
The MakerBot Obituary - szczys
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/28/the-makerbot-obituary/
======
fudged71
I have been in 3D printing for over three years now and it has been gut-
wrenching to watch Makerbot's actions. Like watching a crash test dummy, you
can see the moves coming and it's beautiful and destructive at the same time.

Makerbot systematically SOLD their founding values. Open source, open
community, independant, and made in america (new york).

These values appealed to the early adopters. And by taking large amounts of
venture capital, Bre effectively decided to accelerate crossing the chasm by
incrementally tossing each of these values aside as they were potential
liabilities for mainstream adoption. He was maximizing shareholder value
rather than catering to the customers of his products. Their patent strategy
was clearly to increase their value to acquirers (Stratasys or 3D Systems).
And by aiming so high on the acquisition negotiations they tanked the stock of
every single industrial 3D printing company, who have all operated for decades
longer than Makerbot.

I hope that Ultimaker and Printrbot stick to their values and gain significant
market share. I'm not confident that Lulzbot's libre values will translate to
a thriving marketshare and ecosystem.

One note on the article though... There is no way that Zach and Adam walked
away with $100M each, where did that come from? I'm sure they must have been
diluted significantly. If not, I'm very interested how that happened if anyone
knows!

~~~
Hondor
Made in America isn't really an important scaleable value. For American
customers it plays on their patriotism. For overseas customers it plays on the
perceived quality of American products. In both cases, it's just marketing
trickery to make people like them.

~~~
conceit
The trickery is based on the apparent politics. The question is whether the
incentive was honest or not.

In reallity I'd guess that outsourcing is only really viable when the
production volume is big enough and if the knowledge to select the right
process is there. Homebrew is educative and saves a lot of money if the work
hours can be deducted or counted as training, fun or early investment.

------
jfoutz
I have cupcake #40 with the wooden pulleys for belts. It was an incredibly fun
project, assembling, soldering, general fuzing around to keep the thing
working. It requires probably 2 hours of fiddling for each hour of printing.
It felt momentous because it kind of was, me and perhaps a hundred other
people toiling away, bringing the future to reality.

i'm sad to see the state they're in. I hope, dearly hope, that that spirit of
the year or so i spent caring for my cupcake is how humanity ends up, at least
for some of humanity. building kits, patching code, struggling with the odd
issue. It really felt like pushing the frontier of the human experience. we
can't all expand the frontier of theoretical knowledge, but we can all push a
frontier. It's a lovely place to be.

Sitting in my basement week after week, heck, month after month trying to get
a good sequence of prints, that was a great time in my life. I don't think
much will come of 3d printing of abs plastic. Super customized shapes are just
not that interesting. Perhaps VR will simplify the design process, which i
kind of hated.

At the start, right at the beginning of makerbot, they were wonderful.

------
beardicus
It was interesting to watch an open hardware company wrassle with
profitability and scale vs. "being a good citizen". The two aren't mutually
exclusive, though it seemed like Makerbot thought that was the case. Oh well.
Goodbye Makerbot. Thanks for building upon the RepRap and for pushing 3d
printing out into the mainstream. Sorry you abandoned your roots and got
swallowed up into the megabusiness garbagescape.

~~~
deepnet
Bowyer's RepRap is GPL so the MakerBot couldn't build on RepRap derived work
without violating the GPL.

------
Animats
The real problem is that MakerBot didn't keep up with the technology.
Extruding hot ABS filament and hoping it would bond to the previous layer just
isn't a very good technology. The Form1, Form2, and Ember, all
stereolithography machines, produce much better parts. There are half a dozen
extruder type printers better than the MakerBot, and some are cheaper.

MakerBot just didn't get better fast enough.

~~~
Ccecil
DLP and FDM are totally different technologies...and the DLP stuff isn't as
usable in machines as FDM is.

Just like powder, sls, paste and every other form...they all have their uses.

------
wpietri
One of the questions I have: what are 3D printers in this weight class being
used for beyond novelty?

I like shiny tech as much as anybody here, and I'm certainly excited by the
_potential_ of 3D printing. But companies eventually have to survive on
_actual_ revenues. And for people who make tools, that generally means their
customers have to use the tools to make money.

As an example, my brother makes custom wood furniture, so he buys saws and saw
blades. As long as people want wood furniture for their homes, saw-makers get
a slice of that. What are 3D printer makers getting a slice of to sustain
their business?

~~~
grogenaut
I generally use mine to test fitment of parts that I'm going to machine. While
3d printing takes a while, hand machinging things on my manual mill takes a
LOT longer and the material is more expensive. I made a mount for a motor for
a skateboard with an irregular truck shape in about 8 prototypes with the 3d
printer. Then I cut the metal part out in one go and it fit perfectly.

Also for custom brackets and enclosures they're great. You can make all sort
of custom one off parts with a 3d printer and they're good for at LEAST
mocking up a prototype if not even making a real working prototype.

Even more fun, I've got a project to convert my mill to a CNC, and round one
of that is to 3d print the brackets, attach them and then cnc up the actual
brackets from aluminum. Then replace them.

3d printers also let you do things like lost plastic casting, lost wax
casting, etc.

But the fitment and layout thing is not to be ignored. When you're making
parts that will go into real machines, it's really hard to get good
measurements of the real part. Lets say I'm making a part that goes in a car.
I can get lots of measurements by hand but I'll likely be off as it's kind of
a free-hand thing. You can then cad up and print the part and then go shove it
in there and see where you're off, measure those gaps, alter the cad,
reprint... These parts are pretty cheap (generally less than $1 each for
materials). Whereas having a dude in a shop cnc up a real one is quite
expensive, running $100/hour machine time. The other benefit is you get to
test placing your part into the machine. You can often make parts that work
but you can't get them in to the machine without say taking THE WHOLE FRONT
END OFF OF A CAR, which in itself could take 8 hours of mechanic time.

I've also got a bunch of misc things. I've got a flower vase my wife likes in
black plastic that I sealed that just looks different. And I've got a bunch of
coasters I cnc'd up that are custom that I use and I rally like. I also cnc'd
up a custom kindle hard case for my son with his name and email on one side
and a silouhette of Optimus on the other side. He loved it. Those things are
just general crafting.

I've also learned CAD much better because design -> object is very quick so
some weekends I'll just doodle in cad and then start the printer and start
playing games while it does it's thing.

Then again the first 1/2 of my undergrad I was a Mech E, and I worked at a
game studio for 3 years so I'm pretty fluent in 3d design compared to the
average person. But if you can run around a map in a FPS once or twice you
generally have enough 3d spacial awareness to do modelling. Computers make
this much easier as you can rotate the object live which connects the dots in
your brain that the old multiple view paper form was much harder to do.

------
dade_
I think it was spring of 2012 when I visited Manhattan to buy a 3D printer. I
wanted to see one first hand and visited the store in (or around) Soho, and
while the store had some great models printed and the staff were enthusiastic,
they really didn't sell me on why I should buy one from Makerbot. I did see 3D
printing first hand, and decided I would definitely get a printer.
Coincidentally, I visited Hack Manhattan that night and a fellow (forgotten
his name...) was building a beta PrintrBot Simple and explained why he thought
Makerbot wasn't a good design, why Ultimaker is a much better product
(extruder feed motor placement, speed, accuracy, and reliability) and finally,
the most important, that no one buying their first 3D printer should be
spending 2000 dollars. Get a PrintrBot kit, spend a few hundred bucks and
upgrade when needed. It was great advice. There are many design files on the
Internet, but it was really CAD that I needed to learn. And in the meantime,
there was so much to learn about printing: different materials, filament
suppliers, how to deal with calibration, optimize slicing options,
troubleshoot extrusion speeds, filament quality, and printing temperatures to
name a few. It's been nearly 4 years, the little PrintrBot Jr kit has been
discontinued, but it still works well and I will probably upgrade this year.
The technology and features available are far better today (OMG auto levelling
beds) and I want a much larger printing area and faster printer. Makerbot
provided a brand for 3D printing, but also a promise that it was ready for
consumers. They really weren't, and probably still aren't. Further, CAD and 3D
modelling are not trivial skills to acquire. Regardless of the future of the
company and their missteps, they did bring about massive consumer awareness of
the technology.

------
beagle3
Relevant: Zach "Hoeken" Smith's (one of the founders of Makerbot) thoughts
when the company changed direction (and he was out):
[http://www.hoektronics.com/2012/09/21/makerbot-and-open-
sour...](http://www.hoektronics.com/2012/09/21/makerbot-and-open-source-a-
founder-perspective/)

------
wodahs02
I followed MakerBot pretty obsessively since its early days. I have to agree
with some of the comments here. It was very clear after they raised venture
money that they became a marketing machine. I suspect they were burning quite
lot of money to grab marketshare and become the de facto personal 3D printer.
They pawned that thing off at the right time and let it become someone else's
problem. Classic venture playbook.

~~~
mappy
In addition, Stratasys is also not a consumer peripheral company. They
primarily make software and printers for the industrial 3D manufacturing
market. But making the mistake won't hurt them much; they're still well seated
in the industry.

They also don't have to worry about losing MakerBot because 3D
printing/additive manufacturing is going to be freaking insanely big.
Companies want to shorten R&D time and generate new products quickly.

Also, 3D printers for the purpose of manufacturing products won't be big in
the home anytime soon. Why? Except for the new HP Multi Jet Fusion printers
which are a small step towards the end goal with their ability to use
different agents within a single part, most 3D printers only have the
capability to print in a single material at a time. This is _great_ for parts,
but not good for consumer goods which are made of many different materials.
Today's 3D printer is very far away from a Star Trek replicator. There is a
lot that goes into part design, determining how to best build the part, doing
the design of the build which is different than the part specification so that
parts can be built as designed, knowing how to use the printer along with
maintaining/dealing with quirks caused by how the parts are built (which
depends on technology/machine/material used and many other things), and
removing structural supports and power/resin from parts after they are built.

Even when all of that becomes less complicated, and it will, home technology
will almost always be behind the level of technology that exists in a company
dedicated to manufacturing. Consumer 3D for most products is just not going to
be a good market anytime soon.

The exception is food. Food is not nearly as complicated of a product as other
consumer goods to make, and people love to make beautiful custom food at home,
so 3D food printers could very easily become a staple in the kitchen. They
could be every home within 40-50 years and in many food production facilities
within 20 years.

------
jack9
> ignored the unspoken rules of Open Source hardware

Implied that the rule is "Open Source hardware can succeed if others (you or
China) don't just clone it?" The rule is that it WILL be cloned.

------
ChuckMcM
I bought a "Replicator 2, Dual Extruder" with the Mark 7 extruders, it was the
last fully open source printer they made. What I liked about it is that it is
so open source its easy to fix. Its also rather poorly implemented in that the
drive mechanisms fail, the nuts loosen, it didn't come with an enclosed build
space etc etc. However it has been a solid platform for experimenting on.
Playing with the BondTech extruder ( _much_ better than Makerbot) the E3D
hotend ( _much_ better melt zone control) different driver architectures. I
think if I was buying one fresh I'd probably get a Lulzbot for the same
reason.

On the one hand its sad to see them die, on the other it created some very
wealthy folks who might angel invest in new even cooler stuff. Circle of life.

------
dankohn1
My 9yo loved his 3-D printing spring break camp last week [0].

Any views on the Monoprice 3-D printers? [1] It seems hard to compete with
Shapeways [2], if we're willing to wait a day for shipping. As with lots of
technology, it's hard to buy a 3-D printer given how much they improve each
year.

They used TinkerCAD at the camp. Should he stay with it or is there better
online software for a beginner?

[0] [http://www.pixelacademy.org/spring/](http://www.pixelacademy.org/spring/)
[1]
[https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=107&cp_id=10724&cs_id...](https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=107&cp_id=10724&cs_id=1072403&p_id=13860&seq=1&format=2)
[2] [http://www.shapeways.com/](http://www.shapeways.com/) [3]
[https://www.tinkercad.com/](https://www.tinkercad.com/)

~~~
ThatPlayer
I've got the Monoprice Maker Select. You'll find it's a rebrand of the popular
Wanhao Duplicator i3.

Shapeways printers are not really comparable to the cheap FDM printers. For
example, they have Full Colour Sandstone as an option which just isn't
possible on the Monoprice one as it will only do one color at a time.

I think the improvements in 3d printing aren't too huge like they are in other
technologies. 3D printers can be upgraded too (with plenty of self-printed
parts). For the popular Wanhao Duplicator i3,
[http://3dprinterwiki.info/wiki/wanhao-
duplicator-i3/](http://3dprinterwiki.info/wiki/wanhao-duplicator-i3/) .

Of course if you want something that just prints without having to do all
these modifications/maintenance, you'll probably have to spend more on a
printer.

------
CamperBob2
_Like every aspect of a business, the value of the brand and reputation is
tracked as an asset, and is called “goodwill” in company reports. For every
quarterly report Stratasys has released after the acquisition of MakerBot, a
goodwill impairment charge – a markdown on the value of the MakerBot brand –
has been recorded. Including the 2015 yearly report, Stratasys has taken a
total goodwill impairment charge of nearly one Billion dollars for MakerBot.
Keep in mind Stratasys acquired MakerBot for $403 Million in stock. Stratasys
has written off nearly double the value it paid through the failures of the
MakerBot brand._

How exactly does "goodwill impairment" work? A billion dollar tax writeoff?!
This sounds like some kind of scam.

~~~
daveguy
Apparently it was commonly a scam in accounting scandals in 2002 and now there
are more rigorous tests for it:

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill-
impairment.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill-impairment.asp)

Goodwill is the value of intangible assets -- name recognition, customer
relations, intellectual property, etc.

Impairment is a reduction in that stated asset due to overpayment, negative
publicity harming relations, etc.

So by impairing the total paid, they are essentially saying what they paid for
was worthless, and by impairing _more_ than it is worth is saying it damaged
their brand significantly in addition to being worthless.

It sounds like a difficult argument to make. Impairment on the total cost,
maybe since the closing up the devices has made it last instead of first on
most people's 3D-printers-to-get list. More than what they paid for it does
seem like a scam -- I wonder if they have already justified it successfully?
Does anyone know?

EDIT: I see skybrian's reply. Good catch. So the goodwill had increased in
value temporarily and then decreased to essentially zero. Is that all of the
goodwill of the whole stratasys company? Are they now saying "we have no
IP/brand recognition/etc"? If so, that still sounds almost as sketchy for tax
accounting as saying the MakerBot acquisition significantly damaged their own
brand.

------
alayne
After I saw Print the Legend I assumed MakerBot would crash and burn.

------
timrpeterson
Really interesting read. I had no idea. Hope it gets some up votes so that
more knowledgeable people will comment.

~~~
szczys
If you haven't seen it, you should watch "Print the Legend", a documentary
about a few 3D printer startups like MakerBot, FormLabs, etc. It's on Netflix
streaming:
[https://www.netflix.com/watch/80005444](https://www.netflix.com/watch/80005444)

~~~
nkristoffersen
Such a good documentary. I feel it is a great behind the scenes on the
stresses of startups in general.

------
atomical
The average consumer hasn't even heard of open source. I think this point is
really overstated in the article.

~~~
mkesper
Community matters, though. Word-of-mouth advertising should not be
undervalued. And if you turn that into negative, you'll have a bad time.

------
JabavuAdams
Anyone want to buy my Makerbot Replicator 2X?

~~~
dominotw
what did you use it for?

~~~
JabavuAdams
Mostly little experiments. Didn't use it much. I still haven't got through a
1kg spool of ABS.

Printed a toilet-roll holder, some tank-tread link experiments, a miniature
head, and various cubes / cylinders / prisms.

