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Why MakerBot Didn't Kickstart A 3D Printing Revolution (backchannel.com)
Bre PettisâS once said MakerBot gave you a superpower -- "You can make anything you need." But four years later, mirandakatz writes that though MakerBot promised to revolutionize society, "That never happened."
At Backchannel, Andrew Zaleski has the definitive, investigative account of why the 3D printing revolution hasn't yet come to pass, culled from interviews with industry observers, current MakerBot leadership, and a dozen former MakerBot employees. As he tells it, "In the span of a few years, MakerBot had to pull off two very different coups. It had to introduce millions of people to the wonders of 3D printing, and then convince them to shell out more than $1,000 for a machine. It also had to develop the technology fast enough to keep its customers happy. Those two tasks were too much for the fledgling company."
Do I spend a grand and a bunch of time learning the software necessary to print the widget, or do I buy the widget for $2 and spend no time learning how to use software? Virtually everyone I know with a 3D printer uses it for pointless projects that have no practical value. If it isn't a premade design, they're not printing it.
nobody wants to spend £1000+ on a device which makes shitty low quality christmas cracker toys. It was obvious from the start that this was this seasons desktop publishing fad. The sort of people who it was argued would use these are already aware of better alternatives.
The internet was a revolution, starting with a few networked government buildings.
Mobile phones were a revolution, starting with heavy briefcases that barely worked anywhere.
Computers were a revolution, starting with speeds so slow a human could keep up.
None of these revolutions happened overnight.
3D printers will become cheaper and will become common place so slowly, we won't even notice it until only in hindsight we will say "it was a revolution".
It may take another 20 years to get there, but we will.
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Makerbot was a hype-machine that didn't have the technical competency to compensate for their artisan pricing model. They were a bunch of creatives that were very good at branding and marketing, but what few Hardware Engineers they held in their employ left the sinking ship when they pushed their shitty printhead disposable printhead to production thereby killing any remaining ounce of brand loyalty that existed from their laser cut balsa "cupcake" days.
Their entire business model was built off of freeloading on the back of the Reprap community and when they finally needed to actually in-house talent to design for mass production(ie. the reprap community IP is useless at this scale) they didn't have the hiring skills or management talent to pull it off.
Hackaday did a good forensic analysis/post-mortem on the company. I'm not sure how many shares they were able to pass off to the "old kids on the block" at Stratasys of Z-corp or whoever it was that bought a sizeable portion of their company, but I hope it wasn't too many because I hate to see these sorts of shenanigans pay off for douchebags.
It didn't help that there were a billion "me too!" startups birth'ed from the same hype and froth which were all doomed to failure once China let the dust settle around the cheapest design to knockoff and undercut.
All that said: Thingiverse is a nicely designed front-end/community and if we give it a couple more years, I suspect that some combination of WebVR/Project Sansar/HTC Vive/Augmented Reality games like Pokemon Go will eventually give "Thingiverse" a second life(in much the same way Mt.Gox found a new purpose as a Bitcoin ponzi scheme). That is: if their lawyers can keep it in their pants regarding how aggressive they are on expanding the Intellectual Property provision of the terms of use.
3D printers will one day be able to print copies of themselves, circuits and all. Minor variations in each iteration will be tested for improvement. Improved machines will share their specifications with others. Also there will be gay printers.
Prusa Research has been pushing the technology closer to a consumer class appliance. They've taken care of the calibration headaches with their new bed leveling algorithm and heated bed design. The carriage is mounted rigid to the linesr rails, and the mk42 heated bed has more even distribution so there's less chance of a curled corner. They haven't open sourced their design so I'm waiting for that.
All the criticisms of 3d printing are fair, but there's money being devoted to engineering those problems out as we speak. With exotic filaments like continuous strand carbon fiber and all the new ones coming out each week, it's just getting started. I give it 3-5 years before it's ready for mass market. I think the cost barrier is going to be an issue, but costs will come down with economies of scale.
Prusa I3 mk2
Here's a link to the i3 MK2. The videos are definitely worth watching. I have zero financial ties to this company. They definitely have s cool product.
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What are they going to make though? Mostly toys. You can make lumps of plastic basically. A professional 3d printer for use by professionals makes models and mockups, not something someone off the street is going to want or need.
Here in Sweden a typical Makerbot would set you back 18K Sek (that's roughly 2000$) and for what? A slow, primitive - made out of wood 3D printer that looks like it was made by a bunch of tech kids at a high school.
It also takes TONS of fiddling around, and the patience of a saint to even produce something useful with it. If you want something better like the Ultimaker 2 or 3, you pay around 4000-5000$ in Sweden, and most people aren't ready to fork out that kind of money. However, you can always gamble on cheap Chinese clones of the older makerbots, often made in plastic instead of wood or just coated wood for that matter, but the same enthusiast process involved, it is NOT just print and you're ready, it takes TONS of work. Lots of preparation, and you need to clean and prep. your 3D work before you hit the print button so to speak.
I'm a 3D modeler, I've been working with 3D for over 20 years. I've YET to see a useful home-model that isn't just "look - I - printed - a - stock - model - ma!" tech demo. You'll actually be better off with a good CNC machine if you want to make prototypes on the cheap.
But they're fun tho...if you have the time AND the money to burn on the countless rolls of ABS plastic you're gonna need.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Makerbot capitalized on a great idea that came from expired patents. It wasn't cutting edge stuff but it is part of the history of 3D printing revolution, much like the people with 2400 baud modems were part of the internet revolution. There have already been significant advancements in 3D printing (like SLS and SLM) but they are locked behind patents and a lack of inexpensive pulsed lasers. Once these issues can be addressed, there will be inexpensive SLS and SLM which can then easily be used for semiconductor fabrication. It wouldn't be anything cutting edge but being able to make micrometer ICs on the cheap would be a boon for everyone.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What is needed is a not-very expensive device that can be put into the home that prints high quality metal parts, plastics, ceramics and electronics.
FTFY
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
One place where I see a 3D printer being of use is when repairing things with hard-to-obtain parts. But of course you can't do this unless you have a database of parts you can print for the thing you are repairing. So like MP3 players (which did not explode until there was a database of downloadable songs that you could buy for 99 cents), we need a database of 3D printable parts for things like dishwashing machines and refrigerators and the like which can be downloaded for relatively cheap and printed on your printer which can be used to fix the broken component.
Of course not all parts can be replaced like this. But certainly there are plenty of components (such as the plastic drive gears in a garage door opener) which can be printed and replaced by consumers.
At the higher end I can see companies like auto repair shops using professional or pro-consumer level printers for printing harder, and more refined components for auto repairs, and even using 3D subtractive technologies (like CAD-driven lathes and CAD-driven milling machines) for making metal components which fail that do not require tight tolerances.
I think where things like the MakerBot gadget failed was that it seemed to be oriented around the idea that everyone could design their own components. But even in today's environment there are far fewer mechanical engineers and designers than folks like that give credit for.
I initially preordered a Thing-O-Matic, but was quickly warned off while waiting for it to cancel and get one of the many great RepRap kits available. I'm glad I did. Anyone that spent more than an hour or two a week trying to 3D print stuff quickly came to realize that MakerBot printers were to be avoided. They cost more and were less capable than most of the alternatives. When people can 3D-print their own custom designs and thereby rapidly improve existing 3D printer designs, mass-producing printers on a long product life cycle is a losing proposition. As far as I can tell they only got as far as they did on Bre Pettis' cult of personality and hype. While Thingiverse is handy it is/was also subject to their whims and censorship, and they blocked any weapons or weapon parts from being uploaded there, highlighting the need for other methods of sharing 3D printing designs. All I can say in conclusion is good riddance to MakerBot, long live 3D printing.
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