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."

Comments

It's always cost

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's always cost

[Rei]

That's really a key issue. Most "standalone" things people want are not made of plastics, except for toys. There are a some things - for example, parts for a small homemade drone or whatnot, where strength is not important but lightness is. But most often, if you want something "standalone", you want it out of metal.

Being able to print replacement plastic parts for other things could be nice, mind you. For example, I've twice had to replace a plastic part on my refrigerator and it cost something like $50 each time with a nearly month delay, due to customs fees, shipping to where I am, etc. Having been able to print one out would have been great. Except, having a 3d printer alone wouldn't have been enough, because there's no "universal spare part database" that manufacturers upload to. A 3d scanner as well might have been able to enable reproducing the part from scanning its broken pieces, except that not only do you have to have one, the part was transparent, and many 3d scanners don't like transparent objects.

A "3d printing revolution" may come some day. But things are a lot more complicated than just making it possible to print something out of some material.

because

[Threni]

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.

Re:because

[AmiMoJo]

3D printing has some very good uses. Makerbot's problem is that rather than owning your own £1000 device just to do a few prints now and then, it makes more sense to use an online 3D printing service or the one at the local Hackerspace.

The online services are fairly cheap and have better quality printers. They offer finishing too like polishing, better materials and tighter tolerances. You would have to do a hell of a lot of 3D printing to make it worth buying your own printer.

!Revolution

[mwvdlee]

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.

Re:!Revolution

[Rei]

The word revolution also contains the word evolution, and you might have noticed that we've evolved past the point of calling a paper printer a necessary component of computing today.

And the word "internet" contains the word "tern", so clearly it is built upon angry arctic birds with sharp beaks that dive bomb anyone who gets too close to their nesting grounds.

Makerbot was the wrong messenger

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Where's my Von Neumann printer?

[Jesus H Rolle]

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.

Re:The problems are many

[dontbgay]

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.

Kind of obvious...

[MindPrison]

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.

Re:Kind of obvious...

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Yeah because those two things are entirely equivalent. I know my way around a manual lathe and mill well enough to not make an idiot of myself, and I've done a bit of CNC. I also happen to own a 3D printer and know my way round a CAD program well enough to take something simple enough all the way through to production. IOW, I'm a practicioner, not expert.

And I know what you're saying is off the mark.

Milling is a much greater pain in the arse than 3D printing. You just don't have the whole datumming/clamping problem that you have with 3D printing, for a start. I mean don't get me wrong, it's cool to make things out of metal, but christ flood coolant is a mess. A 3D printer is the kind of thing I can have up in my attic office/light workshop.

It can sit there running while I do other stuff and I can leave it overnight. The stock is cheap, easy to get and available in a wide variety of forms (how well does a CNC mill work with soft rubber?). These days it's well enough set up and calibrated that unless I have an awkward part to make (e.g. small contact area, very large) I can pretty much hit print and go. It certainly takes far, far, FAR less prep than milling anything.

Re:Kind of obvious...

[daid303]

Makerbot pushed too soon and too hard. Their machines where not up to the expectations set by marketing.

However, wood? That was years ago. We've progressed a lot. I'm not saying it's "one click and 100% reliability". But it's not as error prone as it was 3 years ago.

I work for Ultimaker, and the Ultimaker 2+ (while a bit older) is still selling very strong due it's reliability. Prototyping, showcase models and jig&fixtures are the main markets where we see sales.

I work at R&D, we have CNC machines next to our fleet of 3D printers to prototype as well, but they require a lot more expert knowledge, we have a full time operator on that. Unlike the 3D printers, that are even used by our reception desk, provide little to no noise, and no dust.

it's all about progress.

[Gravis Zero]

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.