<story><title>Low-cost 3D printers and crowdfunding suicide</title><url>http://3dprototypesandmodels.com.au/blog-2/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>This was an interesting article. Primarily about the inexperience in people building printers (and some evil people) who through Kickstarter or Indiegogo are making promises that it is mathematically impossible for them to keep. People have been doing this since forever but the Internet makes it easier than ever.&lt;p&gt;That said, the 3D printer &amp;quot;market&amp;quot;, if you will, is remarkable. It is being created in exactly the same way that the microcomputer market was created, and from that we can potentially predict its path and some opportunities there.&lt;p&gt;For those of you too young to remember, IBM was not a participant in the microcomputer market, which was called microcomputers (as opposed to minicomputers from the likes of DEC or Data General). Between 1972 (introduction of the 8008 microprocessor from Intel) and 1981 (introduction of the IBM PC from IBM), the market consisted of lots of documentation (datasheets) from manufacturers, re-using 100 pin edge connectors for wiring busses, and lots of source code published in &amp;quot;magazines&amp;quot; which were no more than photocopied pages stapled together. And then, as with 3D printers today, the nerdiest of the nerds all had to have one but they didn&amp;#x27;t know why, and the rest of the world felt that owning your own computer was a ridiculous idea. Why pay all that money so that you could play &amp;#x27;hunt the wumpus&amp;#x27; in a painfully slow loading stripped down version of the BASIC programming language?&lt;p&gt;Stepping back though, the excitement, the nerd fests, the people going nuts over these things, like a spinning top in a maze randomly bouncing off the walls, eventually found a solution, or a use, for this technology that non-nerds could relate too. Initially that was spreadsheets, then small databases, and data collection and analysis that the &amp;#x27;big&amp;#x27; computers had been doing since the start. There is a lot of capital trying to figure out which company is the next Microsoft.&lt;p&gt;When I was at Google, a relative of one of the Makerbot founders worked at Google as well, and sought out volunteers to help build their first &amp;#x27;Cupcake&amp;#x27; printer kit and give feedback. It was an amazing little box which, when the stars and planets aligned, would actually print reliably for the 3 hours or so needed to make a print of any decent size. It was a marvel, and sometimes it worked reliably.&lt;p&gt;I ended up buying a Makerbot Replicator 1 at a weak moment at Makerfair when they were 15% off list (they were clearing out old stock to make room for the Replicator 2) I printed a few test prints and then it sat on the shelf for nearly two years. I recently fired it up again because my daughter wanted me to print her a measuring spoon for chai.&lt;p&gt;Diving back into it I realized that there are a lot of people &amp;quot;building&amp;quot; 3D printers but not nearly so many &amp;quot;engineering&amp;quot; 3D printers. Circuit design for example on the RAMPS 1.4 board has little to no self protection circuitry and so it is prone to being damaged by things like moving the steppers when the power isn&amp;#x27;t applied. Extruders of all types with varying levels of material feed, feedback, and consistency. Machines that require amazing amounts of calibration to print correctly assembled with fasteners without any locking capability at all. It is so much like early S-100 microcomputers it is practically a deja-vu experience.&lt;p&gt;3D printing is a &amp;#x27;thing&amp;#x27;, and its going to be a huge thing. While I get that there may not be anything today you want to print, I can also imagine a day where all your currently disposable plastic goods (cups, utensils, clips, etc) would be printed on demand and disposed in a hopper that would recycle them as raw material for the next round. Because of the amount of investment going on, I don&amp;#x27;t worry about novices who go bankrupt trying to build a printer after a successful crowd funding campaign. I feel feel badly for them sure, but I don&amp;#x27;t think it will derail this particular technology bloom.</text></comment>
<story><title>Low-cost 3D printers and crowdfunding suicide</title><url>http://3dprototypesandmodels.com.au/blog-2/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tmuir</author><text>Another big problem that makes it hard to raise this kind of money is that none of these FDM printers have anything that differentiates them from every other printer.  There are only a handful of different gcode interpreter&amp;#x2F;motor driver boards.  Almost all of those boards use the same Marlin firmware.  They all use Repetier Host has the PC software.  They all have roughly the same printing resolution.  They all use the same hotends.  They all require too much tinkering, maintenance, and learning curve to ever be a mass market product.  On top of that, ask any hobbyist who owns one how often they use it after the initial wow factor wears off.  Most people run out of stuff to print pretty quickly.&lt;p&gt;Besides Makerbot, who has the advantages of 5 years of experience and VC money, none of the low end FDM printers have any sort of moat to make new customers want their printer over the newest kickstarter project.  And Makerbot isn&amp;#x27;t even competing on price anymore.&lt;p&gt;Without some major innovation in ease of use, print resolution, print time, print material, or reliability, I don&amp;#x27;t see how a startup FDM printer can raise the kind of money outlined in the article.</text></comment>