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Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

josefprusa.com

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Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#41

Post by clarionbell »

motorest wrote: post #23
Workaccount2 wrote: post #20

As a hardware guy, and someone who loves coming up with fun product ideas, China is the ASI LLM of the hardware world. Like don't even bother trying to compete, they are faster, cheaper, have better yield, and don't really need to be profitable. Imagine what the software industry would look like if an LLM could look at any completed software product, and a few weeks to a month later have made a perfect copy of it. It…

> People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too. What problem do you think needs fixing?

Dependence on foreign power with potentially misaligned goal? Collapse of manufacturing sector, leading to rise in poverty?

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#42

Post by Workaccount2 »

motorest wrote: post #23
Workaccount2 wrote: post #20

As a hardware guy, and someone who loves coming up with fun product ideas, China is the ASI LLM of the hardware world. Like don't even bother trying to compete, they are faster, cheaper, have better yield, and don't really need to be profitable. Imagine what the software industry would look like if an LLM could look at any completed software product, and a few weeks to a month later have made a perfect copy of it. It…

> People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too. What problem do you think needs fixing?

Being entirely dependent on Chinese manufacturing to make anything. This also has the downstream effect of no one young learning how to make stuff, which then leaves you as a society that is forced to buy everything from China, and puts China in an excellent position to rug pull American society if they want.

I can tell your first hand, that the engineers in the hardware/physical product space probably have an average age of 58 years old. That's very bad.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#43

Post by josefprusa »

Hi! Josef here! I was just recently sharing a little update on socials, here is a copy:

Since I posted my “OHW is dead” article, you’ve been asking me about “that patent”. I didn’t want you to miss the forest (thousands of filings since 2020) just because of one tree. But let’s take a look now. In this case: the MMU multiplexer (we open sourced it 9 years ago). Anycubic (another IDG Capital-backed company) used the tactic of filing in China for an easy initial grant: CN 222407171 U > DE 20 2024 100 001 U1 > US 2025/0144881 A1. The playbook: file a Chinese utility model (10-year patent, same protections, lower examination, already granted) claim that priority in Germany (again as a utility model, already granted) file in the US. Cheap to file, but expensive and time-consuming to fight. I already wrote why prior art isn’t a magic wand that solves it immediately in my article ⤵ And there are many more, we just found a new juicy one!

Edit: Emojis stripped from the original, tried to fix it a bit ;-)

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#44

Post by conorbergin »

If you are a hobbyist or small business in desktop manufacturing you are basically forced to buy Chinese products.

I have never owned a Prusa, but I have owned several Creality and Bambu Labs printers, because I could get the same utility at half the cost. The same goes for soldering irons, linear actuators, oscillscopes, etc. I still buy European hand tools (Knipex, Wera, etc) because I know they won't break in a year, so they are good value in the long run.

Often the choice is whether to buy a used, last generation tool of eBay, or a brand new next-gen tool from China. The choice depends on how flawed the Chinese implementation is and the gap in utility between the generations.

The main problem with Chinese products is the lack of accountability. The same product will be sold under multiple brands, or by dropshippers, and you have no idea who actually made it, there are some strong Chinese brands that buck this trend, i.e. Bambu Labs. When you buy western tools you are buying peace of mind, something I can't currently afford.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#45

Post by vhab »

razemio wrote: post #14

A genuine Question. Is open hardware even possible at some point? The advances in quality and speed are nothing short but impressive. I started 3d printing stuff in my basement one year ago (Ender V3 Plus). With the quality and speed improvements, comes technology which gets more complex every year. Companies spend millions to archive this. Why would they share it? I remember building drones in my basement (still on…

Open hardware for 3D printers is actually thriving. There's a whole fleet of community designed hardware, with most innovations to consumer 3D printing still originating in the DIY community.

Multiple manufacturers have direct contact with community members to produce custom hardware at a small but affordable scale, and keeping up with rapid iterations and multiple hardware improvements throughout the year.

Some of the most cutting edge as well as niche 3D printing hardware available to consumers are being sold on small webshops operating out of someone's garage.

If anything, we're in a golden age right now. 3D printing in 2025 is a very exciting place to be.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#46

Post by pwillia7 »

simpaticoder wrote: post #11

The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…

I'd vote for you

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#47

Post by BoredPositron »

cluckindan wrote: post #25
BoredPositron wrote: post #4

It's time that prusa gets outside pressure their printers stagnated in innovation and got more expensive. They don't even have machines in the entry/starter category anymore. Why should anyone buy from you if he gets a better experience for less. Especially now that they started to abandon their own core values just have a look at their new offerings they are the opposite for what they plead here. Less open.

That’s a misframing of the situation explained in the post. Prusa printers stagnated in innovation due to patents filed, making it more difficult to add features. Still, they did expand into SLA and CoreXY. Prusa printers got more expensive because most of the expensive components come from China, which raised prices and gave subsidies to Chinese manufacturers. That is a de facto export tariff. They do have entry-lev…

The Core One makes your whole last sentence obsolete...

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#48

Post by reactordev »

simpaticoder wrote: post #11

The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…

While I don't entirely disagree with you. You have to understand why the courts exist at all. To govern working class citizens. Laws are written by the powerful and wealthy - always has been - to control the working class (everyone else).

You're freedom is an illusion. A social contract agreed upon by you following certain rules. Those rules, written by the wealthy, don't apply to the wealthy. In a just society they would be, but we have ceased to be a just society for the last 50 years. Technology isn't going to solve this without becoming that AI overlord everyone is scared of. Court systems are designed to prevent working class from becoming wealthy and to protect the wealthy and their assets from the working class. (violent crimes aside)

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#49

Post by bluGill »

pjmlp wrote: post #27
bluGill wrote: post #16

For most people this is just fine - your goals were not to build a 3d printer it was to build something that just happens to be build able on a 3d printer. That is the something you are building is the goal, not building a 3d printer. If the goal isn't building a 3d printer then buying a 3d printer that someone else has already debugged and made to work is the better way to get to what you really want to do in the fi…

As it happens with FOSS anything, that is not what the general public cares about, rather getting something easily at a store and fulfills their needs, which aren't how the thing works, rather as a tool for their actual work.

You have limited time. That year needed to build and debug a 3d printer (if you are single a year would be way to long, but for those with kids that is way too short) is a year that you can't spend on whatever your real hobby is. If you real hobby is 3d printers then that is great, but if not you shouldn't. I work on FOSS projects, but most of what I have installed on my system is a per-packaged distro from someone else who made it work (I have FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and Arch - each slightly different) because I don't have time to do linux/BSD from scratch even though I could. I have built gcc, but most of the time I just use the pre-packaged gcc so I can get on building the project I'm interested in.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#50

Post by jononor »

Palomides wrote: post #31
simpaticoder wrote: post #11

The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…

partial disagree, I think the issue is how the patent office abdicated any but the most superficial effort to validate patents onto the court system

It would be good if the difficulty of getting patents would go up by a factor of 10. To get less of them in volume, and less bullshit ones. Should also throw out a bunch of the existing bad ones.
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