

Criticized for overpriced parts, company gives away 3d schematics instead - anigbrowl
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2012/09/24/teenage-engineering-says-print-your-own-accessories-should-more-companies-open-source-their-parts/

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jmitcheson
3D printing is exciting, but it's easy to get carried away. Paper printers
exist, yet people still purchase books and magazines. By the same token, even
if everyone had a 3D printer, they wouldn't necessarily print every object
they own instead of purchasing it.

In addition, our culture has slowly eroded the usefulness of printing parts.
Parts are great if you fix things, but consumers don't fix things. They break
them and buy a new one!

IMO 3D printing will provide a huge boon to 1-2 person commando hardware
startups more than consumers, in the same way that access to free development
tools and cloud services have been a huge boon to 1-2 person commando software
startups. In that way, consumers lives will certainly be changed by 3D
printing because of being provided more products, but not necessarily by
actually owning them and printing things with the printers.

~~~
waterlesscloud
If printer cartridges were cheaper and if home printers bound books, people
might not buy as many books.

To me, the key is going to be the cost of the feed stock. Get it low enough
and people will 3D print everything.

A side note, this weekend my 74 year old stepdad was asking me about the state
of 3D printing. He has a mechanical engineering degree, so a bit atypical of
his age group I guess, but he was really excited about the possibilities.

I also told him about HN so he's probably reading this now. Hi!

~~~
beambot
Indeed, you should check out the Espresso Book Machine. It's being installed
in libraries around the world [1]. I've seen computations that suggest
printing your book on demand might be more cost-efficient [2] than maintaining
book inventories and hiring librarians to restock shelves.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_Book_Machine>

[2] Though probably much less environmentally sound!

~~~
mseebach2
> [2] Though probably much less environmentally sound!

Don't count on it. Paper isn't an environmental liability - all paper you can
buy in the US and Europe is from sustainably farmed wood and recycling. As
long and the resulting books are recycled, not inefficiently burned, it's
fine.

Also, remember, the cost to maintain libraries isn't just financial, it's
environmental as well.

~~~
davezatch
Do you have a source re: sustainably farmed/recycled wood? I was not aware of
this, and so often hear about disappearing forests in Brazil and Russia. But
I'm curious.

~~~
vibrunazo
Here in Brazil, most of the forest currently disappearing is because farmers
want the land to raise cattle and make money off selling meat. Not paper.

Though forests used to be cut down for paper. That's no longer the case
because it's not profitable anymore. Because of lack of demand.

But while the parent poster is right that virtually all paper today comes from
sustainably farmed wood. That's still an ecological problem. Because
sustainably farmed wood is not native to our eco system. Brazilian flora might
take centuries to grow, so farmers would chop down local trees to plant
European pine trees instead. Their propaganda, which the parent poster bought
into, is that if you chop a tree to plant another, then no harm is done. But
that's not how eco systems work. Local fauna cannot live in foreign pine
trees, just as they wouldn't live in a concrete city. So many local species
are now endangered or extinct because of paper farms.

I live on an area where a lot of paper farming used to happen. I had an
American friend come here once. He told me the forest around the highway we
were on surprised him. Because it looked nothing like the movies he seen,
instead it looked just like Europe, with regularly spaced tall pine trees. He
asked "is this where the monkeys are?", looking closely to the pines hoping to
see one. Unfortunately, I told him, during my whole life here I have never
seen a monkey in the wild. Even though this same place used to be the home of
some really interesting species, like the golden lion monkey. But we could go
to the zoo to see one if he wanted to.

Source of this is my experience as a local who used to be an active Greenpeace
volunteer, back in the day.

~~~
mseebach2
It pretty rich for a Greenpeace activist to accuse others of buying into
propaganda. Greenpeace is nothing if not a propaganda organisation.

For the record, I didn't suggest that replacing old growth forest with fast-
growing trees foreign to the ecosystems is neutral or sustainable.

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jrockway
How long until the "Home printing is killing the small parts manufacturing
industry. (And it's illegal.)" campaign?

~~~
vibrunazo
3d printing is theft. You wouldn't shoplift a toy, so why would you print it?

~~~
nathos
Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's "Printcrime":
[http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-
_Overclocked...](http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-
_Overclocked_-_Printcrime.html)

~~~
daeken
One of my favorite of his stories. I'd strongly recommend his novel 'Makers'
as well, if you're into this sort of thing.

~~~
svdad
Oddly, I just finished reading that. Can't say it's terribly prescient -- it
was published just three years ago -- but it does echo lots of things that are
just happening now.

~~~
derleth
SF authors have always predicted the present. Given that most people seem
immersed in the past, this works for them.

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qq66
As 3D printing becomes truly mass-market, people who want to print copies of
objects will start attacking physical product patents as strongly as they
attack software patents and digital media copyright today (strong, coordinated
opposition to these grew only with distribution channels).

~~~
s_henry_paulson
You're ignoring the massive grey area that is "fair use"

There's a huge difference between me building something for my own personal
use, as opposed to building a product and trying to sell it.

~~~
qq66
I'm not ignoring it -- people used to make mixtapes for friends and copy games
on 5.25" floppies (see the classic "Don't Copy That Floppy" -- but only when
online distribution became a reality did people start arguments of the nature
that "IP should not exist on this category of entity."

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thechut
This is a great idea! Those with 3D printers can get their parts almost for
free and those without can pay Shapeways a "reasonable" amount.

As the quality of 3D printing improves I can see lots of companies doing this,
especially for legacy parts.

~~~
pserwylo
> I can see lots of companies doing this, especially for legacy parts.

I wish I could agree with your conclusion, but I have had a lot of trouble
looking for "out of print" arcade game roms [0]. I want build and use an
arcade machine for my house (legally). However, it's amazing how protective
old companies seem to be of people playing their games which they no longer
distribute.

I get the feeling it will probably turn out the same with 3D printing out of
production components.

[0] (for example)
[http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:ROMs#How_do_I_legal...](http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:ROMs#How_do_I_legally_obtain_ROMs_or_disk_images_to_run_on_MAME.3F)

------
mikiem
I love it. Those that have the printers can print their parts, and pay for the
raw materials and the printer and the time. For those that do not, well, they
can STFU about the cost of parts. I actually see this as more of an STFU move
in reality/practicality, but it's a very cool way to say it. I wish I could do
this with my products, but its not applicable.

------
natep
Am I not seeing them, or are there _no_ links to TeenageEngineering.com in the
piece, or links to the actual announcement, or to where the CAD files can be
downloaded? Very poor journalism, IMO. The linked Shapeways blog post has all
of those links in the first sentence.

Anyways, I think this is a great development. If TE wasn't making much money
on spare parts, might as well not sell them, and with companies like Shapeways
around, it doesn't force every consumer to have a 3D printer, either.

------
voltagex_
Now if only I could convince the wheelchair industry to do the same.

~~~
dcaldwell
Can you explain what your problems are with the wheelchair industry in regards
to parts? I'm actually very curious.

~~~
voltagex_
Just off the top of my head:

* One manufacturer and one manufacturer only of the parts for my particular wheelchair (A Quickie GTX by Sunrise Medical)

* High prices as customers often don't have any other options

* Occasionally the company won't deal with me as I'm only ordering 1 or 2 parts at a time, not hundreds

* Proprietary parts requiring complicated installation - unfortunately I can't direct link but have a look at any of the front brace/fork assemblies on <http://www.sunparts.us/>

* Slow shipping times from the US to Australia, requiring me to plan ahead for any future damage/repairs!

~~~
alexchamberlain
You need an open source wheelchair.

~~~
bobbles
Theres a startup idea if I ever heard one

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Xylakant
Isn't the main point here that it's not the parts themselves that are
expensive, but that the shipping for those parts is disproportionally
expensive? So the company does in fact not loose anything by providing the
designs, since they never made any significant money on the spares anyway.
Still, it's a cool idea.

------
QuantumDoja
I have a huge business crush on Teenage Engineering, I think they have handled
this situation extremely well. I don't know of any other company that has done
this with their products.

