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What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

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Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#61

Post by dragontamer »

Animats wrote: post #18

The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something…

> The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money.

High quality desktop CNC Mills are out.

http://carbide3d.com/

$3000 for a proven technology. Home-made CNC mills have always come in between $1000 to $3000, and now professional turnkey solutions are available in that price range.

I do realize CNC machines are the "opposite" of a 3D Printer. But if a CNC machine can get a software stack as easy to use as the 3d printers, then I think they'd get a lot more use.

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#62

Post by crimsonalucard »

xorcist wrote: post #38
xenadu02 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that say about the idea of doing open hardware in general? You do all the work, some other manufacturer in China greatly undercuts you. How is that a good idea?

How's that any different from pretty much any easily-copied business? How do Nike or Levi's survive, when pretty much any basement shop in China can undercut them on shoes and jeans? The answer is your brand must must mean something. Be the domain expert. Be the one people turn to with questions. When the clones arrive, you are already ahead. That's easier said than done, and execution is everything and so on and so…

Nike and Levi's are bad examples. They use brands as illusions of superiority. Money in this case is not spent on R&D but spent on marketing.

Also how can you be the domain expert if you open source everything you know? The millions you spend on R&D are given away and allow others to arrive at the same knowledge for $0. How does that work out for a company from a competitive standpoint? You are basically shooting yourself in the foot in terms of staying ahead and being a domain expert.

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#63

Post by bane »

I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative.

The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a couple copies of a 3d trinket or toy with enough frequency to make it worth it. And the subset of those people with useful 3d-modeling skills is some tiny fraction of that number.

Whenever I see somebody using a 3d printer at the consumer level for something useful, it always seems to have just been for a one-off Arduino case or something like that. That's really just not incentive for me to spend the time and money to get setup with 3d printing, when I can just buy a case off of Amazon or whatever and be done with it.

The cost of the parts is the cost of your time + materials + setup costs (the printer). Is an Arduino case really worth $1400-$6500? That price only comes down if I print off more stuff I suppose, but at what point do the trinkets and dodads I'm printing off start to make economic and time sense? That's pretty far down the production chain, and I simply don't have that much stuff to print.

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#64

Post by auxym »

bane wrote: post #63

I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative. The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a coupl…

I'm in mechanical engineering and love tinkering with stuff, and I also can't really find an excuse to get a 3D printer. In the research lab I used to work in, we had both a printer and trotec laser cutter (for acrylic and similar), and the cutter was used multiple times every single day while the printer was fired up once a month or so. Note that we also had two CNC milling machines, a lathe and a full complement of power tools, which likely contributed to the printer seeing very little use.

Also, your post reminds of a recent blog post by a friend of mind who is cofounder of a makerspace in the college town we were in. Loosely translated, he deplored how the maker culture has shifted from a utopia where everyone could learn to make their own durable and useful objects instead of buying into mass-production, planned obsolescence and consumerism, to a bunch of people manufacturing mostly useless plastic trinkets.

All in all though, when I move into a home with a garage, I'd love to get of those chinese mini-lathes which can be had for sub-1000$ :) And I wish laser cutters were less expensive (the trotec we had was bought around 40k I think, actually more than our CNCs).

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#65

Post by derekp7 »

Animats wrote: post #18

The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something…

I wonder why we haven't seen a hybrid of a 3d printer plus cnc machine? That way you could have a really inexpensive 3d process that is low resolution, then have a cnc cutter that finishes it up. (A cnc machine by itself normally has as a disadvantage of a large amount of waste of input material).

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#66

Post by justifier »

Animats wrote: post #18

The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something…

i am always amazed at how 3d printer articles brought to the forefront of this aggregator rarely, if ever, talk about the peachy printer

in considering lowering costs i suppose the question is who is assessing these costs: an individual, or a company

form1 is interesting but at 3.3k that is quite expensive for an individual

there is an effort for a 100$ stereolithographic printer called the peachy printer

comparing specs:

                    pP(i)       form1(ii)
    resolution     .2mm    20-200microns(.02-.2mm)
    build vol      ?inf?*     125×125×165
    software       open         closed
    price printer  100$**        3.3k$
    price resin     60$          150$
    * peachy's design is formless, seemingly only limited by the tank volume and struts
    ** 100$ self assembly, 400$ fully built
when the peachy is finalised and in the hands of users i think this build volume aspect will be a source of very interesting experimentation and debate

peachy was impressive when it started its effort and has steadily improved but the really impressive element of the campaign for me is the transparency of development(iii), and the ethics of its staff(iv)

also the software is opensource : https://github.com/PeachyPrinter

.

(i) http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!printer-specs/c1gk6

(ii) http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/

(iii) https://www.youtube.com/user/PeachyPrinter

(iv) http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!ethics/c2208

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#67

Post by bborud »

Animats wrote: post #18

The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something…

No, that is not Makerbot Industries' problem.

They have problems at two levels. At one level is that their management isn't very nice and thus the internal culture appears to be very strained. At least if you read the comments from about 50-60 former and current employees on one of those "employee satisfaction" websites whose name escapes me at the moment (Glass Door?).

They went from a very open company embracing open source and the Maker culture, to a closed company that was about pushing products that were not mature in order to meet revenue demands from their new owners. Their new owners being one of the big names in an industry that has been defined by patenting the fuck out of everything and then holding progress back for dear life. (High end 3D printers are the ultimate razor-blade business model -- with the slight difference that the razor handle isn't exactly cheap. Ask someone who owns a high end printer and they'll be able to tell you how insanely expensive they are to run).

At the more obvious level, Makerbot are in trouble because they have made a defective product. It would have been okay if the product was still "open" so users could service the parts or upgrade components, but now you can't.

In particular they have made an extruder that fails on almost every level. From the badly designed hotend that has an entirely wrong temperature gradient, to the non existing adjustment of idler wheel pressure, the unnecessary custom designed hobbed wheel, the lack of gearing on the stepper, meaning that it is too weak to do its job (look for "tick of death"), the fact that you can't open the extruder without voiding the warranty and risk breaking off the tabs to hold it together and the various Z-axis calibration problems which means that automatic offset measurement both results in the wrong distance AND it takes more time on EVERY print than it takes to calibrate the Z-offset on a manual printer ONCE.

The upshot of this is very frequent printing malfunctions, an extruder that is only guaranteed for 200 hours of operation before it has to be replaced, and if the extruder clogs, you have to send it in to have it cleared. (Extruder clogs can happen at any time. I've had extruders clog after just 2 hours). In Norway a new extruder costs about 4000,- NOK ($510)the last time I checked. For moderate use while prototyping you need between one and two new extruders per month, plus you need a population of extruders big enough to guarantee that you have extruders on hand when sending back extruders for repair.

You can calculate how many times over a year you pay the price of a new printer in spare parts alone. The Makerbot is a fucking expensive machine to run. (Yet not as expensive as the big high end printers from 3DS, Stratasys etc)

(Of course, in real life, time is worth more, so you fix the clogged extruders yourself and void the warranty).

So no, it is not about high end versus low end processes. Most people who are in the market for FFF (FDM) printers know precisely what the process can deliver. And there are printers that reliably deliver the expected results. Makerbot's fifth generation printers are not among them.

While the Osborne effect might have been a contributor to their earlier troubles, it isn't what is ailing them now. In fact, you would have to ignore half a dozen bigger issues before you would desperately reach for the Osborne effect.

(I have a Makerbot fifth gen at work and we've gone through three extruders before just giving up. The thing doesn't work. I occasionally update the firmware and the desktop software to see if things have improved, but there really isn't that much you can do when the key problem is horrendeously inept mechanical design.

I also have a Makergear M2 at home which (in Norway) costs about half of what the Makerbot costs, and which has worked impeccably for months now. After 4 monts the extruder mount started breaking apart. So I quickly printed a new one (before it broke completely) and replaced it. It cost me about $2 and it took 90 minutes from I discovered the cracks until I had the new part mounted. Apart from that I have had no problems and have had to replace no other parts)

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#68

Post by bborud »

derekp7 wrote: post #65
Animats wrote: post #18

The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something…

I wonder why we haven't seen a hybrid of a 3d printer plus cnc machine? That way you could have a really inexpensive 3d process that is low resolution, then have a cnc cutter that finishes it up. (A cnc machine by itself normally has as a disadvantage of a large amount of waste of input material).

The machine you describe exists at least in prototype form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9IdZ2pI5dA

Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect

#70

Post by justifier »

bane wrote: post #63

I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative. The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a coupl…

just this week:

(i) an arm on my glasses broke, i went to the shop i bought the glasses from, for 400$, and their suggestion? buy a new pair and my prescription has expired since the last time so i will need to have an eye exam for another 200$

(ii) the little plastic latch on my girlfriend's bike helmet broke in half, it still latches but can pop free with enough pressure

(iii) the clip on my compass broke so now i just tape a pencil onto it

(iv) variably sized plant pots

(v) mechanism holding the wheel on our closet door broke

(vi) clip on accessories: front and rear lights, phone nav; for bike

it's little annoyances that crop up and cause me to think i wish i could just print this little solution out

also..

(vii) i think parents would love the long term savings :: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/12/29/arts-and-cr...

(!) tinkering

.. 'all this and more' for 100$ .. http://www.peachyprinter.com/#!blog/c16fp

i think we need the printers in homes before we start to think about what we can print with them

the biggest problem i see is print time and recyclability of old parts

it is funny thought though.. i hate personal printers, all this useless paper lying about: "print me a reciept", "print me a boarding pass", "print me a copy of the report"

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