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3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

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Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#41

Post by dougmccune »

As the father of a 3 year old my interest in 3D printing has been reinvigorated. I can print segments of train tracks (1) for his train set to expand and build cool bridges (2). I can even print connectors that let me combine Mega Bloks (giant legos) with his train set (3), which is a good example of cool interoperability that the toy manufacturers themselves won't ever do. And I didn't even have to model any of this, since there are geekier parents than me out there.

Sure, it's still all just crappy chunks of plastic, but it's pretty cool to teach my son about the tech of 3D printing in such an engaging way.

1) http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22244

2) http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:608012

3) http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:742253

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#43

Post by dragonwriter »

philrapo wrote: post #39
panzagl wrote: post #28

For a 3-D printer to be useful to a home consumer a bunch of non-obvious conditions have to be met- 1- You have a need for an object you can't pick up at Home Depot, dollar store, etc. 2- You need the skills to model it in a 3-D program and make it suitable for printing. 3- You need to not have the skills to make it some other way- whether in wood, metal, or clay. I think the combination of 1 and 3 is probably the re…

What about: 4. 3-D models are available for purchase to instantly print an item in any dimensions you'd like.

That's really not a separate requirement (4) so much as an alternative to #2 (and an overspecified alternative, giving the "for purchase" part.)

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#44

Post by Htsthbjig »

_zlpp wrote: post #13

Here's why these 3D printer companies are now reeling in: go to kickstarter and search for "3d printing". There are 315 results. That's right, 315. 3D systems was founded in 1986. Stratasys was founded in 1989. These are not toy companies. These companies defined and refined the printing methods we're talking about today. What did their devices print? Engineering prototypes. Cars. Car parts. Medical and research part…

"3D systems was founded in 1986. Stratasys was founded in 1989. These are not toy companies. These companies defined and refined the printing methods we're talking about today. What did their devices print? Engineering prototypes. Cars. Car parts. Medical and research parts. Things that preceded mass production. From cat scan to a hip broach with no room for error."

This is exactly the problem with those companies. They had the patents that let them charge $60.000-$100.000 for something that cost less than $2000 to manufacture. They will spend more money sending you a sales representative, or in Shows and parties and fancy buildings.

Everything they sold to you was incredibly expensive, and God help you if your machine breaks.

For 20 something years they had done that and gotten away with it.

But now patents are expiring and they are dinosaurs.

"So the market, the buyers, are confused because seemingly new printers and 3d printing companies are sprouting like mushrooms after a rain promising faster and cheaper printing for a hundred bucks, and they keep tanking. Failing to deliver. Breaking promises. Consumers don't know many of these are just remixed open-sourced printers or that it takes 8 hours to make a small toy. The product dilution is eroding confidence in the technology and stealing resources from starter companies who are serious and could deliver real products."

I don't know what are you talking about. A Prusa Steel takes 30 minutes to mount. You can buy a printrbot, a bukito, a kossel already mounted.

Stealing resources? What? If I device to spend my money whenever I wish after a 20 years monopoly grant ends it is "stealing resources" from those guys?

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#45

Post by willholloway »

moron4hire wrote: post #12

A lot of the reliability problems with desktop 3D printers comes from the fact that they're forced by patents encumbering better methods to use Fused-Deposited Material (FDM) style printing. Extruding plastic thread and building up a model from that requires a lot of moving parts, some with extreme thermal changes being applied to them. I've seen a lot of DIY folk waste a lot of time on 3D printers. As it currently s…

I just built a 3D printer (Reprap Prusa i3v) so I could design and build custom parts for a hardware project I'm doing and I think that this is overly pessimistic.

I needed to print, try and tweak parts, if I ordered everything from shapeways my iterations would have been stretched out.

Here is a page I wrote about my experiences:

http://winterstartupchallenge.com/3dprinter.html

The only difficult thing was the calibration, making sure the surfaces were level etc... this could all be drastically improved with better reprap design.

Learning how to design models that could be 3D printed took some time, but now its second nature and basically comes down to not having any overhangs greater than 45 degrees.

I'm really glad I built my 3D printer and have the skillset. My ambition in life is to become what I call Master of the Intelligent Networked Machine, which is a grandiose way of saying I want to have the full skill set to design and build Internet of Things devices, from the hardware to the code.

I think its the most valuable skillset around today and 3D printing is a valuable part of the toolset.

It took me time to build the printer, but in the process I learned about the technology and I immediately saw the possibilities for using it in new and interesting ways. By seeing how a RepRap is built (commodity parts + custom home fabricated parts) it changed the way I designed and built my hardware product.

Becoming a 3D printer master builder only took a couple months and was well worth it.

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#46

Post by Htsthbjig »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #37
Htsthbjig wrote: post #36

The title is unfortunate and misleading. 3D printers are in fact booming. Each year the market doubles in size or more, hardly "falling flat". USD30.000 printers are falling flat, precisely because you can do lots of the things you only could do in $30.000 machines with $1.000 and companies are not stupid. Imagine someone telling you "computer firms are falling flat" when Apple II appeared, because IBM was loosing ma…

THe entire 3D printer market capitalization (sales etc) can currently be summed up as :Stratasys and 3D Systems. The rest added up don't touch these guys for sales (total < 10% of what they sell). So, anything that happens to their sales is really significant; all the rest are not yet significant.

They are significant in number, not in capitalization.

This is the Innovator's dilemma. If you don't consider a cheap or toy market that is 10 times bigger than yours in units sold and continue growing as "significant" then you will find yourself on a "kodak moment" soon in the future.

Nvidia was insignificant against Silicon graphics selling toys, until it was not.

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#47

Post by Htsthbjig »

dougmccune wrote: post #41

As the father of a 3 year old my interest in 3D printing has been reinvigorated. I can print segments of train tracks (1) for his train set to expand and build cool bridges (2). I can even print connectors that let me combine Mega Bloks (giant legos) with his train set (3), which is a good example of cool interoperability that the toy manufacturers themselves won't ever do. And I didn't even have to model any of this…

It is amazing what children could do. The technology is very similar. If your children learn 3d printers today, in the future they will be able to 3d mill or EDM a piece in metal.

I volunteer teaching little children to 3d print here in Europe. There is a very active Spanish community. Some of them will do incredible things when they grow up.

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#48

Post by Htsthbjig »

panzagl wrote: post #28

For a 3-D printer to be useful to a home consumer a bunch of non-obvious conditions have to be met- 1- You have a need for an object you can't pick up at Home Depot, dollar store, etc. 2- You need the skills to model it in a 3-D program and make it suitable for printing. 3- You need to not have the skills to make it some other way- whether in wood, metal, or clay. I think the combination of 1 and 3 is probably the re…

1- You download already made objects at youmagine, thingiverse or github.

2- You need to load your model and press a button that says "print".

3- You can make objects any other way in wood, metal or clay and 3d scan it to make it digital. E.g Cars are regularly designed on clay, and 3d scanned to make a computer model that you can replicate forever and edit in the computer.

I could spend hours carving wood or drilling, milling, lathing it. But all this work has to be replicated if I need another piece. Digitalization means anyone, anywhere could replicate my piece(or analyze in a CAM, CAE program).

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#49

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #46
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THe entire 3D printer market capitalization (sales etc) can currently be summed up as :Stratasys and 3D Systems. The rest added up don't touch these guys for sales (total < 10% of what they sell). So, anything that happens to their sales is really significant; all the rest are not yet significant.

They are significant in number, not in capitalization. This is the Innovator's dilemma. If you don't consider a cheap or toy market that is 10 times bigger than yours in units sold and continue growing as "significant" then you will find yourself on a "kodak moment" soon in the future. Nvidia was insignificant against Silicon graphics selling toys, until it was not.

That doesn't happen in an instant. At some point the upstart's market capitalization will have to grow orders of magnitude. Until then, business as usual, and that business is the big guys.

Re: 3-D Printer Firms Fall Flat, as Buyers Wait for New Models

#50

Post by _zlpp »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #44
_zlpp wrote: post #13

Here's why these 3D printer companies are now reeling in: go to kickstarter and search for "3d printing". There are 315 results. That's right, 315. 3D systems was founded in 1986. Stratasys was founded in 1989. These are not toy companies. These companies defined and refined the printing methods we're talking about today. What did their devices print? Engineering prototypes. Cars. Car parts. Medical and research part…

"3D systems was founded in 1986. Stratasys was founded in 1989. These are not toy companies. These companies defined and refined the printing methods we're talking about today. What did their devices print? Engineering prototypes. Cars. Car parts. Medical and research parts. Things that preceded mass production. From cat scan to a hip broach with no room for error." This is exactly the problem with those companies. T…

You sound like the kind of person who can work through photogrammetric scanning, mesh reconstruction, 3D modeling with openSCAD, manual bed leveling, nozzle jams, picking the right nozzle sizes, print and bed temperatures, and other slic3r settings. You can figure out why your print came out looking like a malnourished waffle.

Most consumers who are interested in 3D printing can't.

This is not a hobbyist product. This is a product for a hobbyist engineer. With some elbow grease and love, it could become a hobbyist product, but an ungodly lot of these kickstarter companies are selling unicorns.

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