
MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China - state_machine
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2016/04/25/makerbot-partners-with-contract-manufacturer-to-increase-production-flexibility
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legitster
A lot of people wonder why large companies can't just stay in the US and
compete on quality, and here is a great case for why. It doesn't matter how
great your workers are, you can't sell a product for $3,000 when others are
selling it for $600. Especially when it's a technology still in development.

And I know we pay extra for the warm and fuzzies knowing that something is
made in the states, but I'm sure the home tinkerer in Indianapolis doesn't get
super warm and fuzzy thinking of paying an extra $2000 just to support some
exorbitant Brooklyn rent.

~~~
talmand
I often wonder if costs could be lowered for many of these companies if they
would stop locating in some of the country's most expensive places to operate
and for their employees to live. I know the arguments about workforce
availability and all that, but I've never seen a proper look into it.

~~~
iask
Probably. But then there is shipping. If I may stray a bit. The price to ship
a small package from Adafruit to a place less than 10 miles cost me around
$10.00 - 4 days tops. I can make a similar purchase for a Chinese spoofed
version and have it in 7 days, free shipping. I don't know how the heck the
shipping from China is so cheap. While to ship anything inside the us is
frigging expensive...to ship outside the us is worse. And we invented modern
day shipping.

~~~
dahdum
It's because the USPS is subsidizing the cost of that shipment.

"The Postal Service is losing millions a year to help you buy cheap stuff from
China"
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the-
postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from-
china/)

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Ninjalicious
My crazy conspiracy theory is that Makerbot was acquired by Stratasys as a
ploy to buy out the most dangerous and high quality big hobbyist 3D printer
brand and then torpedo it with value engineering to allow them to sell their
own in house brand (uPrint) better. Maybe that's not true, but the Gen 5
Replicator was Day 0 garbage.

My Replicator Gen 5 was not functional on launch, I never got a good print out
of it. The self calibration function was non-functional out of the box after
one print, and the inability to manually level was designed out from the Rep2,
a design so good, international manufacturers copied it in the form of the
Flashforge. The Rep 5 was completely redesigned for no reason, the integral
filament reel was intended to bully you into buying Makerbot brand filament on
their custom reels, the "new" software made it so you could CHANGE LESS
SETTINGS, like you know, temperature, or feed rate. Basically Gen 5 was a
corporate ball of dark patterns and poor regressive design, completely
overpriced, and shipped before it was ready to boot. One could argue that
making the Makerbot brand a more closed design was a choice of positioning,
but I feel that is only justified if you can deliver the ease of use value,
which Gen 5 didn't.

Sadly, those Brooklynite's jobs might have been doomed when the Stratasys logo
first went up on the Makerbot sign.

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deepnet
Caveat Emptor. If you can't fork you aren't free.

The Makerbot rose up from a spirit of sharing and community goodwill, made
money and employed local Brooklyites - so it was a flagship for the sharing
economy and open hardware.

Now there is an impression that they closed it off. Make4rbot was bought by
the holder of a patent for the sintering 3D printing technology, seen as an
impediment to this useful methods community adoption.

The price paid for Makerbot was handsome, but as everyone was doing OK already
- this was perceived as 'selling out' and the goodwill began evaporating. The
question then for Makerbot is: Does the momentum of being first to market
trump the anger among the maker community & alpha adopters ?

When I bought Minecraft at alpha, Mojang suggested it would become open - then
after making more cash than anyone needs they sold it to Microsoft. I felt a
bit betrayed, not because of $20 but because I promoted it and gave it to
friends children and now they are tied into Microsoft which was the opposite
of my intention.

This problem echoes down the ages: traditionally bands sell out the truefans
when they sign with the majors; the closing of the UNIX community when Bell
was privatised; the emerging idea that cool hacks, hardware & software
shouldn't be shared among friends, exemplified by Gates letter to the Homebrew
Computer Club about BASIC.

This makes new communities wonder if there is a way to prevent this - Stallman
invented the GPL to stop the 'tradgedy of the commons' happening to his work &
community.

Is there a community GPL that could have been used for MakerBot to ensure it
stayed community orientated ?

Does this reflect the difference between Free and Open ? GPL & MIT, is this
the tragedy of the commons that only the GPL ensures against ?

~~~
jackhack
In a number of ways this echoes the early microcomputer industry (thinking the
1970s-80s), when dozens of competing and incompatible standards existed.
Atari, Apple, Commodore, Amiga, just to name a few. And as the industry neared
middle age in the 1990s, shopping for a "PC Clone" was a cornucopia of
options: a copy of PC Shopper was hundreds of pages thick, each with ads for
"custom made" PC clones "built to your specifications". Lead times of weeks,
hundreds of case, motherboards, CPU, RAM and Video card options existed... and
prices were in the $2000+. Now it's settled down to a few big players who
essentially sell poorly-differentiated commodity items for paper-thin margins.
It is to be expected as an industry matures.

A company must choose where to place itself. Go after the high-end boutique
market and risk pricing yourself out (if one can't communicate the price/value
argument to customers), or become another "me too" supplier in a race to the
bottom, following all the same steps as the competition, facing extinction due
to lack of margin.

~~~
deepnet
Mature free markets that entail paper thin margins are naturally disrupted and
conquered.

Jobs had seen Kay's Dynabook at Parc and had some vision of what portable
computers could offer. Apple phones made $250 per phone, even with less than
0.5% of the market Jobs had already won as Nokia et al. made ~pence per phone.

Cartels and Monopolies naturally aggregate to protect incumbents from the
needs & desires of the customer and society from the painful costs of over
rapid progress, yet like great empires companies decline when their owners
lose touch with their daily customers needs, demands or desires.

Intellectual property rights are not natural rights but a social contract,
providing temporary monopoly in exchange for social benefit.

Rinse and repeat.

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pj_mukh
Totally understand being disappointed in MakerBot for a myriad of other
reasons. But the whole, "omg stuff is going to be shitty because its Chinese"
is a tired old trope. If you know what you are doing and aren't needlessly
cutting corners you should be fine.

P.S: Not Chinese, I've just enjoyed enough Chinese mfg'd (even Chinese
designed) products now to know that trope is old.

~~~
joshmn
I've gotten about half my wardrobe from AliExpress, and I look like a million
bucks.

The stigma is for the uneducated. Cheap knockoffs will be cheap. But if you
know how to spend and where to spend it in China — regardless of industry —
you will get amazing quality for the price.

~~~
flashman
Way off topic, but who sells good menswear on AliExpress?

~~~
joshmn
Sort by "hottest"! Just read the reviews and pay attention to ratings. Read a
lot of reviews them. Triple-check sizing. If you don't know, then send a
message to the shop and ask. They're really friendly and great.

It might be worth going to a local tailor and getting measured. They'll gladly
do it for free, but I'll usually give the person $20 as a thank you.

Regarding scores: I won't buy if the "Item as Described" metric is below 4.6.
I can usually get stuff to Minnesota within 10 days via ePacket.

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reustle
First the Closed Source discussions [1], and now completely outsourcing to
China? What sets them apart from any other hardware company now?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakerBot_Industries#Closed_sou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakerBot_Industries#Closed_source_hardware)

~~~
3dfan
We really should try to promote 3D printing companies that support the open
source movement and local manufacturing. Maybe we should set up a wikipedia
category for open source 3d printers?

Product Chart has a section for 3d printers with open source design:

[http://www.productchart.com/3d_printers/sets/4](http://www.productchart.com/3d_printers/sets/4)

~~~
MBCook
They tried. And the result is that as they got press and notoriety people took
their open plans and made replicas in China and sold them at a cost that
massively undercut MB.

If they had stayed open source they would have gone under years ago, probably
years before Systrays bought them.

Open hardware doesn't really seem to be a sustainable business, at least not
when what you're making costs as much as a 3D printer. A brand name isn't
worth a ton when an identical rip-off product is 40% cheaper and performs the
same.

~~~
Eridrus
> Open hardware doesn't really seem to be a sustainable business

Neither does open source software tbh.

~~~
MBCook
It seems to be, at best, something you try and use as a value add to your
_real_ service like DB consulting.

~~~
trentlott
Why not make your real service on-site repair? That's less outsourceable than
consulting, even.

~~~
reustle
Who is going to pay for on-site repair for consumer 3d printers? Only a
handful of businesses that actually rely on 3d printers use a MakerBot.

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dammitcoetzee
Of course they are. It's been lies and flim flam for a while. Worst printers
on the market, just look at the reviews. They had US manufacturing going for
them, but I guess even that much of their previous reputation, honor, and
pride was too much to hold on to.

~~~
sbarre
So what would you say is the best 3D printer on the market right now?

~~~
santaclaus
We've had good luck with the products out of formlabs (the print quality is
awesome), although dealing with their resin is a royal PITA.

~~~
CBalin
I've heard that the resin cartridges that Formlabs 2 uses are much easier to
deal with.

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astrodust
This company isn't even a shell of its former self. What a shame.

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london888
I would have welcomed a more upfront description from Makerbot. Eg 'We're
moving production to China - here's why'.

~~~
dantiberian
I had the same exact thought. Don't dress up bad news in corporatese, just rip
the band-aid off and speak plainly.

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akshayB
3D printing is a great technology but this is just sad, more jobs leaving to
China.

~~~
abakker
So, the jobs that leave the US go to China, but maybe the company can increase
sales/invest more because they have better economics, and then grow, and then
hire more people. Its only a net loss in the short term, not necessarily
forever.

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Animats
MakerBot sucked at manufacturing. Laser-cut wood frames for a production
product? Please. What they need from China is manufacturing expertise. People
who can design injection molds and stamping dies. They were in love with their
"replicator" fantasy of one-off manufacturing, forgetting that 3D printing
costs orders of magnitude more than injection molding in quantity, and
produces inferior plastic.

~~~
MBCook
The laser-cut wood was when they were just starting out and more DIY. Their
recent more professional printers have had steel frames.

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Dan_JiuJitsu
Time to find a 'Made in America' 3d-Printer for my next fabricator

~~~
542458
LulzBot might be of interest to you. Best power-user printers on the market
IMHO, and made in Indiana.

~~~
Ccecil
Lulz is in Colorado...SeeMeCNC is in Indiana.

~~~
542458
Whoops - I'm an idiot.

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sharemywin
To me the cool part to 3d printers was that they could make their own parts.
Not be mass produced in China.

~~~
jackhack
Other than a handful of minor endcap parts, everything is made in China: the
control board, stepper motor, extruder, heat bed, wires, limit switches, lead
screws, bearings, guide rods, filament, fasteners, cables and probably the
laser-cut lexan or aluminum folded frame.

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yeukhon
Moving to China means more communication effort and more coordination which
can really hurt your business if you do it bad upfront. Same reason why
enterprise usually hires consultants rather than hiring everyone as full-time
under their paycheck even though the enterprise itself has to pay more money
to the consulting company: enterprise doesn't need to pay for health benefit,
bonus and even travel expense; pay a premium for a package. Of course, a smart
enterprise talent management should turn consultants into full time over time
if when the consultants are critical for the growth of a given project...

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mathgeek
Understandable as to why they're doing this, but the amount of spin in how
they titled their press release is sickening. "Production flexibility,"
indeed.

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tailrecursion
There are some comments here about the difficulty competing with Chinese
knockoffs, but there are many small companies making high quality 3D printers,
and they have good reputations: Ultimaker. Printrbot. E3D BigBox. Makergear.
There are probably many others too that have been around for years but I'm not
really plugged in.

Thomas Sanladerer on youtube is a good source of information, and reprap.org,
if you're shopping.

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michaelbuddy
Makerbot is in a tough spot. They lost points with people when they announced
closing off of some of their work vs remaining open source. And so customers
thought they might (if they are paying premium for consumer level printing
anyway) to go with Ultimaker which retained premium build quality and remained
open. And month after month, other companies keep bringing printers out to
compete.

Microcenter is carrying Makerbot but also much lower priced generic 3D
printers I think which are house branded. Dremel has a very nice 3D printer
for a lot less than Makerbot and apparently has pretty good tech support too.

In regards to competing with China though, it's important to know that the
products from China are artificially low and that _seems_ to benefit us but it
also means that so many of us are out of work or under employed. But if you
straighten out trade balance and currency manipulation Chinese products become
more expensive as they naturally should be, local U.S. goods become more
accessible and less expensive to a degree and and we have more people with
more buying power (because employment) to make the economy work.

~~~
glenndebacker
The Dremel is a rebranded Flashforge Dreamer if I'm not mistaken. At home I
have a Flashforge Creator Pro (a clone of a Replicator 2X, but with a lot of
improvements) and I'm really happy with it.

It is more than (in Europe) half the price of a Makerbot and that for a
printer that is certainly on par with it or maybe be even better. It scores
very high in the enthousiasts category on 3D hubs
([https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers#enthusiast](https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers#enthusiast))

Regarding Chinese quality, I don't have the feeling that "Made in USA" is so
much better if I see how many problems there are with the Makerbot Replicator
5th generation imo. That version is notorious for having a lot of quality
problems.

These days most parts come from Chinese manufacturers anyway... .

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2close4comfort
Too bad I thought it had finally gathered the ability to manufacture itself.
Turns out the owners suck, too bad.

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known
Simple solution: Impose tax on MakerBot revenues, not profits

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ajsharp
lol "increase production flexibility" that's some top-notch corporate-speak.

