PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer • Hacker News Board

Re: PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer

#41

Post by guelo » Fri, Oct 05, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

andyjsong wrote: post #36

d1plo1d wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To Stratasys $10k is probably already the Honda Civic of 3D printers. To go with an entirely different analogy, Stratasys is the old, lumbering baron of 3d printing. Conversely, RepRap, Makerbot, Ultimaker, MakerGear, Type A and now Panda Robotics are all the agile, new kids who were raised on a healthy diet of open source. Having invaded the Barons lands they are now zipping around rearranging the Baron's fiefdom at…

This comment will probably get some flack, but it sounds like they need to get bought out by a PE firm and go through a massive reorganization. Layoff all the top management brass, keep engineers that have a low-cost printer in their homes and hire someone like Bre to keep things lean. Otherwise, they will watch their market share erode until one of the scrappy startup kids get enough bank to buy them out for pennies…

Or more likely, a PE firm would saddle the company with debt to pay off the new owners' debts, lay off everybody with any know-how, make an inept attempt at reinventing the now low-morale company, then give up after a few years and go into bankruptcy selling it off for parts leaving a pile of bondholder and pension lawsuits behind while management moves on to their next glorious MBA adventure.

Re: PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer

#42

Post by nickpinkston » Fri, Oct 05, 2012, 3:51 AM UTC

d1plo1d wrote: post #35

andyjsong wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I went to the Stratasys site and saw that there entry level printer was $10k, would this be the equivalent of a Ferrari vs. a kit car conversion? Why doesn't Stratasys make a Honda Civic of 3D printers?

To Stratasys $10k is probably already the Honda Civic of 3D printers. To go with an entirely different analogy, Stratasys is the old, lumbering baron of 3d printing. Conversely, RepRap, Makerbot, Ultimaker, MakerGear, Type A and now Panda Robotics are all the agile, new kids who were raised on a healthy diet of open source. Having invaded the Barons lands they are now zipping around rearranging the Baron's fiefdom at…

Yea, it's a good question about what Statasys' response will be, but in the near term they see, realistically, that much of their customer base never heard of the other FDM printers. They've got a sales force and install base, so I bet they're good for years to come. Still tho - they're mostly likely to be disrupted in the space.

Honestly, the editor of Modern Machine Shop hadn't heard of Make Magazine when I asked - the maker hobbyists and manufacturers have little overlap surprisingly.

Re: PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer

#43

Post by ecaron » Fri, Oct 05, 2012, 4:30 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #40

pxlpshr wrote: post #7

The video mentions they've only been working in the 3D printer world for less than a year. So now they know how to fix "all the problems" to make 3D printing available to the masses? The leadership page doesn't give me a lot of confidence in that blanket statement. Regular 2D printing isn't something that's been easy for most people after 20 years of modern computing. It's a toss up whether or not software, hardware,…

Only $1,000 difference? Makerbot's Replicator 2 is approaching triple this price at $2200. Makerbot is moving upmarket into the semi-proffesional market and abandoning the hobbyist and student market leaving an opening for sub-thousand dollar robots like this one.

In fairness to Replicator 2, the output versatility looks scores more impressive than Panda's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o6pcbhylmQ. I suppose it all depends on the hobbyist.

Re: PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer

#44

Post by srlake » Fri, Oct 05, 2012, 5:30 AM UTC

Even though it's 3x the price, I'd take the Form 1: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affor...

3x the price and 10x the machine.

Re: PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer

#45

Post by tptacek » Fri, Oct 05, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #39

tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't fair. Pricing so close to COGS that you can't sustainably deliver the product isn't price innovation, nor is pricing so low that COGS forces you to deliver an inferior product; the comment you're responding to took pains to spell out why this particular 3d printer price didn't make much sense. The consistent hostility towards low prices on HN is based on this site's manifest tendency to underprice things,…

But Tom, what basis do you have for suggesting they can't sustainably deliver the product? I don't know whether this is the case, I'm waiting to find out. But I'm perplexed by the assumption that they can't, and thought the grandparent comment assumed its conclusions. I don't agree on the inferior product angle; that assumes someone else should define what the minimal acceptable functionality is. I don't necessarily…

Yeah, I don't know. You make a good point too. Maybe the parent comment was worded too stridently, but I thought it asked a valid question, and I think HN needs that question to be asked more, not less.