able to sell a lot of these even after this issue was well known.
Bre is out now and maybe it's possible Stratasys may start intervening to try to recover the reputation MakerBot once had if it seems like they're still screwing things up even without him. Stratasys is still the biggest name in the field (when including the high end printers).
Do you want to get your computer owned? Not using NoScript is how you get your computer owned.
(Also there's no automated videos whatsoever on Slashdot)
because most people won't touch patent-scum makerbot with a 20 foot pole.
All I want to hear is how it bankrupts them:
http://makerflux.com/possible-...
If it could be extended to include people who contributed to the opensource which they use and don't credit, I'd be even happier.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
ket qua xo so, ket qua xo so 6/2/2015