81–90 of 112 posts
Thomas Sanladerer on youtube is a good source of information, and reprap.org, if you're shopping.
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 commun…
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 commun…
Time to find a 'Made in America' 3d-Printer for my next fabricator
The Lulzbot mentioned below was based on the Mendelmax 1.5. This line of printers moved RepRap from a threaded rod construction to extruded aluminum. Also the first to have linear rails instead of steel rod+linear bearings. The new Mendelmax3 is a mix of laser cut parts and extrusions - and has required less service than any of my printers to date.
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 t…
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.
3D printing is a great technology but this is just sad, more jobs leaving to China.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Open hardware doesn't really seem to be a sustainable business Neither does open source software tbh.
It seems to be, at best, something you try and use as a value add to your real service like DB consulting.
If Middle America wants those jobs, Middle Americans are welcome to start a fashion label of their own. But since they seem to thrive on blandness in the Midwest I doubt that's going to happen.
That was condescending. Let's try not to make generalization about a large portion of the country.
That culture is causing a serious brain drain and more importantly a hard ceiling on how far a brand can reach into the unknown. Its the difference between capturing the imaginations of consumers all over the world as opposed to simply trying to scale into some generic chain store or big box retail product.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
> Open hardware doesn't really seem to be a sustainable business Neither does open source software tbh.
Open hardware works similarly in that you offer your design and then sell a reference build of it. There will always be some percentage of users who are attracted by the fact that it's 'free' but just want the finished product and don't care about building it themselves.
It's a viable business model, it just doesn't scale the way closed-source scales. It only works when you're selling something new that hasn't been mega-mass-produced and commoditised yet. If you want to design something once then churn out millions of units, don't open-source your design.