
What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect - hugs
http://www.hugs.io/2015/04/18/makerbot-and-the-osborne-effect.html
======
Animats
The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't
work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on
that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors.
They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm
or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient
of expansion to build something tall without delaminating due to thermal
stress.

The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end
processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography
printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo
in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working
fluid, so that's how they make their money.

Eventually, somebody is going to get low-cost laser sintering of metal powder
figured out. But not quite yet. The Aurora Labs 3D metal printer turned out to
cost about 10x the original $4000 price. MatterFab hasn't shipped their
device. There's a low-end electroplating printer, but that's inherently a very
slow process.

[1] [http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-
kno...](http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-
fo-508176750)

~~~
dragontamer
> The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end
> processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography
> printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker
> Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the
> working fluid, so that's how they make their money.

High quality desktop CNC Mills are out.

[http://carbide3d.com/](http://carbide3d.com/)

$3000 for a proven technology. Home-made CNC mills have always come in between
$1000 to $3000, and now professional turnkey solutions are available in that
price range.

I do realize CNC machines are the "opposite" of a 3D Printer. But if a CNC
machine can get a software stack as easy to use as the 3d printers, then I
think they'd get a lot more use.

~~~
stan_rogers
Easy-to-use already exists, it's getting it at a reasonable cost that's
missing. ArtCAM, for instance, will gladly sell you something in the
automobile-priced, dongle-secured range, that can handle all of the toolpath
calculations, tool swaps, etc. (so you don't need to be a machinist to
understand what's going to break and what's going to burn, etc.) But if you
need $10K software to turn a model into instructions for your $2K mill,
there's a bit of a prohibitive imbalance there from a hobbyist's perspective.

~~~
dragontamer
MeshCAM (what comes free with the Nomad 883) is easy to use... although speeds
and feeds still need to be manually inputted. But still, if you break your
block of wood because you feed was too high, you just drop down the feed (or
increase those RPMs) and spend $5 on another 2x4 block of wood.

Or if your RPM was too high and you smell burning, you drop it down on the
next run.

In the worst case, if you catastrophically fail at those numbers and break say
an end-mill ($20 to $50), that's still not that big of a deal. A major mistake
/ catastrophe still is cheaper to deal with than regular maintenance of say...
a Form 1 stereo lithography plastic that costs something like $150 per liter.

I'd bet you that MeshCAM (again, free with the Nomad, $200ish otherwise) will
create more precise parts than your typical Makerbot stuff anyway. Waterfall +
Pencil Finish is more than enough to get the majority of projects done.
(Steriolithography from Form1 looks... _very_ impressive though, but the
running costs are absurd in comparison)

ArtCAM, and other professional toolsets, are probably much better suited for
professional artists who need to keep track of the grain of wood and the
cutting direction. But... you can ignore the details of wood-grain and still
come up with something with _far_ more detail and precision than anything
Makerbot can ever hope to do.

Basically, you start to care about those minor details with CNC machines
because you actually have a machine that has such accuracy that those details
matter. Also, $5 wood blocks and $20 leather (Drag Knife on a CNC machine:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMoRUZnvbXw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMoRUZnvbXw))
honestly feel more "artisan" than the $100+/liter plastic that comes out of a
Form1.

------
ChuckMcM
The challenge of being an open source hardware manufacturer in the presence of
an economy that is better suited to create hardware than you are (China in
this case) is that you really have to execute well. I agree it was a huge
mistake on Bre's part to leak the upcoming Rep 2. Without incoming orders you
have to fund current orders and R&D out of cash on hand, and that doesn't work
without a big line of credit.

But it is also really unfair to second guess someone who is riding a bucking
bull in a nursery. That is what running a very successful startup can be like,
lots of money coming in, decisions needing to be made with too little
information, large outcome swings based on them with precious little runway to
correct for errors. When you are in that space and someone reaches in and
offers to lift you out, it can be hard to be rational about the choices you
are making. It seemed to me that Stratasys knew exactly what they where doing,
and less so for Bre and crew.

Unfortunately for Stratasys they failed to understand _why_ Makerbot had been
growing like it had, probably taking the late product launch as all the
rationale they needed for a cash short company. I believe that had they
understood what they had stepped in to, they would have approached it very
differently and made very different choices. Not the least of which would be a
mixed model of open and proprietary gizmos for their printers.

I am convinced that their lack of openness lead directly to the C.F. that is
their "SmartStruder" which now has people calling for class action lawsuits.

A company with the Goodwill of a Printrbot and the resources of a Stratasys
would have dominated the 3D market completely. Instead small printer companies
are flourishing and kickstarters for new printers regularly cross $1M in
pledges (and that is for printers no one has any right to believe can even be
built!)

I found it hugely ironic that Bre is on the cover of this month's Popular
Science [1]

[1] [http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-
awards](http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards)

~~~
FreakyT
> I am convinced that their lack of openness lead directly to the C.F. that is
> their "SmartStruder" which now has people calling for class action lawsuits.

What is the story of this? (I tried searching for "SmartStruder class action"
and all I found was this particular comment.)

~~~
makomk
It's actually called the Smart Extruder, you should find more results if you
search for that. Rumour has it they knew they were dodgy, shipped them anyway,
and then quietly redesigned them a few months later:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/2ovd27/makerbot_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/2ovd27/makerbot_aware_of_faulty_extruder/)

------
bane
I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than
tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer
would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with
a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative.

The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most
people just don't need to run off a couple copies of a 3d trinket or toy with
enough frequency to make it worth it. And the subset of those people with
useful 3d-modeling skills is some tiny fraction of that number.

Whenever I see somebody using a 3d printer at the consumer level for something
useful, it always seems to have just been for a one-off Arduino case or
something like that. That's really just not incentive for me to spend the time
and money to get setup with 3d printing, when I can just buy a case off of
Amazon or whatever and be done with it.

The cost of the parts is the cost of your time + materials + setup costs (the
printer). Is an Arduino case really worth $1400-$6500? That price only comes
down if I print off more stuff I suppose, but at what point do the trinkets
and dodads I'm printing off start to make economic and time sense? That's
pretty far down the production chain, and I simply don't have that much stuff
to print.

~~~
vonnieda
I was in the same boat, until very recently.

I am the founder of OpenPnP, an Open Source SMT pick and place platform. I
eschewed 3D printing for my design work for several years thinking that it was
not accurate enough, not strong enough, etc. Having experience with CNC mills
I kept comparing 3D printed parts to ones cut accurately from aluminum and
found them lacking.

What I recently came to realize is that the power of 3D printing is in it's
instant turnaround and the ability to quickly iterate. Now, I design my parts
for 3D printing. They look and function differently than they would if I had
cut them from aluminum and I have to take the limitations of 3D printing into
account, but they work. And most importantly, I can test a new design simply
by hitting "Print" and waiting an hour or two.

I agree that much of the consumer market is dominated by people who buy a 3D
printer and then use it to print trinkets until they get bored, but there are
also a lot of people out there who are engineering new devices and machines
using the ability to quickly test new designs on a 3D printer.

~~~
nkurz
Are there advantages to the 3D printing process besides the speed? That is, if
a fool-proof CNC mill was available for the same price, would you switch back?
Is the price difference of the consumables a significant factor?

I have trouble shaking the feeling that printing 3D parts with little dabs of
plastic has a lot in common with putting ink on pages with a dot-matrix
printer. While they were revolutionary for the time, you don't see many dot-
matrix printers these days.

~~~
vonnieda
The primary advantage is that a 3D printer is truly able to create features in
any orientation in 3D while a typical mill cannot. The price of consumables
isn't really something I consider important, especially when prototyping.

The thing that a lot of people don't realize about traditional machining
operations is just how long they take to set up. I didn't, myself, until I
bought a CNC mill. I thought it was just a matter of sticking a big hunk of
metal in it, hitting Go and then coming back when it's done.

The first problem is that for a typical 3D axis milling machine you have to
find a way to mount the material you intend to cut without getting in the way
of the cutter, and if your part is at all complex this can be very tricky.
Different materials and thicknesses all require different methods of mounting,
and learning how to mount and setup a part is an education in itself.

The second problem is that a 3 axis mill can really only cut down. That means
if you want a hole in the up/down Z axis, you are fine. If you want one in the
X/Y axes you are out of luck. You have to finish your Z axis operations,
unmount the part, turn it, find a new way to mount it, zero the machine to the
new part configuration and then do more operations. If you have a part that
has, for instance, mounting holes on several sides you are looking at a LOT of
manual work to complete that part. And each time you remount the part you have
to be able to tell the machine exactly how the part is mounted so that
everything lines up.

Industrial machine shops get around this by using 5 or more axis mills. These
are insanely expensive and not really available to the home / hobby engineer,
although I am quite interested in what
[http://www.pocketnc.com/](http://www.pocketnc.com/) is doing.

3D printers, on the other hand, are truly 3D. You can have features in almost
any configuration and it's no more difficult to print than a simple cube. It
is literally a matter of starting it up and coming back when it's done.

I don't think 3D printing is the be all end all of machining, especially FFF,
but for the home or hobby engineer it's an incredibly powerful and easy to use
technology right now.

------
jacknews
To avoid the Osborne effect, they could simply have produced new versions and
only open the source once released.

That's not the real problem. I guess it was a combination of chinese knockoffs
and stratasys proprietary instincts.

In any case, IMHO, the layoffs are a result of losing the open community,
which is now being serviced by true open-source proponents like Aleph with
their excellent Lulzbot printers.

~~~
hugs
Yup, I only buy LulzBot printers (I own 3 now), pretty much a direct result of
MakerBot's decision to go closed.

~~~
simcop2387
Just got a taz 5 a few days ago. Been really impressed with them. I still
don't have the bed fully level but the PEI surface has been wonderful compared
to everything else i've ever used. it's like it's a completely different kind
of machine. I looked at them for the same reason, open source but they really
deliver on the actual product. my only complaint is one i'm going to fix
myself if i can't find any other way. the LCD is bright at night when printing
in the dark.

------
orionblastar
The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too
early cancels sales of the current project.

People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining
sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition.
Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to
DOS programs.
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608077.aspx)

Also Kaypro had won over Osborne customers with their own CP/M machines that
reached the market before the new Osborne models.

Commodore had the VIC-20 and later Commodore-64 that provided cheaper
computers as did the 8 bit Atari line. Some people would rather buy a $399
Commodore or Atari computer and hook it up to their TV screen.

So announcing a new product too far ahead of time was only one factor in the
Osborne effect.

Makerbot has Chinese competition, and they had technical issues as well. There
are more factors here than just announcing a new product too far ahead of
time. Instead of Osborne it is more like the Apple III
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III)

~~~
hyperpallium
And Osbourne probably preannounced so early _because_ of the competition (to
pre-empt users switching). Preannouncement and failure were correlated due to
a common cause.

OTOH MS vapourware has scuttled competitors. So it depends on your market
power. Osbourne was against IBM and a disruptive tide.

~~~
jkestner
Right - it was a move of desperation. Perhaps Osbourne could've
marketed/distributed their way out. But it's hard to position yourself as the
brand that no one gets fired for buying when someone's already got that spot.

With MakerBot, another issue may be that the market is approaching saturation.
As they're being eaten by cheaper competitors, they haven't been able to
create a new market to grow into. I suppose the Replicator is an attempt to do
that - how has that done?

------
argonaut

        Gee, thanks, Bre. Again, why do you think that's true?
        How did you come to that conclusion?
        What do you know that those of us still in the "fantasy world" don't know?
        Aha, that's it! 
        MakerBot fell victim to the Osborne effect, where talking openly about future products hurt the sale of their current products. 
        Sales dropped, so they got scared and went closed. 
        That sounds like a way more honest and real answer than the non-existence of an open source steel bender.
    

Commenting on the tone alone, this strikes me as the logic of someone who has
already arrived at a conclusion (the MakerBot founders are concealing the real
reason behind their abandonment of open-source), and is merely searching for
evidence to back up a conclusion they've already arrived at.

~~~
monochromatic
My thoughts exactly. If the statements about open source hardware don't fit
your worldview, just deride them and make up some other explanation!

~~~
hugs
I didn't deride his statements because they didn't fit my worldview, I derided
them for making no sense. He was the one that kept coming up with new
explanations. His latest (which I quote in the post) is other-wise known as
the Osborne effect.

~~~
monochromatic
Ok. But you blew off the main justification he gave for no sensible reason I
can see. You just didn't like it, so you found some other explanation.

------
blhack
Makerbot is doomed because not only will nobody in the hobbyist market buy
their printers anymore, but when the people who are in the hobbyist market get
asked about what printer to buy, the will recommend _against_ makerbot (well,
more specifically against Bre Pettis).

~~~
devopsproject
We just bought a 3d printer and noticed this. There were so many negative
comments about makerbot

------
tarr11
Perhaps an open source model might have mitigated the atrocious quality of the
5th generation Makerbot. I must have replaced our extruder 5 times already,
and the entire machine had to also be replaced once. This is all on a maker
care warranty, so no matter what they charge, there is no profit left.

If I could have replaced the extruder with an open source clone that
functioned better, I would have.

------
alayne
This seems like a normal result of post buyout restructuring by Stratasys.
Does anyone have sales numbers to know if they are actually having issues?

~~~
ChristianGeek
This is what the business press is reporting, and it makes sense. The author
of the article obviously has a grudge against MakerBot and decided to go
postal against them when he read the layoff headlines without doing due
diligence first. (Wait until he finds out they closed their retail stores!)

------
jjwiseman
I'm curious to see how 3D Robotics handles a similar situation. Their drone
platform has been open source hardware plus open source software. There are
Chinese companies cloning the hardware and selling it for much cheaper than 3D
Robotics sells it for.

3D Robotics just raised $50M in a series C. It will be interesting to see how
their commitment to openness holds up.

~~~
steve19
3D Robotics only open source the flight controller hardware and software and
ground control software. delivering a safe drone platform requires a lot more
hardware (the aircraft itself, camera and radio gear) and firmware (camera,
gimbal, speed controller radio gear).

~~~
jjwiseman
My guess, though, is that as the industry matures, low-level components like
ESC & radio firmwares are not really going to be where most value gets added.
Software is definitely going to eat the drone world, and it's going to be at
the higher levels: First it will be flight software with amazing new features
(VSLAM, sense and avoid, swarm control) and then once that's more mature, it
will be the operations-level super-ground-control-system stuff.

------
spiritplumber
What I generally do is "I've got Rev C for sale. Source and schematics for Rev
A remain available on my wiki, sources and schematics for Rev B now are
available on the same wiki."

------
fsk
I interviewed for a software job there twice. It seemed pretty dysfunctional
to me. For one project, they had 20 people working on something that I thought
would take 3-5 people.

~~~
mrfusion
I've found that's the case with almost all software projects.

------
pmorici
This leaves out some really important background. Makerbot quietly sold out to
Stratasys in 2013. When they did that they lost their soul and their
independence. The first sign of that was when they went closed source
alienating a huge portion of their customer base. This is just another shoe
dropping now that Stratasys owns them they are moving to more tightly
integrate Makerbot into the rest of the company. These layoffs are supposedly
to remove duplicative positions due to the buyout. There is a good documentary
on Netflix about the 3d printing revolution called "Print the Legend" It
covers a lot of the history behind Makerbot including the fact that there were
really 3 co-founders instead of just the one that gets regularly mentioned in
news coverage.

------
anonbanker
TL;DR - If your corporation is extremely open/transparent, including R&D, you
may risk losing sales from people willing to wait for a version 2.0. If so,
don't close up/make opaque your business as a response, or you'll end up
killing your core audience.

------
dsjoerg
doomed is a strong word, and the article makes no attempt to argue that
makerbot is doomed, but rather assumes it without any argument or
demonstration at all.

i have no stake in it myself, but if you're gonna make a strong statement like
"doomed" you should back it up. layoffs != doomed

~~~
hugs
It wasn't just layoffs. "Stratasys also announced a $100 million write-down on
Makerbot’s valuation in February."

Link: [http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays-
off-100-employe...](http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays-
off-100-employees-closes-retail-stores/)

But you have a point, they're not dead yet. They might turn the corner, hire
again, and regain that $100 million in value someday.

------
deleterious
Did no one see "Print the Legend" on Netflix. Pretty well discusses this
matter in detail. It also deals with funding a new business and the various
pitfalls.

~~~
sleepychu
It was discussed in the article but the author didn't find the answer given in
the documentary convincing.

------
gonzo
Personally, I'm wondering how many on HN actually owned an Osborne machine.

~~~
empressplay
I still have one! Flyback is shot on the CRT though =(

~~~
jacquesm
Heat and vibration rubbing the coil wires against each other is what kills
flyback transformers, you can usually get replacements for about $50 or so and
replacing them isn't hard.

------
ericflo
Anecdotally, I stopped hearing people talk much about Makerbot right around
2012. Seems to coincide with when they closed source their stuff.

------
iammaxus
The author is somehow making a connection between what "doomed" Makerbot and
why they went closed source. Makerbot biggest growth year was 2013
(approximately quadrupled booking rate over the course of it), the year
immediately after going closed source.

------
copsarebastards
MakerBot is still in business. Yes, a 20% layoff is not a good sign, but it's
a little early to say MakerBot is "doomed".

Taking it one step further and saying that it's the Osborne effect which
caused their troubles is even less valid. There are a ton of different
possible causes for MakerBot's troubles. The only honest answer here is that
we don't know why MakerBot is having trouble, although there are a number of
very good guesses we could venture.

The OP seems to be frustrated with MakerBot going closed-source. I share that
frustration, but let's call that what it is, a frustration with MakerBot going
closed-source, rather than using MakerBot's failures as an excuse to gloat.

------
Jack000
I think they would have been fine had they shipped a better product. When I
was doing research to buy a 3d printer every review I read said that the
closed source metal version was every bit as unreliable as the previous
plywood laser cut makerbot.

------
protomyth
I'm not quite sure we are at the stage where 3D printers are a home market
item. I figured they would go into copy shops first with models priced like
big copiers. It just seems a little early days.

------
stefanix
MakerBot has just not been very innovative. I see their contribution more like
that of a cheerleader of 3d printing (who layer got involved with too much
sugar-dadiness).

------
teslaberry
'doomed' , really?

we are in an epic financial bubble right now that DWARFS all previous bubbles
of the past 20 years so much so that janet yellen herself said "cash is not a
good store of value"; meaning the bubble is so big that those who created and
sustain it with unlimited cash are so scared of it popping that they will
publicly allude to the possibility of unending limitless printing ( and the
inevitable hyperinflationary boom it would conclude with ) .

all of the self congratulatory lying and self deception of silicon valley is
that it is 'libertarian' and 'independent' , when in fact ALL THE NEW MONEY IN
SILICON VALLEY COMES FROM THE FED THROUGH EITHER BANKS OR THE TREASURY BY WAY
OF VC AND THE MILITARY RESPECTIVELY.

the boom will end as all booms do and the headline of what 'doomed' makerbot
will seem like a joke.

laying off 20% isn't 'doom' by any stretch of the imagination.

if there are problems with makerbots business model, then they were relegated
to the parent company which now owns it.

bri pettis is a political genius for ousting his 2 compatriots and keeping the
control, and the spoils of the buyout , all for himself.

