Open letter to Makerbot

[quercus]

I've just cancelled my order (and place near the front of the UK delivery queue) for a Makerbot Replicator 2 (a 3D printer

Comments

[jarkman]

You might want to have a chat to some of the 3dprinterati at the Hackspace, They seem to have plentiful supplies of PLA and ABS.

And, incidentally, there's a promising-looking Rostok coming together there as well, which I find a tempting idea.

[quercus]

Rostok is certainly a promising idea, but it's surely a whole world of faffing to make it work right. The Replicator is at least off the shelf as a working design,

[petrichor_1]

I don't know how true this is, since boingboing is increasingly an unreliable narrator, but they said yesterday:

"Many of the key patents in 3D printing start expiring in 2013, and will continue to lapse through '14 and '15. Expect a big bang of 3D printer innovation, and massive price-drops, in the years to come."

[quercus]

Boing is turning into the physical world version of Slashdot, with a similar crop of idiocy. Like the Daily Wail, it's certainly a mistake to read the user comments.

I think this "great unleashing of patents" is overblown, at least as far as the Maker-level machines go. I know of no significant patents that are opening up around the fused filament machines, it's all about the polymerisation and powder sintering processes. So those might open up a bit, bring a few new machines into production at the tens of thousands level, but I still can't see hobbyist polymerisation becoming popular with the price of the resins. At most I think we're going to see more and smaller Shapeways appearing. Maybe me!

[jarkman]

If this works out as planned (obviously a big if) SLA may get a lot cheaper:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affordable-professional-3d-printer

They are predicting resin at $150/l, which I think is cheap enough to engage hobbyists.

[quercus]

Hobbyist 3D print SLA is still a tiny fraction of resin volume, and there's a nice fat profit on those resins at present.

So in who's interest is it to disrupt this?

Formlabs is now its own problem anyway.