
Low-cost 3D printers and crowdfunding suicide - dangoldin
http://3dprototypesandmodels.com.au/blog-2/
======
ChuckMcM
This was an interesting article. Primarily about the inexperience in people
building printers (and some evil people) who through Kickstarter or Indiegogo
are making promises that it is mathematically impossible for them to keep.
People have been doing this since forever but the Internet makes it easier
than ever.

That said, the 3D printer "market", if you will, is remarkable. It is being
created in exactly the same way that the microcomputer market was created, and
from that we can potentially predict its path and some opportunities there.

For those of you too young to remember, IBM was not a participant in the
microcomputer market, which was called microcomputers (as opposed to
minicomputers from the likes of DEC or Data General). Between 1972
(introduction of the 8008 microprocessor from Intel) and 1981 (introduction of
the IBM PC from IBM), the market consisted of lots of documentation
(datasheets) from manufacturers, re-using 100 pin edge connectors for wiring
busses, and lots of source code published in "magazines" which were no more
than photocopied pages stapled together. And then, as with 3D printers today,
the nerdiest of the nerds all had to have one but they didn't know why, and
the rest of the world felt that owning your own computer was a ridiculous
idea. Why pay all that money so that you could play 'hunt the wumpus' in a
painfully slow loading stripped down version of the BASIC programming
language?

Stepping back though, the excitement, the nerd fests, the people going nuts
over these things, like a spinning top in a maze randomly bouncing off the
walls, eventually found a solution, or a use, for this technology that non-
nerds could relate too. Initially that was spreadsheets, then small databases,
and data collection and analysis that the 'big' computers had been doing since
the start. There is a lot of capital trying to figure out which company is the
next Microsoft.

When I was at Google, a relative of one of the Makerbot founders worked at
Google as well, and sought out volunteers to help build their first 'Cupcake'
printer kit and give feedback. It was an amazing little box which, when the
stars and planets aligned, would actually print reliably for the 3 hours or so
needed to make a print of any decent size. It was a marvel, and sometimes it
worked reliably.

I ended up buying a Makerbot Replicator 1 at a weak moment at Makerfair when
they were 15% off list (they were clearing out old stock to make room for the
Replicator 2) I printed a few test prints and then it sat on the shelf for
nearly two years. I recently fired it up again because my daughter wanted me
to print her a measuring spoon for chai.

Diving back into it I realized that there are a lot of people "building" 3D
printers but not nearly so many "engineering" 3D printers. Circuit design for
example on the RAMPS 1.4 board has little to no self protection circuitry and
so it is prone to being damaged by things like moving the steppers when the
power isn't applied. Extruders of all types with varying levels of material
feed, feedback, and consistency. Machines that require amazing amounts of
calibration to print correctly assembled with fasteners without any locking
capability at all. It is so much like early S-100 microcomputers it is
practically a deja-vu experience.

3D printing is a 'thing', and its going to be a huge thing. While I get that
there may not be anything today you want to print, I can also imagine a day
where all your currently disposable plastic goods (cups, utensils, clips, etc)
would be printed on demand and disposed in a hopper that would recycle them as
raw material for the next round. Because of the amount of investment going on,
I don't worry about novices who go bankrupt trying to build a printer after a
successful crowd funding campaign. I feel feel badly for them sure, but I
don't think it will derail this particular technology bloom.

~~~
afafsd
>I can also imagine a day where all your currently disposable plastic goods
(cups, utensils, clips, etc) would be printed on demand and disposed in a
hopper that would recycle them as raw material for the next round.

Is this the killer app for home 3D printing? Printing plastic spoons? The same
spoons you can buy mass-produced in packs of fifty for eighty cents or
something?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Its a fair question, and in truth just printing plastic utensils is not a
killer app, just like calculating sums on a microcomputer made less sense than
buying a calculator. Rather I expect the transition to 'user focused' 3D
printing to be the point where nearly _every_ gizmo you use around the house
is printed and then recovered after use. Any container, tool, decoration,
replacement part, mounting bracket, paper good, or packing material, pretty
much anything that you have to go out and buy today, and have to recycle
responsibly. The value proposition will be that it is exactly what you need,
right now but you don't have to store it for a future need. I'm still on the
fence as to whether or not it will ever be practical to 3D print clothing but
given the Disney demo of soft printables I know people are thinking along
those lines too.

Step past thinking that it is a spoon that you can buy a pack of 50 for (which
you have to in order to keep the costs down) to thinking that in the space
where you would store a pack of 50 spoons, knives, forks, plates, and napkins
you can have an nearly inexhaustible supply of spoons with a birthday theme,
serving, color matched to a table setting. Every time you set the table you
can print it all out, from place mats to drink cups. And then throw it back to
be recycled again with just the organics left over.

And to return to my previous theme, having been the first person in my family
to build their own computer in 1978 and listened to everyone about how stupid
and inane it was to own a useless computer, only to live my life and find them
become the 'smartphones' of today. When I walked through Makerfair this year
and saw all of the 3D printing stuff there and heard the same sort of
dimissive comments which I had heard at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1980,
it really struck me. The same feeling you get when you are halfway through a
book and realize you've read the same story but set with different characters
and in a different place, but fundamentally the same story.

Its going to be interesting.

~~~
narag
_Its a fair question, and in truth just printing plastic utensils is not a
killer app_

I'd say the most relevant word there is "plastic". I don't want replacements
for my cheap plastic objects. I'd love to "print" with other materials.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is coming too but on the industrial scale. You can print in metal at
Shapeways now, but owning a laser metal sintering machine is not going to be
practical unless you can grind up previous things to make new things. There
are already at least two filament creator projects out there that make a
credible replacement filament out of scrap plastic.

------
tmuir
Another big problem that makes it hard to raise this kind of money is that
none of these FDM printers have anything that differentiates them from every
other printer. There are only a handful of different gcode interpreter/motor
driver boards. Almost all of those boards use the same Marlin firmware. They
all use Repetier Host has the PC software. They all have roughly the same
printing resolution. They all use the same hotends. They all require too much
tinkering, maintenance, and learning curve to ever be a mass market product.
On top of that, ask any hobbyist who owns one how often they use it after the
initial wow factor wears off. Most people run out of stuff to print pretty
quickly.

Besides Makerbot, who has the advantages of 5 years of experience and VC
money, none of the low end FDM printers have any sort of moat to make new
customers want their printer over the newest kickstarter project. And Makerbot
isn't even competing on price anymore.

Without some major innovation in ease of use, print resolution, print time,
print material, or reliability, I don't see how a startup FDM printer can
raise the kind of money outlined in the article.

~~~
bane
I've thought about getting a 3d printer to mess around with for a long time.
But before I drop the money and spend the time, I sit around and try and
figure out what exactly I'd _do_ with one once I had it.

I don't really have any useful modeling skills, so I'd be reliant on 3d models
I could find elsewhere. So I go to
[http://www.thingiverse.com/](http://www.thingiverse.com/) and to be honest,
even at the price of free, I can't find a single thing I'd ever be interested
in having sitting around my house. Almost every object available is a novelty
statue made by a fan of some geek favorite property, or some incredibly
specific part for things I don't own.

I mean, do I _really_ need to invest a couple hundred to a couple thousand
dollars and hundreds of hours of my time to print off a low quality t-slot
hinge when I could just stop off at my local home deport and pick up a high
quality metal hinge for $2.95?

In almost every case where I think it'd be cool to have a printer sitting
around in the off chance I _really_ needed to spend $3 in ABS plastic and
spend a half hour assembling a lens cap, I can usually find an actual version
of the part cheaper and higher quality on-line somewhere and I don't have to
muck around with anything.

I'm obviously the wrong kind of audience for 3d printers as they are now. But
I don't think I'm that atypical of the general audience that's out there. The
economics and ROI on 3d printers don't remotely work out for anybody who's not
a tinkerer. Until I can start printing off exact-to-quality copies of my
favorite shoes for 1/3rd the store price, or entire working keyboards I don't
have to assemble and find electronics. I just don't see much of a general
market.

~~~
tmuir
I think your sentiment is true of technology and tools in general. If you have
a pain point that a particular tool solves, then that tool is probably a good
fit for you.

But if you buy a tool because you've been sold on all of the cool things you
_could_ do with the tool, and you weren't necessarily looking to do any of
those things before you knew about the tool, then buyer's remorse is almost
certain to come your way.

99% of smartphone apps fall into this category. The internet of things, at
least currently, is also an example of this. There tons of products out there
that solve problems that no one actually has, but can be construed as game-
changing with romantic notions and polished marketing.

~~~
photojosh
My "Internet of Things" concept is a BT/WiFi appliance power monitor... would
be able to detect whenever power usage changed.

Use case: you get a push notification when the dishwasher/washing
machine/dryer/etc finished.

Thoughts?

~~~
jpindar
There are wireless power monitors which have their own smartphone apps. I
don't know if any of them can be set up to give you that sort of notification,
but some of the manufacturers make enough information available that you could
write your own app.

[http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F7C029/](http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F7C029/)

[http://developers.belkin.com/wemo/sdk](http://developers.belkin.com/wemo/sdk)

------
droithomme
Something I've noticed at Makers Faires and Expos is there's a lot of people
with 3D Printers, but they tend to fall into two groups.

One one side you have college teachers wearing suits sitting at a table with
pamphlets advertising their school's fabrication lab. These guys all have
commercial 3D printers they bought from a company, and examples of fairly
boring objects they printed.

On the other side you have the hackers from the maker spaces. These guys all
have 3D printers they have made themselves which favor extreme colors, and
bizarre and interesting features that commercial units don't have and can't
support. These guys will have mohawks, crazy clothes, piercings, tattoos, and
be showing off amazing objects they designed themselves, often to solve actual
real life problems.

Currently the market is bifurcated into suits vs artists.

The suits try to sell their printers to other suits and to soccer moms.

The artists are doing the cool stuff.

The problem is that suits and soccer moms don't want 3D printers. It's like
when the industry tried to sell early 8 bit computers to women using a
marketing message "You can manage your recipes." Sure, but the reality is a
card file works even better for that purpose.

The startups are marketing their printer kits to the freaks, rebels, punks,
artists and mad scientists. And that's the people that are able to actually
use 3D printers right now. Not suits and suburbanites.

Things will change later, but right now this is an early market that appeals a
lot to early adopters, who are non conformists by definition, otherwise they
wouldn't be early adopters.

It's not about cost either. The author of the article talks about a $299
printer. The custom kit printers tend to cost a lot more than that including
all the various costs. Users can save money by buying a commercial fully
assembled printer. But that doesn't give you street cred and it's not hot
roddable.

~~~
anigbrowl
_These guys will have mohawks, crazy clothes, piercings, tattoos, and be
showing off amazing objects they designed themselves, often to solve actual
real life problems._

I don't agree. A small number of the items are useful, most often replacement
parts for things that would either require replacement with much larger parts
(custom patches for damaged plastic shell) or which are difficult to replace
(item no longer manufactured or firm no longer in business or part so obscure
as to hinder repair). I've also seen some novel items that are good prototypes
for industrial production.

However, the majority of stuff I see at the 'freak' tables is _junk_ , and
samey junk at that. Expansible plastic jewelry, dodecahedral plastic hats
(admittedly intended to draw attention to the large print area, but couldn't
you find something more interesting?), and a lot of kitchenware, which strikes
me as a particularly poor sector; ABS filament is non-toxic but I wouldn't use
it where it's likely to encounter heat or alcohol, as would many examples on
this page: [http://www.pinterest.com/mekitso/3d-printed-
kitchen/](http://www.pinterest.com/mekitso/3d-printed-kitchen/) Toys are a
more obvious application, but most kids are not so into a monochromatic toy,
and cheaper printers don't have the resolution to make good multi-part toys.
An awful lot of printer offerings I see appear to be motivated by an 'if you
build it they will come' approach, but are being offered for sale more on
novelty than utility.

 _The problem is that suits and soccer moms don 't want 3D printers._

Suits love 3d printers for industrial design/prototyping, architectural
models, anything related to physical products where you might want to go into
volume production later. And I do think there's a market for soccer moms: the
most commercially interesting offerings I've seen at the lower end of the
market in the last year or two is chocolate printing. It turns out that sugar
works well enough for extrusion, low resolution is not that big of a deal when
you're going to be eating it, and quite a lot of people are into doing really
elaborate things with food. OK, such people tend to be artistically inclined
too, but since everyone eats that translates into a huge number of people.
Martha Stewart is already there:
[http://www.marthastewart.com/1065207/3d-printing-101](http://www.marthastewart.com/1065207/3d-printing-101)
...although note the bias towards services like Shapeways that can do one-offs
in high quality materials, vs home printers. But I bet you'll see a Martha
Stewart-branded 3d printer within a few years that's optimized for
confectionary use.

Now I'm not into baking or sweets, but I'm willing to bet that confectionery
printers become by far the most widespread, while most people will go to a
local print shop for quality 3d fabrication, whether that's sintered metal,
multicolor paper, or very high resolution multifeed plastic. Makerbot-type
printers have about as much future as dot matrix paper printers.

The boring presenters at Maker Faires tend to be offering actual utility, if
you can get past the eye candy. If you doubt this, go to a large hardware
store; they have quantitites of boring-looking things with very high utility.

~~~
im3w1l
Back in my days, we had to put hours and hours into gluing together and
painting our warhammers! Surely todays kids shold be able to 3d print the
parts and do the gluing and painting by hand.

~~~
anigbrowl
Ah, I was thinking of action figures although now that you mention it I was
into painting wargaming/roleplaying figurines myself as a teen. In fact one of
the first things that got me interested in 3d printing was my good memories of
things like building model aircraft and so on, but that also made me pay
attention to how crude FDM is :-/

~~~
larve
there are some SLA printers in the consumer market that are more suited for
small detail prints, like the Formlabs form1 or the pegasus touch.

------
gregpilling
Most new manufacturers price things too cheaply (source: own manufacturing
company). I did so myself 10 years ago, but luckily some industry people
convinced me to raise the pricing before it was public. I changed the pricing
from $89 to $150 and that was not quite enough, and I raised it a few months
later. Cost to produce the product at the time was $50.

Now with some automation we can make the same thing for $18, and we can
wholesale it for $59. That is after 10 years and thousands of units, so we
learned a little on the way.

I think this article is a little simplistic about manufacturing costs, but the
point is true - raise the price. Sounds like what patio11 says about SaaS
products.

------
spyder
Yes there are a lot of yet-another-3D printer project that are trying to do
what others are doing and the only real difference is that they are promising
to be cheaper.

But then there is for example the Peachy Printer that is trying to be cheaper
($100) by innovating and reducing the components: no motors, no big rigid
frame, no external power besides what comes from the computer. Sure it will
not be the most accurate printer and it's still in development, but it looks
feasible and shows that with innovation you can reduce the costs.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-
pr...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-
first-100-3d-printer-and-sc)

~~~
eatmyshorts
I love the Peachy Printer guys...I really do. They're taking a unique and
interesting approach towards 3d printing. The only problem is they are about a
year behind schedule in shipping. Furthermore, without advanced and expensive
optics (like an F-Theta Lens, at >$300), they never will be able to print much
larger than 2"x2" footprint objects. It's a problem inherent to galvanometers.
Furthermore, they've only shipped a handhold of units--most of their
kickstarter supporters (myself included) have not yet received their units.

Honestly, after backing Peachy and researching SLA printers considerably, I'm
more intrigued by SeeMeCNC's DropLit when looking at the future of 3D consumer
printers.

~~~
Gormo
Adding a $300 lens to the Peachy Printer would still bring the total cost to
less than half of the price of the typical extrusion-based 3D printer, most of
which have a fixed build area of no more than about 8"x8".

One of their milestone goals is to use the Peachy Printer to build a usable
sixteen-foot single-piece canoe, and actually test it out on a lake. If they
can manage that, even if they have to install some specialized optics to make
it work, it will be extremely impressive, and demonstrate capabilities that
far exceed those of more expensive 3D printers.

I think the biggest weakness of the Peachy Printer is the specialized
consumables it requires. The resin solution it uses as a build material is
going to be considerably more expensive, harder to obtain, and more difficult
to store in volume than the spools of cheap ABS or PLA used by more
conventional 3D printers.

------
grogenaut
Initially I thought, other than some toy stuff I wont have anything to make
with that. Then I broke down and got one. Now everything like a nail that
needs a 3d printed hammer. Built test replacement parts for my wife's antique
knitting machine, for the antique spinning wheel, fixed my waterproof mp3
player, and can easily make custom enclosures for my electronics project. I
cad something up and then play dota while it prints which is perfect as I can
check it every 30 minutes to am hour which is the right interval for these
things

------
pravda
"I then had detailed talks with an injection molding consultant. I was quoted
around 50k for all the molding all up.."

I think you can have an injection mold made for a lot less in China. Maybe
5-10K? Anyone have accurate numbers?

~~~
jacquesm
Molds are extremely complex objects, amongst the most complex mechanical
objects that I've worked with. The precision to which they are fabricated, the
thermal management to allow for fast cycles and high numbers of product
produced from the same mold are absolutely incredible. The principles are
simple but moldmaking is an absolute art form and unless you've seen a
moldmaker at work at a reasonably high end facility I don't think you should
be throwing out price points and opinions.

50K is actually _very_ much on the low end for mold making, of course
everything depends on size, expected # of products, cycle speed. An sizeable
edm produced mold of tungsten with copper laminate for heat management is
going to be a lot more expensive than a small mold for a protoype run where
speed and number of products are not critical.

~~~
msandford
I agree that you're completely right for the kind of "consumer" scale
injection molding.

But they're talking about making perhaps only a few thousand parts. The number
I saw was 2400 or so. For only 2400 parts (per YEAR!) you could make aluminum
molds which are much, much cheaper. 2400 parts a year is 50 per week or one
every three hours. Even if your cycle time was 10 minutes (which is an
eternity even for old shoddy equipment) you can still make all the parts in
400 hours which is 2.5 weeks straight or 10 weeks of 9-5 production.

There is a company in the US which will make simple molds for much less than
$50k. For that you could get 5-10 molds and all the parts and possibly have
money to spare.
[http://www.protolabs.com/protomold](http://www.protolabs.com/protomold)

If you're talking about the kinds of molds necessary to do something like
this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHwTHarf8Ck](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHwTHarf8Ck)
then yes I agree $50k is a total joke. But for the batch of parts necessary to
build a semi-successful production run for a 3d printer, $50k might be
overkill.

~~~
jacquesm
Is there a description available of the parts that the quote refers to?

~~~
krschultz
I have used ProtoMold and they are very good. They are aluminum molds and
there are fewer options with regards to custom details, but if you are making
basic parts it works fine. I would think it would work very well for injection
molding parts for a 3D printer because surface finish is probably not critical
and the quantity will be relatively low. I generally think of the scaling up
process as 3D printing -> ProtoMold -> steel molds.

That said, when he said $50k in molds, I pictures $50k in ProtoMold molds, not
$50k in steel molds. I imagine steel molds would be more on the order of
$250k.

------
snori74
Well worth reading to the end of this article, some very good lessons
regarding the realities of scaling, applicable for many startups.

I'm planning to see "Print the Legend" later this week, so this was very
interesting. I see the Variety review of the film says "Because Lopez and
Tweel are tracking the rise but not the fall, “Print the Legend” doesn’t have
the falling-apart-before-your-eyes immediacy of “Startup.com” - but is seems
pretty clear from this article that there will be a lot of falling apart
happening.

------
orionblastar
Actually this is true of any Crowdfunded project.

Always crunch the numbers and do a feasibility report before you decide to
crowdfund it.

This is why 90% of Startups fail as well, they focus on making the product but
they fail to plan ahead and make sure that the costs aren't higher than the
investment money and figure in salaries, taxes, fees, etc.

------
jwatte
I think we got to this point over a year ago. 3D printers are the new "I can
build you a home page on the web."

Printrbot has had a good $300 FDM solution for a long time; to get
significantly better, you really need SLS or Resin lithography solutions. And
even there, the competition is hearing up as old patents expire.

------
jglauche
The link has been taken down for some reason. The Internet Archive to the
rescue!
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140810205859/http://3dprototyp...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140810205859/http://3dprototypesandmodels.com.au/blog-2/)

------
sharemywin
Wonder how much this would affect the pricing model?
[http://www.injectionmolder.net/](http://www.injectionmolder.net/)

------
Htsthbjig
So this man is spending 50K in molds alone and four people before he proves
the viability of his business?.

You don't need to make molds, printrbot started without those, and you don't
need four people for starting.

Another whining article: [http://www.3dprinterworld.com/article/can-we-get-
wrench-crow...](http://www.3dprinterworld.com/article/can-we-get-wrench-
crowdfunding-spigot)

A gem from it:"A suicidal price war has ensued, but unlike most price wars,
this one does not necessarily benefit the consumer."

Of course it benefits the consumer, but does not for those selling cheap, like
in any price war.

Companies already established have an advantage over new comers like in
anything else. If you get late to the party, the party is gone.

I am engineer and entrepreneur, and I have designed my own 3D aluminum-steel
printer from scratch in my spare time!! in less than a year. Most of the hard
work is already done, a Prusa i3 structure is already designed and open. So
are the extruder, hot ends, electronics.

If you create a new company, you need to provide value. Something unique that
does not exist.

If you can't, just crying on Internet is useless. You are not entitled to have
a business.

~~~
krschultz
I have a friend who has built a bunch of 3D printers from scratch (of his own
design) as a hobby. Hobby != business. And it's not a price war unless you can
buy the printers, what we have is a crowd funding war.

I know a couple people that work at MakerBot. They're not dumb. The reason the
printer keeps getting more expensive over time is because that's what it takes
to make a nice one.

