[HN Gopher] Ultimaker and Makerbot merge to form new 3D printing...
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Ultimaker and Makerbot merge to form new 3D printing company
Author : ChuckMcM
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-05-12 18:53 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (press.ultimaker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (press.ultimaker.com)
| ravenstine wrote:
| I have no feelings for or against this because I own a 3D printer
| from neither of those companies. Makerbot's printers used to be
| pretty terrible, and now they are just overpriced. An Ender 3 or
| similar Prusa knockoff can do the exact same job for a fraction
| of the price. Yeah, institutions go with MakerBot because of
| support, but from a hobbyist perspective, I don't think it really
| matters if these companies merge.
|
| The only reason I even have heard of Ultimaker is because their
| software is actually pretty good. Hopefully Cura doesn't become a
| mess like Thingiverse or drop features because reasons.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Ender 3 S1 is a fucking pizza shit, don't buy one. So many bad
| units out in the wild. Poor QC caused me to waste many hours on
| two different units with different catastrophic failures.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| All creality are very low QC. Lot of bang for the buck, and
| that is one of the places all that bang for the buck comes
| from.
| starky wrote:
| I think the biggest mistake that people make when getting
| into 3D printers is buying a cheap Chinese printer. In most
| cases it seems to be that you are buying into the hobby of
| fixing a 3D printer rather than actually printing things.
| Some like the Ender can be good, but they still seem to
| require way too much work. I personally put far too much
| money into a cheaper kit before realizing that I hated it
| and bought a Prusa. If I hadn't experienced better machines
| through work, I probably would have just given up.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Dunno what the S1 part is, but my Ender 3 runs great. I print
| multiple times a week, get perfect prints, and have yet to do
| any maintenance in the last 2 years. The only things I've
| done are change the nozzle and upgrade the print bed to
| glass. Maybe the QC isn't the best, IDK. Lots of people have
| a good experience with those printers.
| unwind wrote:
| The Ender-3 S1 [1] is the latest revision, featuring direct
| drive extrusion and other enhancements.
|
| [1]: https://www.creality.com/products/creality-
| ender-3-s1-3d-pri...
| antirez wrote:
| Prusa is going to eat the entry level 3D printing world, unless
| some giant enters the consumer market. Makerbot is fading into
| the irrelevance: moved away from the entry level market but I'm
| not sure there is really space for them in the professional one.
| mastax wrote:
| Creality has already eaten the entry level world.
| sircastor wrote:
| Some giant did enter the market. Stratasys bought MakerBot in a
| bid to own the hobby space. MBs reputation rapidly diminished
| before and after thanks to a few boneheaded moves.
|
| What's amazing to me is how Prusa, the undisputed leader in the
| space, is fully open source and continues to fully fund itself
| and research new technologies. They're the antithesis of what
| Makerbot and Stratasys are, and are a successful company.
| MBCook wrote:
| I know a ton of people hate MB for going closed, but what
| were they supposed to do? They spend all that time and money
| doing R&D to develop new printers and then Chinese groups
| would take those plans and sell identical printers for a huge
| discount since they didn't have to pay American salaries or
| do any real R&D?
|
| It was like that terrible time Apple tried to have clones.
| The clones just undercut Apple and made sales even worse,
| causing them to lose money faster. Except at least the clones
| paid _some_ licensing fee.
|
| Seems like they had to go closed or fold.
| syedkarim wrote:
| I don't disagree with this reality. What I don't understand
| is how Prusa manages to do so well.
| gaze wrote:
| Didn't makerbot have those hot ends that were rebranded as
| disposable because they would just fail so often? I wonder if the
| new CEO seeing over R&D/operations was there for that.
| cloakedcode wrote:
| Maybe this will do good things for https://thingiverse.com ! It's
| suffered for a long time from reliability issues, a terrible
| search function, and a host of other usability/stability
| problems. In spite of these problems, it remains a massive
| repository of community-made 3D designs and deserves fixing if
| only as a piece of 3D printing hobbyist history.
|
| Edit: removed markdown
| jwr wrote:
| Luckily, we have competition, and https://printables.com/ is
| there.
| deelowe wrote:
| Just switch to the prusa site. It's much better. Competition is
| good an all, but there's no reason to keep using thingiverse at
| this point.
| sircastor wrote:
| On my back burner for a whole has been a federated thing-
| sharing server. A sort of "Mastodon for 3D objects". I
| haven't taken the time to build anything because I've been
| otherwise busy, but the idea that I could host my own stuff
| if I was wary of someone else's EULA is nice.
| avian wrote:
| Isn't "Mastodon for 3D objects" just a personal website
| that hosts .stl files? Last time I did a project that
| included 3D printed parts, I just attached models to a blog
| post.
|
| I understand that not having models in a centralized
| repository brings problems with discoverability. So maybe a
| better project would be a search engine for 3D objects
| hosted on the long-tail web?
| app4soft wrote:
| > _Isn 't "Mastodon for 3D objects" just a personal
| website that hosts .stl files?_
|
| Nope.
|
| Its more like _MediaGoblin_ [0], but decentralized like
| _Fediverse_ [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaGoblin
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
| sircastor wrote:
| At the moment, that's exactly how I share my 3d Objects.
|
| The magic of Mastodon is not that it's a Twitter clone,
| it's that it's federated, so any Mastodon instance can
| share it's "Toots"(ugh) with any other Mastodon instance
| (or advantageously, not).
|
| In my imagined server, you would host your own 3D Files,
| and that data would be federated to other servers. Prusa
| might host it's server that has thousands of users and
| hundreds of thousands of objects, but when someone does a
| search, my dozens of objects show up there too.
| traverseda wrote:
| Django? If so, send me and email.
| hahajk wrote:
| Or a "dogpile" for 3d printed things, like yeggi.com?
| sircastor wrote:
| The problem I see with Yeggi (and I've run into it a lot)
| is that it's just a web-scraping catalog. I've tried many
| times to download objects that were linked on Yeggi only
| to find that they've disappeared.
| thetinguy wrote:
| I just use yeggi or thangs for search. They are much better for
| that.
| sime2009 wrote:
| This merger includes a significant amount new cash being
| invested. Also, Stratasys will be taking backseat and becoming
| a minority investor. Ultimaker has continued to invest in Cura
| and make it available for many competing printers over the
| years. They understand the value of giving something back to a
| community. Thingiverse is one of the biggest and most important
| 3D printing communities out there. I know that a lot of people
| in Ultimaker (and I suspect MakerBot too) are keen to see
| Thingiverse be restored and improved.
| junon wrote:
| This could either be a great thing or a terrible thing, I don't
| know that it'll end in an in-between...
| lvl102 wrote:
| Not really sure what to think of this merger. They're both has-
| beens. FDM printer space has changed quite a bit over the past
| decade and it's decidedly DIY with Prusa dominating the space.
| And the fact that other, far more advanced, printing methods are
| available for cheap prices means that FDM will mostly remain DIY
| and niche.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the Ender 3 is way more popular than all
| of Prusa's printers put together. They're definitely both has-
| beens though.
|
| Also, although fancier methods like SLA and MJF are way cheaper
| and more accessible than ever they still can't really compete
| with FDM for large cheap stuff so I think FDM will be around
| for a while.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Ender isn't a has-been... it's like the Honda Civic of 3d
| printers. It's got a huge aftermarket and tons of
| enthusiasts.
|
| Note: I don't own an ender. I have some no-name 3d printer.
| If I did it again I'd have gotten a prusa
| regularfry wrote:
| More like a Model T Ford. Absolutely definitional for a
| generation, but kinda crap and you _really do_ have to
| tinker with it.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that the Ender 3 is way more popular than
| all of Prusa's printers put together.
|
| It's possible, but:
|
| - The Ender 3 is an "i3 clone", so in some ways still a Prusa
| - If your assumptions is right, it's probably just because of
| the price difference - The reliability you get from a Prusa
| is unbeatable even at much greater price points
|
| Just to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you, only adding
| context.
| whazor wrote:
| I think the target market is more companies/schools/clubs. You
| pay premium for a machine that is serviced. Which is essential
| if you want to offer 3d printing to users, because 3d printers
| need ventilation, maintenance, configuration, installation
| etcetera. For an organisation it makes sense to pay premium for
| a printer that might not be as great as other printers, but at
| least it works and users can print the thing they found online.
| sime2009 wrote:
| what makes you think Ultimaker is aiming at the DIY market?
| have you seen their website?
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| You're describing the DIY niche, I'd be very surprised if the
| DIY niche is greater than 25% of these companies' business.
| [deleted]
| Hemospectrum wrote:
| And what will they call it? Ultimakerbot?
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| _"The new company will be led by Nadav Goshen, current MakerBot
| CEO, and Jurgen von Hollen, current Ultimaker CEO, who will act
| as Co-CEOs, with Nadav managing operations and R &D and Jurgen
| managing the commercial functions."_
|
| How well does this type of mergers-of-equals work out, generally?
| It seems like an inherently fraught arrangement, to have two
| CEOs, even if they nominally have different responsibilities.
|
| The other problem is that Thingiverse is dated and not well
| maintained; it has received a lot of criticism from the maker
| community. Doesn't bode well if their primary showcase is treated
| like an afterthought.
| Fordec wrote:
| This sale of $62.4m is quite the fall from when Stratsys bought
| Makerbot origionally for $604m.
|
| Says it all really.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.
|
| For background, in the 3D printer market there is a really big
| step function in 3D printers. The least expensive (and thus
| widely used) are the Creality printers which are made in China
| and evolve quickly as the open source market does, but seem to
| suffer from reliability issues. More expensive are the Prusa
| printers which are also open source, but rock solid in their
| operation and well supported. In terms of value they probably
| reach a good compromise between openness and capability per $
| spent. Then in the "full commercial" mode (which has things that
| commercial users need like 24/7 on site repair, solid warranty
| terms and easily replaced parts that tend to have a usage
| lifetime (like extruders) are Makerbot (which was bought by
| Stratsys) and Ultimaker.
|
| The first printer I ever bought was a Makerbot Replicator, which
| turned out to be the last fully open source Makerbot printer they
| ever produced. I chose it because Makerbot was a leader in the
| field and it had dual extruders so you could extrude an easily
| rinsed of "support" material as well as your main material and
| that made 3D printing complex shapes possible. It never worked
| well. I mean it worked as well as it could, but its best day
| wasn't really a good day.
|
| I augmented it by getting a Prusa Mk3S, which has been an
| excellent printer. It fixed all of the issues that the Makerbot
| had, but lacked dual extruders so it could not easily use a
| separate support material. I've been very happy with the Prusa
| and got the kit to upgrade it to an Mk3S+ (basically better
| bearings) and it remains my "go to printer." However the
| combination of a lack of support material and the difficulty of
| printing ABS without an enclosure, lead me to get my third
| printer.
|
| And I went back to Makerbot and got one of their Method-X
| printers. Their marketing makes it sound a lot better than it is,
| and it _still requires manual build plate leveling_ which seems
| really lame for printer that lists for over $6000. My alternative
| choice in "pro" printers was the Ultimaker S5 (also a $6000
| printer) but those don't show up on the used market nearly as
| much[1]. So I found a used Method printer before I found a used
| Ultimaker.
|
| Sadly, the merger announcement seems to have Makerbot in charge
| of R&D which seems backwards. They are good at marketing, R&D not
| so much. Hopefully the combination will make a 3D printer company
| that can compete with Prusa, but if Prusa starts shipping the -XL
| printer, I think it is going to be a tough road.
|
| [1] This is probably a better signal of usefulness than I give it
| credit for :-)
| mdorazio wrote:
| I lost faith in Makerbot when they started using proprietary
| parts that, as far as I could tell, weren't actually superior
| to the open source equivalents. I ran a print farm for a while
| with 50 printers of various brands and the bottom line is that
| if you FDM print a lot, stuff is going to break or go wrong
| regardless of the printer price or brand. Being able to easily
| (and cheaply) source parts and replace things yourself is
| essential. I will always applaud them for Thingiverse, though.
|
| I feel like the story is a bit different in the SLA world, but
| I got out of 3D printing before it got really popular.
| madengr wrote:
| regularfry wrote:
| If you look at how much money each party is putting in and how
| much equity they each get, it reads a whole lot like Stratasys
| trying to get a return on a brand they don't really understand
| the value of by paying off someone who's doing better in the
| target market to do it for them.
| sime2009 wrote:
| Stratasys will be a minority shareholder in this new company.
| i.e. just an investor.
| regularfry wrote:
| Exactly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Prusa fan as well here, I print support using very little
| density but with the same material, you will need to do some
| polishing anyway if you want a part to really look good so this
| is easily accomodated.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Prusa make a dedicated enclosure now.
| cs2818 wrote:
| My printing journey started with a FlashForge Creator Pro that
| has dual extruders and an enclosed build area. It was easy to
| use and worked well for ABS, but has essentially been idle
| since getting an MK3 a couple of years ago. I've had really
| good results printing ABS and ASA using the MK3 in a simple
| enclosure tent (Creality branded and like $80 on Amazon). We
| print a lot of ASA so I do want to move the MK3's power supply
| out of the enclosure, but it's such a great machine I've
| struggled to find something new that seems worth the purchase.
| m34 wrote:
| Also as the Anker M5 is on the horizon [0] (sort of), I'm really
| curious how the consumer 3D printing space will develop in the
| very near future.
|
| [0] https://ankermake.com
| vosper wrote:
| LTT did an interesting video (but not a review, I think) on the
| Ankermake
|
| https://youtu.be/E581GZ_dZbY
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I'm excited for this one. I really like Anker's charging
| products and the speed looks nice. Also having a camera to
| check on your prints is something I've always wished for.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Also having a camera to check on your prints is something
| I've always wished for
|
| If you've got a typical consumer 3D printer, you could be
| using OctoPrint anyway, just hook up a $20 webcam to it and
| you've got a camera on your octoprint interface, and in any
| number of mobile apps that monitor Octo.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Or install Klipper [0] and Mainsail [1]. Octoprint is a
| great addition where there's none but is very
| underperformant and the interface is janky. Klipper brings
| in many other improvements at the cost of tinkering.
|
| [0] https://www.klipper3d.org/ [1]
| https://docs.mainsail.xyz/
| shimonabi wrote:
| I bought the Anycubic Predator delta 3D printer with a 380mm bed
| from China 3 years ago for 480EUR. I have learned to design
| replacement parts for the things I break. I think it has paid for
| itself by now. Just yesterday I printed hands for an old cuckoo
| clock.
|
| 3D design stores are still in infancy. There are either no items
| when I search for them or they are way too expensive.
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