
MakerBot's bold bet that 3D printers would become common - maverick_iceman
https://backchannel.com/the-3d-printing-revolution-that-wasnt-60b000c3a3ed#.chdpvs3bi
======
Animats
Makerbot's big problem was that their machine sucks. Low-end 3D printers just
aren't very good. The weld bonds between layers of ABS filaments are too weak,
and the objects break easily. They often break during building, just due to
thermal expansion. 3D printing requires better temperature control of the
process than Makerbot ever achieved.

TechShop used to have some MakerBots, but they've been replaced by better
machines. Materials costs are too high, though; the Form I and Form II use a
working fluid that costs $130/liter. (This is a bit like the inkjet printer
ink problem.) They also go through build tanks fairly fast; the working fluid
in its solid form builds up at the bottom. But the build quality is excellent.

The "maker revolution", such as it is, is driven by laser cutters. They're
accurate, fast, reliable, work on large sheets, and have no consumables.

The Next Big Thing is supposed to be desktop waterjet cutters. The Wazer,
though, is apparently very slow, and may use more garnet per cut than the big
waterjets. Wazer also glosses over the problem that waterjets generate a
sludge composed of water, shattered garnet, and whatever you're cutting. You
have to pay to get rid of that stuff. Waterjet cutting is a good industrial
process, but not office-ready.

(On a vaguely related note for maker types: does anyone know of a good low-
cost surface mount reflow oven? The common low-end T962 has a big hot spot in
the middle of the heating area and will scorch boards when used at lead-free
solder temperatures. Yes, there are fixes, but I want something that works out
of the box.)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
_The "maker revolution", such as it is, is driven by laser cutters. They're
accurate, fast, reliable, work on large sheets, and have no consumables._

We're pushing 14 bar of 99.8% purity nitrogen through our 4kW fibre laser
cutter to cut up to 12mm thick stainless steel.

Regular mild steel is reactive cut with 0.4 bar of oxygen and a trickle of
nitrogen for lense cooling.

We go through 110 cubic meters of nitrogen on a slow week. We've got a 1400
litre liquid nitrogen bulk tank and 3500 litre liquid oxygen bulk tank.

If you bought a laser cutter earlier you probably have a CO2 laser so there's
another consumable.

And we're getting slogged on lenses and protective glass windows. That's how
they get you, the long tail of proprietary parts. I need to find a cheaper
supplier of parts, but do you really want to put aftermarket lenses in your
bosses one million dollar laser cutter?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
To add to that, laser cutters are bloody dirty. Our machine is fully enclosed
with a large (4 meter high) external dust extractor and self clean filters.
The ultra fine dust that collects in the hopper is _not_ something you want to
be breathing.

And then theres the tons and tons of oxydized steel waste, stainless steel
dross, and scrap that fall through that has to be sent for recycling but no
one will take when the scrap prices are low like they are now.

~~~
Gracana
Pretty sure the parent is talking about cutting acrylic, wood, etc. At my last
job we had a small epilog laser and it was fairly low maintenance. Metal
cutting is another world entirely, for sure.

------
wanderingjew
This gets the current state of 3D printers half right. I wrote the same thing
seven months ago [http://hackaday.com/2016/04/28/the-makerbot-
obituary/](http://hackaday.com/2016/04/28/the-makerbot-obituary/), and yes,
the downfall of Makerbot was due to going closed source and shipping faulty
'smart' extruders.

However, the author gets it completely wrong by not looking at any of the
other companies shipping reprap designs.
[https://www.lulzbot.com/](https://www.lulzbot.com/) has seen consistent
yearly growth, from tens of thousands a month when the first MakerBots came
out to tens of millions per month today.
[http://prusaprinters.org/](http://prusaprinters.org/) is experiencing the
same growth, and that's despite an obscene number of clones of their machine
on the market. The growth of 3D printing never stopped. If you look at the
well-respected companies in the field, they're seeing consistent, increasing
revenue.

The trouble with the industry is Makerbot. They burned their community with
the change to closed source, they killed their industrial/educational market
with the Smart Extruder problems, _but_ they were the darling of the media.
When Makerbot laid off employees, it made headlines. When manufacturing was
outsourced to China, tech bloggers stumbled over themselves to get a post out.
As Makerbot went south, so went the perception of the industry.

3D printing is still a growing industry, and the tech in low-end printers is
getting really, really good. It'll never be a printer on every desk, but if
you find a household with a circular saw or a soldering iron, you'll probably
also find a 3D printer. That's what it should be, anyway: a tool, and not a
fetishized technology.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Well, the issue with 3D printing as I see it is 3D modeling.

Anyone can fire-up a word processor and produce interesting looking documents
and flyers.

A lot less people can fire-up a paint program and produce interesting images.

A lot less people than that can fire-up a 2D CAD program and produce 2D
mechanical or architectural drawings.

And yet a lot less people than that can run a 3D modeling program and product
much beyond trivial trinkets.

Beyond "Look! I printed this tiny Statue of Liberty from a file I got online"
and "Check out the letter A I made!" lies real mechanical design. This is
where mechanical things start to become useful.

At that level you now need far better understanding of how to design multi-
component mechanical assemblies, materials, etc. Anyone can do a little
pyramid in Sketchup. Not everyone can design a full robotic hand with
differential drive and force compliance.

I imagine most folks buy 3D printers, print a few things they can get online
and that's the end of it. A very few are inspired to learn some more and do
some basic modeling. I can only see a very, very few go all out, learn
advanced modeling and mechanical design and start to extract value out of
their 3D printers.

~~~
badsock
This is one area where I think VR will produce a solid win. IMO the steepest
parts of the modelling learning curve are the result of the complexity
required to manipulate a 3D world using 2D interfaces. With VR, both the input
and output interfaces have the same dimensionality as what you're building - I
think that'll have a big impact on how easy it is to get into, and
consequently how much content is created.

~~~
ffwacom
The interface to cad programs is trivial to learn, mechanical design isn't.
It's like saying the hardest part about programming is using the IDE.

~~~
grogenaut
To ellaborate, when you're using cad you have to give thought to how the part
will be produced as well. There are a lot of shapes that 3d can't build, there
are minimum angles, all sorts of restrictions. And there's the nitty gritty of
actually fitting real shapes together in the real world, having the right
flange sizes for holding screws, nuts, etc. And then you get into wear,
balance, etc.

------
Blahah
Home 3D printing is not worth it for most people in the developed world, but
in developing countries it can be.

When I lived in the UK, I would default to trying to 3D print anything I
needed around the house. But manufacturing is cheap enough, and availability
of products so ubiquitous in the UK, that it was almost always cheaper to just
buy the thing on Amazon instead of print it. The only thing I printed that I
couldn't have bought cheaply was custom plumbing parts.

Now I've moved to Kenya where Amazon doesn't deliver, import duty is extremely
high, and availability of low throughput items is non-existent. I 3D print
everything from spare parts for my truck to basic DIY supplies like rawl plugs
and cable tidies - things I just cant get cheaply. Of course the fact that 3D
printing is so useful in this environment is offset by the fact that hardly
anyone here can afford it. I'm planning to set up a community makespace where
people can print cheaply, but I don't expect it to cause a revolution.

~~~
kilroy123
Oh wow that's really interesting. What brought you to Kenya? (I'm also an
expat living abroad.)

~~~
Blahah
My wife and I were both coming to the end of our PhDs and knew we didn't want
to continue in academia. We have a successful software consultancy on the
side, and have been teaching bioinformatics around Africa for a couple of
years. We came to Kenya for the summer, then realised we had a much higher
quality of life here, our work had much greater potential impact, and there
was nothing stopping us from staying. So we stayed :D

------
AbrahamParangi
The author is wrong- but it's not their fault. All the interesting things (new
technologies) in 3D printing today are happening at an enterprise price scale
right now so if you're not looking too hard, it can be hard to see.

Today 3D printing is eating small-batch manufacturing. Tomorrow any production
run of less than 5000 units will happen on 3D printers.

Bre Pettis and the maker (and investment) community had the right ideas about
the future, but I believe Makerbot focused too much on how to sell a hot glue
gun (with extra steps) to the public and far too little on how to make a
product that was truly useful to their customers.

(disclaimer: I work here [https://markforged.com](https://markforged.com),
we're hiring)

~~~
gregpilling
I am looking at your machines now. I can't seem to understannd why your
smaller machine is $3500 and the slightly larger one with manual laser scan is
$69,000. Its not like the laser scan is controlling the machine, and adjusting
printing in real time.

20x price change. If I just want to print in Onyx material, there seems to be
no point in the more expensive machine. The carbon filament printing is cool,
and I may step up to the $13,000 machine. I just wish someone could justify
the big machine - or in reality I wish it was actually significantly bigger.
Double each dimension, so 6x the build volume of the small machine. It is
using linear guides, it is easy to purchase them in any size needed.

The pricing seems to be arbitrarily aimed at maximum cash extraction from the
customer, not reality. I will probably end up with the cheaper machine. I am
looking for a way to print parts I would normally machine from aluminum.

It is a well built machine, however. It makes very very nice out of the box
prints too. Retail quality, probably the first machine that I have seen using
filaments that can do that (in the pro-sumer price range, excluding big dollar
machines). It will be machines like this one with good parts inside (slides,
bearings, servos) that will make 3D printing really useful.

At the tradeshow I saw the machine at (SEMASHOW) , the side by side comparison
to the machined aluminum parts was quite impressive. The part felt like half
the weight, and had really nice surface finish.

~~~
AbrahamParangi
If what you need is a regular FDM machine our $3500 printer is a really,
really fantastic one. It's the least hassle and has the best out of the box
prints out of any desktop 3D printer I've used.

If you're looking to print aluminum replacement parts, you should look at the
higher end machines. They have the ability to print continuous composites (our
homegrown, weird, and very powerful 3D printing technology) which will let you
print parts which are strength/stiffness competitive with Aluminum.

While our $69,000 printer definitely has an enterprise price-tag, it's still
the cheapest (on an amortized cost basis) way of getting strong parts with a
24hr or less turnaround. The purpose of the laser scanner is to close the loop
on what is typically an open-loop system in essentially all other 3D printers.
I can't say too much more about this but we're adding a lot of cool features
all the time.

(Obvious Disclaimer: I'm trying to sell you on the printers we make because I
believe they are the best)

~~~
gregpilling
So why doesn't the big machine actually print something larger? I have a Haas
Mini Mill, which has a 16x12x10 inch work volume, and that is small a lot of
times.

I would buy the $69000 version in a heartbeat (we are a manufacturing company)
if it would print a 12x12x12 inch size or a little larger

~~~
AbrahamParangi
On the Mark X (69k version) our build volume is almost exactly 13x10x8 inches
(we round down slightly when we list dimensions on our website).

If you want I can put you in touch with someone who can help you figure out if
your use cases will fit our printer. Send me a note if you're interested:
abe@markforged.com

------
ideonexus
3D printing is very much like coding, promising a revolution for those with
the mindset to work with it. My wife, a coder by profession, is extremely
active in the 3D printing community, and her ability to research and stick to
problems is why she is successful at it. This is not an accessible hobby, as
is evidenced by so many of my friends who own 3D printers that started
gathering dust the moment they learned it's not simply plug-and-play. You have
to figure out your infill settings, watch your inclines, your print-speeds at
various points in your prints, know what temperatures work well with what
materials, know how to replace the parts that go bad every few hundred hours
of printing, etc, etc, etc. It doesn't help that you will sometimes be hours
into a print before you realize you screwed something up.

The 3D printing community, like some coding communities, are very supportive
and incredibly welcoming to beginners, but the skills we use in coding, the
ability to research, experiment, and stick through extremely frustrating
problems, are skills most people don't ever really learn. Our public education
system is actively trying to address this with the much-misunderstood Common
Core standards, but until such a mindset becomes more prevalent in our
culture, things like coding and 3D printing will only continue to grow slowly
in popularity.

In the meantime, nerds should see 3D printing as a still-uncharted territory
for innovation and opportunity.

~~~
leke
It sounds a bit like we are at the stage when computers were using punch
cards. Maybe in a decade or two, things will get a bit more interesting.

I was thinking of getting a cheap 3D printer for Christmas, but will probably
put it off now I realise it's not, as you say, pulg'n'play.

~~~
pavlov
_It sounds a bit like we are at the stage when computers were using punch
cards. Maybe in a decade or two, things will get a bit more interesting._

Agreed. MakerBot in 2012 was like trying to start Apple in 1962. What kind of
personal computer could one build from the era's transistors and magnetic core
memory? That primitive thing could have sparked someone's imagination, but it
wouldn't have had any mass-market applications.

3D printing's Apple moment is still waiting for its equivalent of the
integrated circuit (a technological enabler) followed by a VisiCalc (a killer
application).

------
sytelus
I'm guilty as charged. I predicted in 2014 that within 3 years majority of
upper middle class households will have 3D printer just like they have paper
printer. Boy, I was wrong and it feels quite laughable claim now. After
initial hype of continuous reduction of prices, things have just came to halt.
Most people don't want to spend few hundred dollars just to build lifeless
models of dragons and there has been no killer application that can justify
the price.

~~~
kylec

        I predicted in 2014 that within 3 years majority of upper middle class
        households will have 3D printer just like they have paper printer.
    

I don't have a paper printer anymore, and I wonder how many households still
do. I'd wager that more households got rid of their paper printers in the past
3 years than bought 3D printers.

~~~
sytelus
I also don't use paper printer more than may be 5 times a year. But those 5
times are important times and these things are cheap enough for the
convenience of not have to travel to some shop with USB.

------
h4nkoslo
3D printing is inherently limited by what you can do with plastics (until you
start getting into laser sintering or something else exotic). The niche
application ends up being Yoda figurines and etc that require weird shapes and
high detail.

For my money, cheap & modular mills like those at
[http://carbide3d.com/](http://carbide3d.com/) are much more promising because
you can actually make structural components. A $500 CNC'd Grizzly mill
equivalent (hell, probably $1000 if it was user friendly enough) would be
extremely useful and would sell like hotcakes, but of course that's
empirically extremely difficult to design since mills are a mature technology
that requires things like calibration, knowledge of tools and materials to
use, etc. Even their $1100 machine would probably be fun as hell, but it's a
price point that actually requires a use in mind.

Incidentally, as far as I can tell the most successful home-manufacturing
product of the past 10 years or so has been
[https://ghostgunner.net/](https://ghostgunner.net/) .

~~~
nabla9
I think the economic model of 3d printing in home is off.

The goal should be to have advanced 3D printers, latches and CNC milling
machine shops that provide easy to use services for walk-in customers or mail-
orders. It should work just as easily as copying and printing services work
for PDF files. You don't know if they have Xerox or Canon and you don't care.
You want to know if they can print A1 and things like that.

As 3D printing advances, having affordable access to several $20,000 -
$200,000 specialized printers in your city beats the $2,000 printer in your
home for a serious hobbyist or small business. Maybe its worth paying
$200-$300 for printer you can use for prototypes before ordering more
expensive work.

~~~
h4nkoslo
The problem with 3D printing / lathing / milling as a service is that
particular parts can have orders of magnitude differences in machining costs,
and typically you need humans in the loop to figure out if you're asking for
something ridiculous (or dangerous, or harmful to the machine...)

These guys are close to that model:
[https://www.plethora.com/](https://www.plethora.com/) . Their supposed killer
advantage is that they have spent a lot of time deriving a cost model for
arbitrary designs which allows relatively unsupervised submissions, but
because they're very dependent on that cost model, the number of operations
and customizations they support is fairly limited.

~~~
Gibbon1
That sounds like the PCB prototyping/short run production house model. Which
makes more sense. As long as the cost isn't too high and the turn around time
is short.

------
hyperopia
Top highlight on this:

> Writing on Brokelyn.com, former employee Isaac Anderson placed the blame for
> those three machines’ problems squarely on MakerBot’s decision to go closed
> source. They could no longer rely on their old customer base of “capable
> hobbyists who provided tech-savvy feedback and suggestions for improvement.”
> The new class of buyers, he wrote, “were largely incapable non-hobbyists
> with no useful feedback, only unrealistic expectations.”

------
willholloway
3D FDM plastic printers are an useful component of the future the hype
described, but they are just a component, they are not energy to matter Star
Trek replicators.

If one designs for it, it is possible to build complex products. FarmBot is a
good example. It is made with a combination of 3D FDM printed parts, flat
metal parts that could be made with a plasma cutter or CNC, open source
software and compute provided by small ARM computers, and commodity produced
parts like wires, motors and extruded aluminium rails.

Thats how RepRaps are made, and that is how you have to build in this new way.
Very few things are solid plastic shapes.

3D FDM printers are great for designing and producing the case that your
etched PCB, switches and LED's attach to. It is an ingredient in the recipe.

FDM can be used to make custom metal components through green sandcasting
metals.

If more projects were designed like RepRap, or FarmBot, this new industrial
revolution could still take shape. Robotic PCB production is another key
ingredient that is needed for reality to match up to the hype.

~~~
jokoon
Yes, until people realize you can't make everything with plastic and that you
need metals, maybe 3D printing with go somewhere.

Not to forget than certain steel parts might not even be accessible to mere
mortals, either because certain steel require certain things.

I'm not against fixing your dishwasher with some plastic part, but that's far
from a revolution.

And it's not like industry won't fight it either.

~~~
jordanb
You can't even print composites. Seriously, most 3d printing fanboys I've met
couldn't even begin to define the term "tensile strength".

I had one guy insist that his 3d printer could 3d print wood. I said there's
no way, so the next day he brought in an object made out of ABS with wood
flower suspended in it. He literally couldn't comprehend how that differs from
a real wood object, structurally, or even better how it'd differ from a cold-
molded composite wood object.

~~~
jacobolus
3d printing sucks for any kind of production structural part.

It’s awesome for abstract mathematical sculpures though.

~~~
fit2rule
>3d printing sucks for any kind of production structural part.

Good thing AuroraLabs is working on that problem. Won't be long until their 3D
printers are standard accessories on oil-platforms and deep mines and the ISS,
oh my...

[http://auroralabs3d.com](http://auroralabs3d.com)

------
patrickg_zill
So at Tinkermill.org in Longmont CO, where I am a member, we have 3d printing
machines.

We also have a good machine shop, and some of the members got together and
refurbished an old injection molding machine.

So, we can 3d print a test, then can transform the finished design into
instructions for the CNC machine, to produce a mold which goes into the
injection molding machine.

So far no one has used this to prototype a part that started a business, but
that is a great way to use a 3d printer, as a first run prototype which can
then be used for other manufacturing.

A guy who is designing a game used both the 3d printer and laser cutter to
make his prototype board and pieces.

We also have a few whizzes who have whipped up replacement parts and e.g. hose
adapters for the dust collector in the woodshop.

Overall 3d printing is like the early days of the commercial Internet: people
intuitively knew it was changing things, but had only scattered anecdotes as
proof.

------
personjerry
I think that we hackers tend to focus on tech-oriented looks at why things
succeed or fail. I propose another idea: that we need education of 3D modeling
in schools, at a basic level, in order to encourage more people to understand
the possibilities.

In middle school we'd learn various things about art, art history, art
techniques, and while they weren't comprehensive, they provided a basic level
of appreciation for art. As an example, if I hadn't learned about techniques
like shading or perspective drawing, I would've thought that they were
impossible for a layman like me to attempt.

For most people (and by "most people" I mean anecdotally most people I know),
3d modeling and 3d printing seems to be at this unapproachable level of
complexity. If we can show kids the simpler side of 3d modeling, there would
be a much greater consumer interest in 3d printing.

~~~
analognoise
I'd rather have logic taught in schools before we waste time with 3D printing.
We need to help people develop their natural bullshit filters so that fake
news, advertising, and rhetoric have less impact.

~~~
rmelly
Unfortunately, I don't think teaching logic will get you what you want here.
Fake news may be false, bit it is often (mostly) logically consistent - this
is part of the power.

------
azdle
For anyone who stops half way thinking this is some comeback of the marketing
of makerbot, keep reading. Overall it's a fair summary of what happened in the
world of makerbot.

As someone who was listening when makerbot was just starting up, I think that
Makerbot as a company both did 3D printing a great service and a great
disservice. Without makerbot it's entirely possible that without makerbot
making as big of a splash as they did and without the press that they were
able to create 3d printing wouldn't have taken off like it did. Unfortunately
the disservices that they then did to the 3d printing community had so much
more of an impact because of all that press that was primarily focused on them
and equating '3d printer' to mean 'makerbot'.

All that said, I'll never give up my 3D printers. For me it was still a
revolution, I think I just had a lower bar for what it needed to be to be a
revolution.

------
cooper12
> The new class of buyers, he wrote, “were largely incapable non-hobbyists
> with no useful feedback, only unrealistic expectations.”

I find this to be a strange statement when the previous paragraph talked about
a class-action lawsuit due to a faulty extruder. Is it an unrealistic
expectation now to expect your thousand-dollar 3D printer to Just Work? You
can't just promise someone the future and then backtrack when people hold you
to it.

------
Taek
It's just too early. I think we will see a 3D printing revolution but you need
to be able to do useful stuff with the printers.

A good use case would be anything that's usually mass produced but actually
benefits from high customization. Like clothes. If you could 3D print clothes,
you might have a market. Or cables (electrical, Ethernet, etc.) that are an
exact length. Or perhaps things like toothbrushes, or contact lenses.

The technology isn't very close to that yet. But if it keeps improving,
there's a good chance that we really will end up with a 3D printer in every
home.

~~~
andrewflnr
There are sewing robots. I don't know if they go as far as cutting the fabric
for themselves.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, there would be a revolution if you could buy a robot that would take
fabric and a CAD design as input, and gave you ready-to-wear dress as an
output. Without that, it's "meh, faster to go to a store" situation.

------
visarga
Cars and computers didn't take off for decades, but when they did, they really
revolutionized the world.

We aren't even at the Ford Model T stage with 3D printing.

------
iamgopal
The problem with 3D Printer is, it is no match to the existing manufacturing
technologies. Imagine, the sub micron accuracy of iPhone, which in no way
achievable with current 3D printing technology. The technology in to which 3D
printer can really revolutionize the world right now is Electric Motor. ( Here
I have said it, please don't patent it. :P ) I am actually doing it. If
interested, drop me a mail. :)

~~~
jolhoeft
I'm curious how you are using 3-D printing for an electric motor. Most of the
key components, steel laminations, copper windings, magnets, commutator and
brushes (if you are going old school :-) ) don't lend themselves to 3-D
printing. I just see some mounting hardware being usefully printed.

~~~
iamgopal
Induction motor as currently built are actually pretty good. Nothing to
improve there, as they are usually fixed speed motors. When you think about
automative or very variable speed motors, which have much higher power density
and energy density, in those situations rotor cooling problems, eddy current
losses, hysterisis losses are very fun problem to solve in context of 3D
printing. Im not sure how much improvement can be done, but lets see..

------
legodt
3d printing might not have had the huge impact expected for it in the consumer
world, but in the professional world printing is hugely important. Getting a
physical model of your cad file overnight from a black box at your desk or in
your model shop is a workflow game changer. Make an ergonomic change to your
grip? Test it out almost immediately. Manufacturer needs you to change the
draft on your shell? Print it first before sending it out and make sure
everything still fits. When previously you had to make engineering accuracy
models all day in the shop or get a part made by a small run manufacturer, now
prototyping and testing variations from cad can all be done in house.
Consumers might not be directly benefiting from the advent of democratized 3d
printers, but they are benefiting in the gains of efficiency at the firms
designing their goods

------
partycoder
I think it is similar to what happened to AI in the so called "AI winter",
where professionals, consumers, companies and funding in general walked away
from AI for quite some time.

We do know that for sure 3D printing will make a comeback for good one day,
probably one decade in the future.

~~~
detaro
I'm not sure that is comparable. 3D printing isn't dead in professional use,
research is still happening, has an active hobbyist community, ... it's just
the "3D printer in every home" idea that Makerbot and others tried to peddle
that's not happening.

------
vacuumator
The propaganda echo chamber apparatus killed 3D printing in the womb, when
they started harping on bullshit about 3D printed guns.

Almost zero nerds gave half a shit about printing guns. Like, at all.

But news, news, news sites had a story to sell, right around the time of the
Silk Road takedown, and poof, nerds received a message, which, in the context
of other dubious criminal prosecutions, communicated that an alphabet agency
might just destroy you and ruin your life because some abiguous technical
detail made for an easy target.

Pirating music and movies, becomes a child pornography felony. Trading in bit
coins becomes a Silk Road drug bust. 3D printing becomes weapons possessions
with mandatory minimums.

Message received, propaganda apparatus.

Risk total ruin, by buying a 3D printer.

Got it. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Move right along.

~~~
atemerev
What's the point of 3D printing a bad gun in a country where in some states
you can go to Walmart and buy a nice gun there, for a fraction of a cost? And
it's not like you could 3D print ammo.

------
snarfy
It's a useful tool for engineers, but not everybody is an engineer. It was
hyped like it was a replicator from star trek. The novelty of printing little
plastic figurines wears off quickly. At some point you realize that you can
buy a bag of a much higher quality injection molded version of the same thing
at the dollar store.

They are useful for making things that don't yet exist, but that means it must
be something you come up with and model yourself. And this is where they are
no longer the tool of users, only engineers.

------
gfosco
My wife and I have a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro and use it often. It prints
like every kind of filament, including wood and metal filled. We've done
several cool projects and are constantly on the lookout for the next creation.
Next up we're looking at fabric printers.

------
disposablezero
Makerbot was a Model A: clunky, slow, power-hungry and limited to all but
geeks; it is certainly a lot cheaper for a hobbyist than buying a Stratasys
the size of a large refrigerator and costing as much as a small home.

To have distributed manufacturing, a much faster, higher capacity, more energy
efficient, more flexible (more materials, deposition/removal methods), easy-
to-use/-monetize/-protect IP machine/front-end would need to happen to be
practical to do more than prototyping.

Amazon could pull this off and save on 'round-the-world shipping by becoming
more of an IP to end-user fulfillment marketplace instead of a warehouse
logistics shop. (for products which can be built JIT from standard
parts/materials)

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jakozaur
By the way, which 3d Printer would you recommend for hobby use case?

1\. Prefer plug and play, interested in making stuff not debugging 3d
printers. Probably that exclude most of cheap 3d printers.

2\. Hobby, so likely will go with FDM instead of SLA. FDM seems cheaper,
faster and more materials for just a little precision loss.

3\. Zortrax M200 ([https://zortrax.com/](https://zortrax.com/)) seems to be
the best option. Any other suggestions?

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blhack
From what I've heard/read, this is the best ~$1000 printer available right
now:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017IZBFB2/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_tt...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017IZBFB2/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2RRCDXZXQJUJ7&coliid=I8VCNVXQ3AOND)

(There seems to be some curiosity in this thread about what printer you should
get)

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erikb
Oh, that was a painful read. Repeatedly they mentioned that all development to
this point wasn't able to provide a cheap enough solution for the common user.
And if you ever had a 3d printed piece in your hand you also know that the
desktop printers still are not detailed and flexible enough.

So in end effect the current status doesn't proof at all that there is not a
market, just that the technology can't reach market yet.

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Sir_Cmpwn
I just got a MonoPrice Select Mini a few weeks ago for $200, and spent about
$30 on upgrades for it (an e3d hotend, the rest of the upgrades I printed
myself), and about $80 on 4 1kg spools of filament. It's really great, I'm
loving it so far. Been making my own things with OpenSCAD too, and some of my
friends have been making things with SketchUp for me to print.

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westoncb
Reading the comments, it seems like the main thing missing here is multi-
material 3d printing. Yes, there's no killer application for just printing
plastic, but checkout, e.g., [http://www.voxel8.com/](http://www.voxel8.com/)

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wfunction
I'm glad someone finally said it. I don't have a particular habit of
predicting things correctly, but in this case I really couldn't see what the
point of a 3D printer was. Even when I was given free access to one I had no
idea what I would ever want to build.

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erikb
"Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you
are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t
and do it."

Can anybody explain how that should work out? Usually people laugh about
someone who only pretends.

~~~
abraae
Pretty funny given recent events.

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Tempest1981
At the Maker faire this summer, Almost half of the largest building was 3D
printer displays. Not much variety.

Personally, I found the old displays that were more electronics-based more
interesting – more variety.

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matthewhall
Jeez now I realize why the maker bit at my school is never used and the $600
replicator 2 clones are

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stevewilhelm
Where is the companion piece "The Bitcoin Revolution that Wasn't?"

