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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?

#81

Post by zevon »

conorbergin wrote: post #44

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 ye…

Prusa makes their products locally, the spare part situation is good, the company runs an open Makerspace in their basement, helps host conferences and has done a lot for Open Hardware in general. They also have offered consistent upgrade paths for old machines for a long time and the repairability in general is good. You can also talk to them. These things matter for purchase decisions. Same logic as per your Knipex and Wera example.

I actually have a Bambu Labs at home for occasional use but I would not consider anything but Prusas for a general-use desktop FDM printer in basically any more serious setting. This has been the situation for many years now (over the last 12 years or so, I've had to make a few purchase decisions for batches of 5-15 FDM printers as well as different single specialty ones).

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#82

Post by naasking »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #60

China, being a planned economy at heart, has a "VC" system that is essentially just the government deciding what needs to be developed, and then Chinese banks lending without any practical strings to those developers. Profit and loss, ROI, business plan, aren't really factored in. China wants to develop AI? You have some experience and want to start an AI business? Great! Here is a few million go make AI. This is the…

I don't see how that could be considered a planned economy, you're describing individuals creating startups of their own free choice and the government backing them with no strings. Individual choices are driving economic progress.

A planned economy would be some government committee deciding what specific startups and how many of them should be started up in any give year, and no one else can create a startup.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#83

Post by reactordev »

AlexandrB wrote: post #72
reactordev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In a just society they would be, but we have ceased to be a just society for the last 50 years. When did we start being a just society would you say? WWI? The Civil Rights Act? Unless you really stretch things, saying that justice declined in the last 50 years - even if true - means that justice "peaked" for a short period of maybe a generation. I suspect if you actually lived in that era[1] you wouldn't think that…

Just going off my own experience. While violent crime has diminished, other crimes are going on in plain sight with prudence from the courts. Because privatized prisons are a thing in the US, they need product... You'll be charged $4/day - $80/day while you're there. I remember when "debtor's prison" was illegal. Now it's not. So you can brush it under a rug, claim things are better, claim we are more just than we used to be, but I never claimed that we ever were 100% just. Only that we used to be more just than we are today.

https://www.rutgers.edu/news/states-unfairly-burdening-incar...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/653897/americans-pass-judgment-...

https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/the-withering-of-public...

https://www.idea.int/blog/how-independent-us-supreme-court-u...

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#84

Post by simpaticoder »

AlexandrB wrote: post #72
reactordev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In a just society they would be, but we have ceased to be a just society for the last 50 years. When did we start being a just society would you say? WWI? The Civil Rights Act? Unless you really stretch things, saying that justice declined in the last 50 years - even if true - means that justice "peaked" for a short period of maybe a generation. I suspect if you actually lived in that era[1] you wouldn't think that…

Arguably justice in general started declining with the invention of the typewriter, and injustice accelerated with the invention of the word processor and will get far worse with LLMs. The cost and time of litigation scales like n^2 where n is the textual length of the law. Personally I'd like to require that laws be written out by hand by the lawmaker(s) proposing them (NOT their staffers), and read aloud by them before a vote.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#85

Post by frantathefranta »

brookst wrote: post #69
RobotToaster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would allow anyone to patent spam though, that could be a good thing.

How? Compare to email spam where the cost is zero. Is that in any way better than a world where it takes substantial capital to send email spam? Lower cost = more patents = more patent trolls = less innovation.

Maybe they think it'd be a good thing because it would eventually phase out patents?

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#86

Post by gubikmic »

vhab wrote: post #24

This could have been an interesting take from anyone but Prusa. While they've earned themselves a great deal of goodwill from past contributions to the ecosystem, they're a failing company pivoting to dark patterns in an attempt to cling to relevance. It's heart breaking to see they still haven't been able to take a good hard look at themselves, and understand their own role in why they are scrambling. Blog posts lik…

Please elaborate

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#88

Post by superxpro12 »

sitkack wrote: post #68
josefprusa wrote: post #43

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 t…

All of Open Source needs a sunlit patent pool, a searchable database of documented inventions AND all of the follow on ideas around them. This could provide a way to force patent examiners to do their jobs and allow the Open Source Community to crowd source invention bombing the proprietary world. How does one lookup these patents? They need more exposure so they can be refuted.

I work in a different industry, power tools. Somehow the USPTO allowed Milwaukee to patent a circ saw that spins at a certain rpm...

The things that get through the patent office are braindead. Patents are just weaponized legal minefields now. They've totally lost their original intent.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#89

Post by schrijver »

conorbergin wrote: post #44

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 ye…

Hobbyists aren’t forced to buy anything.. I blame youtube for turning hobbies into an exercise at buying stuff. Affiliate links are one of the few ways to make money online and the reason why the majority of videos in the hobby space seem to be gear reviews. Yet as a hobbyist chances are you won’t practice enough to outgrow your tools anyway, and neither do you have the economic incentives of business owners.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#90

Post by Symbiote »

tiku wrote: post #29

As someone that had open-hardware printers, they suck. They were fun to play with but not really ready for every day use. So perhaps a bad thing for the hardware side, but as a consumer/user I want a smooth experience.

Prusa's printers have a reputation for being easy to use, but cost more than the Chinese competition.

Your comment is ignorant nonsense.

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