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by wodahs02
3702 days ago
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I followed MakerBot pretty obsessively since its early days. I have to agree with some of the comments here. It was very clear after they raised venture money that they became a marketing machine. I suspect they were burning quite lot of money to grab marketshare and become the de facto personal 3D printer. They pawned that thing off at the right time and let it become someone else's problem. Classic venture playbook. |
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They also don't have to worry about losing MakerBot because 3D printing/additive manufacturing is going to be freaking insanely big. Companies want to shorten R&D time and generate new products quickly.
Also, 3D printers for the purpose of manufacturing products won't be big in the home anytime soon. Why? Except for the new HP Multi Jet Fusion printers which are a small step towards the end goal with their ability to use different agents within a single part, most 3D printers only have the capability to print in a single material at a time. This is great for parts, but not good for consumer goods which are made of many different materials. Today's 3D printer is very far away from a Star Trek replicator. There is a lot that goes into part design, determining how to best build the part, doing the design of the build which is different than the part specification so that parts can be built as designed, knowing how to use the printer along with maintaining/dealing with quirks caused by how the parts are built (which depends on technology/machine/material used and many other things), and removing structural supports and power/resin from parts after they are built.
Even when all of that becomes less complicated, and it will, home technology will almost always be behind the level of technology that exists in a company dedicated to manufacturing. Consumer 3D for most products is just not going to be a good market anytime soon.
The exception is food. Food is not nearly as complicated of a product as other consumer goods to make, and people love to make beautiful custom food at home, so 3D food printers could very easily become a staple in the kitchen. They could be every home within 40-50 years and in many food production facilities within 20 years.