3D Printing Community news and update MAY 2016

3D Printing Community news and update 

MAY 2016

Another community and 3D printing news and views update -

Video update for May - Or watch here in HD over on YouTube.

Hi Everyone, another update from the 3D Printing community, I hope you like it. Please leave me a comment - Thanks.

Here is what I'm discussing, and to make it easier to navigate, check these timecodes and jump to a point that interests you -

Start - Thank you for your Feedback
2:08 - Makerbot Going to China
2:48 - LulzBot Taz 6 Launch - (Not Going to China)'
4:32 - Kickstarting OLO
5:19 - Kickstarter - Two more Delta Printers
7:17 - Kickstarter - Polymaker Polysher & Polysmooth
9:21 - Kickstarter - Mr Beam II
10:30 - Kickstarter - FormBox
11:51 - Patreon - OctoPrint & Toms3DP
13:03 - Community  * Drama *
15:23 - Development & Innovation
17:15 - Materials - eSun Cleaning Filament
19:40 - Things I'm doing...

It's mostly all in the video above, but I have also included a few further notes below for anyone that wants to read. Also some images of what I have been doing with the E3D Titan extruder and a new design of a quick-fit carriage for the BigBox.

Firstly thank you for all your comments and feedback, it's really helpful for me. I have limited time to do 3D printing, and don't have adverts on my channel or blog for any sort of income. It's good to know what I post and share is worthwhile doing and still of interest to you.

Generally I had similar feedback and comments on Youtube, blogger and Google+

I have taken the general feedback to be - that you like my development projects, and want to see more - like in the early days of 3D Printing.

No one commented about facebook, so that's great - I'll continue to totally ignore that.



April turned out to be quite a turning point for some in the 3D printing community.

Pinshape

Image from the Pinshape blog.

We found out who saved Pinshape and that turned out to be Formlabs. Interesting as I really expected Shapeways or one of the other 3D Printing services to snap them up.

Time will tell what Formlabs brings to the model sharing community and what this means for designers using Pinshape. It looks like the original Pinshape founders are now out of the company, so maybe we will see some new direction being applied by Formlabs soon. Read more about the news on the Pinshape blog here.


Makerbot

Makerbot declared itself unable to manufacture in the US, and now plan to offshore manufacturing of desktop 3D printers to a Chinese company. They seem set on death by 1000 cuts. The wider 3D Printing community continues to ignore them. Makerbot blog post here. Enough said.


LulzBot

As an alternative and more positive view, Lulzbot announced the Taz 6 -

Lulzbot still manages to be the most open-source 3D printing company, anywhere.

Matterhackers have them on pre-order for $2.5K. More info should be available on the Taz 6 in a few weeks when the embargo is lifted.

I have not seen any recent comments from Printrbot, but I expect Brook is also still planning to do as much as possible with self-manufacturing and worldwide expansion. Looking forward to some updates from other global 3D Printing manufacturers in May.

I'm really interested in seeing how the US and European 3DP manufacturers navigate through the next 18 months. I have a feeling we are now in the productive phase of desktop 3DP, and even the temptation of ultra low-cost machines from China is starting to subside.

I just wish the RepRap Pro had managed to last out another 6 months, things seem to be turning as long as you are still innovating.

So many Kickstarters -

OLO

OLO got funded to the tune of $2.3M - over 3000 comments on Kickstarter and not a great deal of response from the creators. I actually think this could be the last big 'low cost 3D printer campaign' People are finally going to get smart that a 'very good, reliable and easy to operate' 3D printer is still some long way off, and you need to spend more than $99 to get something worthwhile even trying to use.

I wish them all the luck, but I'm also predicting this one is not going to go smoothly at all. We will check back before the September deadline to see...

Polygon Delta

Billy Zelsnack Polygon Delta 3D printer kit over on Kickstarter - $24K - all sold out - well done Billy, this has been one really interesting development to watch over the past 18 months.

Spatial One Delta

Andrew Wade - Spatial One - Delta Printer has just started over on Kickstarter. If you are looking for a rock solid Delta printer kit, than do investigate the Spatial One


Polymaker

Polymaker - Launched the Polysmooth and Polysher - over on Kickstarter. It's had a tremendous response and is currently at $320k - I have backed this project and look forward to seeing the end result.


Mr Beam 2 

Mr Beam 2 - just got funded, reaching almost 1M Euros over on Kickstarter. Well done!


FormBox

Formbox - $245K for a vacuum forming box - key selling point seems to be that by using your own vacume cleaner make this machine possible. Very disappointed this is planned to take yet another year to be shipped to any backers, you could literally design and make one in a single weekend. Maybe I'm missing something, but what's with the 12 month timescale?


OctoPrint

Gina managed to get a successful Patreon campaign up and running so she can try to support the open-source Octoprint a while longer. Gina is still looking for sponsorship, contract work and generally anything that can help keep her in work and food.

Tom's 3DP

Tom has also decided to go for 3D printing full time - well done and good luck with the adventure. Anything I can do to help, just let me know.

Tom has also just launched a Patreon funding page, check it out.

And subscribe to Tom's YouTube Channel

Community drama - This is the calm down and chill out section of the news.

E3D and the BigBox crew caused some fuss over on Reddit with a recent mascot competition. It looks like a poor choice of wording in the competition rules (about not having to give away the BigBox as a prize if they didn't have any suitable entries) made a few people leap to the idea that designers were being used to provide free services etc. Read as much as you wan over on Reddit.


Innovation and materials -

I visited E3D last week, they are in the middle of another big expansion. This time Unit 3 is being kitted out for a monster research and development lab. Packed full of tradesmen, fitting the rooms for science. Plenty of new developments, materials and projects.

And the EDGE filament will be coming soon...

I also checked to see if they really did have the worlds supply of Haribo :)

This was Nozzle world.

I didn't take the peanut scoop... Honest!

They handed me one of their new silicone boots, this wraps around the hot-end heater block and both helps stop material build-up on the nozzle and also insulates the heater so part cooling fans can be more aggressive while also keeping the

I tried out some dedicated hot-end cleaning materials - by Esun filament, You can buy it over on the E3D website or Printedsolid - Anyone else stocking it, let me know and I'll add a link.


Some of the stuff I'm doing -

Project snowflake is finished, look out for an update on that project, done with my daughter.

The steampunk octopus is also finished, another one done with my daughter. I requested an interview with her, but was 'far too busy' out playing to comment.

I seem to be in an ever state of testing out new materials at the moment. Really interesting but also quite time consuming.

Testing out some colour gradated filament - interesting, but inconsistent and not quite as exciting as first thought.

Lots more work on paste extrusion and bioprinting applications - more on that soon.

I'm also trying to clear out all the projects, posts and video's I have not had time to finish. I'll get them all done over the next month and then get onto even more new developments.

Titan is performing well - and so is the new E3D Edge filament.

 Decided to re-design everything on the X carriage, extruder mount and 360 Degree fan cooling duct.

I have made a new quick-fit extruder carriage for the BigBox. I wanted it to fit the Titan well and also allow easy switching of extruders.

I had to jiggle (technical term) the heated bed forwards and up by around 30mm to allow the now much lower Titan setup to reach the build platform.

And for ideas and inspiration, here is a short 60 second video on what to do with all those spare ends and samples of 3D Printing filament - It was my youngest daughter's idea. Great fun.

Yea, That was April!

May is already looking interesting, see you next time.

Rich.

Handling things the Makerbot way

I don't often write about 3D printing news on this blog, but today I woke up to the story that Makerbot had cut 20% of their staff and closed all their retail shops and that's really quite sad to hear.

The way Makerbot has done this is not good at all and has made me feel truly sorry for the workforce, you know the people who make a company - (Makerbot call them, just 'staff').

I'm sure we will hear much more on this along with some official non-caring and 'business like' statements issued by Stratasys or whatever remains of Makerbot.

The quotes from Makerbot staff and reports of this incident tell you so much about the atmosphere and company culture at Makerbot - “It’s about 20 percent of staff. Everyone suspected that something would be coming with the new CEO, and that there would be restructuring coming.” Not being open and honest with staff and leaving them with the feeling that something was coming is an awful thing. It's going to be very hard times for the people who remain too.

I feel sad for their workforce, people who have endured a lot of directional changes and different 'leaders' who don't understand what they already lost a few years back.

“It’s consolidating with Stratasys, so it’s economies of scale and looking at duplicate positions and consolidating. We have a new CEO, so he has a different plan in mind.”

I'm quite disappointed with the new Makerbot CEO, there are ways to do things and ways you want to be seen in the industry and the company-wide corporate structure. I really think that giving a Keynote speech at a 3D printing conference while all this was going down says it all. - Jonathan Jaglom - Instead of marching them out of the building, you should have been with all your 'staff' and spoken to them directly about all this. 

Stay strong Makerbot workers and I hope things get better. Makerbot is lost, you are not.

Makerbot Patents and the Open Source 3D Printing community

MAKERBOT * PATENTS * TRUST

I was just about to move on, thinking the message was clear and enough was said on the Makerbot Patents, trust and treatment of the Open source 3D Printing community debate, when a Google+ Post popped up from Eddie Kay 3DPrintboard.com . (One man's defense of MakerBot's patent filings. ) What do you guys and girls think?) That pointed to a post here -

I'm all for defence and debate, it made me document a few more things below on this topic -

I'm not 100% sure if the poster Dragons_Blood and Eddy Kay on G+ are the same person? feel free to let me know, I would be happy to discuss this further if needed.

I just had to reply on this, here on my blog - The points and my reply in blue to them below -

From the points on 3DPrintboard.com -

Dragons_Blood - “I just wanted to let my voice be heard. I'm not a huge fan of Makerbot but I don think that what they are doing is not exactly their fault.”

RH - Who’s fault is it? Is someone holding a 3D printed gut to their heads? Using a broken system is not an excuse.

“Makerbot has 2 choices here. Either patent these designs which aren't already patented, or allow another company to do so. “

RH - Other choices include, releasing the exact same documentation you use for the patent out into the public domain as Prior Art, and then happily manufacture these designs. This can be done directly or by allowing the Patent application to lapse, then it becomes Prior art and no one can then patent, but anyone can use the idea / method.

“If another company patents these designs, then they can prohibit Makerbot from ever using them on any of their future 3d printers. However, if Makerbot patents them, they ensure that another competitor (i.e. 3d systems with cubify) doesn't patent it and hold them out of the market. “

RH - See above about public domain and prior art.

- Most of the open-source and maker community is not concerned about companies fighting over patents, infringements and IP, that’s their choice for constantly going down that route.

- What would have made all the difference is if Makerbot made a statement saying they will not go after anyone in the open-source community, or designers where inspiration for these types of ideas also appeared. The fact they have patented so many interesting aspects of Home 3D printing that are also being developed in the open-source community and that they have not engaged at all with that community on this aspect, means they want ownership of patents covering these things, and they didn’t want to highlight what they were doing ‘in the background’. Many companies face this ‘big business problem’ that’s fine – it’s clear that Makerbot is not going to stop down that route, they have stated many times now “we need strong patents” – the concern is over what they intend to do with them and that they have not been open with an open-source community they once held closely at the heart of their business model.

RH 

{

-          RedHat (another very big company) also built on Open-source – Do indeed make a Patent Promise - http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html

-          Over on Google+ if you search you will find an this post from Jan Wildeboer who claims he offered to assist Bre Pettis (Makerbot) over a year ago with similar type of promise to the ‘community’ – I find it a real missed opportunity that was not taken up or used as a guide for a similar statement from Makerbot – if it had, this would not have caused such a bad feeling of betrayal and brocken trust within the open-source/RepRap community and Makerbot’s patents.

Jan's G+ Post - "Dear +MakerBot , here's an idea for you to ponder. Take a look at http://www.redhat.com/footer/patent-promise.html The Red Hat Patent Promise. To put it in simple terms, we at Red Hat apply for patents, mostly out of defensive reasons in a world of patent trolls. But we are fully aware that we must defend the freedom of Open Source and Open Innovation. So we have the legally binding promise that we will never use our patents against developers of Open Source software. It's not the perfect solution, but it is definitely better than your current approach of filing patents and not declaring what the community can do or NOT do.

A year ago I offered +bre pettis my help in working on a similar approach for Makerbot, this however never happened. I am still ready to help and hook you guys up with my network. I think you could have avoided a lot of negative vibes with a patent promise in the Red Hat style."

-          Pledges like the RedHat Patent promise not to go after open-source contributors to a project / technology are already being used by companies that need to have strong patents for legal defence, but also do not want to alienate a community that supports them and can often lead to ideas worth patenting.

-          Without this sort of statement, what are people to think? How will Makerbot use their power and Patent arsenal? For or against an open source community or open-source company? Who knows, but waiting to see is going to be too late.

}

“If that were to happen, it would be very difficult for MakerBot to do anything about it. “

RH - Companies design around patents all the time, and produce more innovative products in the process, also producing more IP that can then be opened up or kept secret, whatever works for you.

“I highly doubt that Makerbot plans to use these patents to profit off of, or keep anyone from entering the market. They are doing it simply to protect their ability to use these currently unpatented designs in the future. “

RH - Why would you assume that? One of the only reasons to have a patent it to get some leverage from it, by making someone else afraid to go near your patented method in-case they say you infringe. Or to attack someone (a competitor doing quite well in the market, but not well enough to defend a big legal battle). And then also to have a patent armoury as a final card to play if someone comes after you.

“Right now they are all free to use, since there are no patents on them. However, if Cubify (3d systems) came along and patented them, they could hold MakerBot ransom. “

RH - Ransom, Threat, Stalemate, stand-off, war, stranglehold, limiting innovation that's what patents have come to stand for. You can decide to patent almost anything, if you have enough money and think it will benefit you.

“Sure Makerbot could go to the courts and say that these designs were created by someone else but then that other person may be required to either patent the design or allow someone else to. They would be stuck in a catch 22, where the patent would either belong to the company that filed the patent, or the original filer, who may not even wish to file a patent for the design. “

RH - The Patent system was supposed to stop things in the public domain being patented in the first place; the scenario above will always appear if companies decide to gather as many patents in an area as possible with the intention of patent litigation in the future.

Most patents are vague for the very reason of letting some later process in the courts or by expert testimony win over an infringement claim, or so simply sink the other party in legal debt before the case is finished.

“I think Makerbot is getting too much heat for just protecting their future business model. Until we see them actually sue someone for using these designs, I think we should let them be.”

RH - It’s too late once they sue a growing open source company - who will already be on their radar - like Printrbot, Ultimaker or RepRapPro for Patent infringement, what they could have done is make a Patent promise not to go after these types of open-source companies in a similar way to how Red-Hat handled their growth. That’s the true missed opportunity to unite a now big company like Makerbot with an entire (and very smart) community to forge trust, rather than shatter and divide it.

RH - That takes true vision and courage, Bre Pettis could have pulled it off if that’s what he wanted to achieve with Makerbot and the wider 3D Printing community. That’s what I'm personally disappointed about.

__________________________________________________________________________

Other posts have appeared over the last week on the Makerbot Patent/trust storm, including some high-profile sites shining a big spotlight on the debate.

Cory Doctorow Posted over on BoingBoing - It's way more balanced than many posts on this subject and raises some fair points for debate, unfortunately I think we have seen the direction Makerbot has decided to take, so we may never see them reach out to build back any trust with the Open source community. And as Cory states, head over to Adafruit to buy a LulzBot TAZ 4 open-source #RepRap 3D Printer 

Even Adafruit themselves do not seem to be able to decide if they want to stock Makerbot/Stratasys products.

John Biggs on TechCrunch posted The Next Open Source Battle Is Being Waged In The 3D Printing Industry
John does mentions Red Hat, but unfortunately not the point about a patent promise I talked about above.
  
Makerbot finally released a statement, (here on TechCrunch) it's bland sees right past the issues of trust and duplicity with the 3D printing community. 

The arguments could easily rage on back and forth, If Makerbot only want to focus on the Quick-Release Extruder - Members of the community have highlighted extruder designs that have the bistable spring implementation posted to Thingiverse as early as 2011 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7129 "by MiseryBot, published Mar 19, 2011" Not quite as "slick" but it does have that key "bistable" bit. Makerbot, I feel you are now on your own.

Plenty of other comments and views are also being aired all over on various forum's and blogs, 

Jeremie Francois Posted his thoughts and opinions here

The sun is shining, and I have real 3D printing to do, so the next Blog post will be a return to all things RepRap. Promise.

Thanks for reading, it was rather a lot of text.

Rich.

Makerbot Patents twist the knife on open source 3D Printing roots, community responds.

Something is leaving a bad smell in the Open source community, could it be the recent Patents of big cheese Bre at Makerbot.

It's always very sad when you see a company or group turn their back on whatever community or project that helped make them successful.

Makerbot seem to be traveling down a darker and darker road as time goes on. I'm not sure if they felt invincible or that no one would notice but a recent patent frenzy by Makerbot has angered the open source 3D printing community. And we don't yet know what more is to come.

I prefer to use this blog to document work and talk about good things, so this is really a summary of past and recent events and links for you to find out more and make your own mind up about Makerbot's actions and community reaction to these disappointing and Machiavellian maneuvers.

And before we go on, I am not against Patents, they can be used for good to protect ideas and costly investments into research, that for some is a necessity to fuel sales and marketing of a product or invention. I don't think they are very fair and certainly not appropriate in many (most) cases, but they are not going away any time soon. For this trade off of hard work you can exploit an idea under a patent for a set period whilst also disclosing information about the invention and use.

Yes, RepRap and many open-source developments were built on expired patents. That's how it's supposed to work. A company gets 25 years to exploit it's patented invention, if after that time the market demand is still there and competitors can build a better mouse trap, then competition usually kick-starts another industry cycle and one could argue the original patented idea was not exploited well enough or the market was not satisfied with just one source of mouse trap.

What angers individuals is when ideas and developments that were in the public domain, very often with a specific open-source license are taken and patented by a company so others automatically now infringe. (or could be accused to infringe).

Patent trolling or this is abuse of the patent system is about as insulting as you can get to a community that encourages open innovation and sharing of open source developments.

Companies that can afford to mop-up open innovation into hundreds of patents, loosely based on ideas common in an industry or sector often have the power to legally threaten anyone that becomes a competitor. Using this abuse of the patent system can tie up smaller companies and stop new developments from even starting due to this sword of damocles handing over head.

Many things are just not worth patenting for companies or individuals, due to the cost and return possible along with the ability to be able to defend your patent if required. But if these seemingly insignificant ideas are patented by bigger companies who can afford the process, as a way to expand their patent portfolio, even if they were not 'invented' they take on another form of power.

Makerbot did 'invent' and patent an automated build platform, this was a commercial failure and proves the point not all ideas are worth patenting. Also the idea of an automatic build platform was openly discussed by various people when I first joined RepRap, long before the Makerbot patent, the difference here being that no one found it useful, practical or in any way essential, so the news Makerbot patented it was just not such of an issue.

Recent turbulent Thingiverse/Makerbot history - 
Back in September 2012 changes to the Thingiverse Terms of Service along with various concerns that Makerbot was moving away from it's RepRap and Opensource roots led to an Occupy Thingiverse campaign.

This was exactly what Thingiverse looked like on 20th September 2012 -

It was the Same day Thingiverse decided to promote and feature my 3-way colour mixing extruder. (And it had already been on Thingiverse and my Blog for 28+ days before this) - See image below 'Created by RichRap 28 days ago'

And the very next day after on the 21st September 2012 they filed a patent for build material switching.

Along with my 3-way multi-input material extruder above, I also posted, documented and shared my simple solution using lengths of different materials to produce multi-coloured objects - that was back in June2011.

Makerbot want to patent various things to do with multicolour and multi-matrial mixing, much of which has been done and documented in the open source community (Even directly at Bath University - UK as early as Feb 2012 and mentioned on the RepRap Blog June 2012 - Myles corbett report) This, over the last few years and is a very active area of open-source 3D printer development for myself and many others.

Plenty of other patent applications are also being submitted, we can only see the ones that have been published, so who knows what other things are in the pipeline...

Many of the recent Makerbot patent applications can be seen and read on this site here - You can search for Makerbot, or click on this search link here 

Title - BUILD MATERIAL SWITCHING
Abstract - A three-dimensional printer uses transitional lengths of build material to facilitate changes from one color to another during a fabrication process, and more generally to achieve multi-color objects corresponding to color patterns on the surface of a three-dimensional model. The transitional lengths of build material may be positioned inside a fabricated object, such as for infill, or outside the fabricated object where undesirable aesthetic properties of the transitional lengths will not impact the desired distribution of colors on the surface of the fabricated object.

Title - COLOR SWITCHING FOR THREE-DIMENSIONAL PRINTING
Abstract - By reversing the direction of a first build material fed into an extruder, the first build material can be wholly or partially evacuated from the extruder before a second material is introduced. This approach mitigates transition artifacts and permits faster, more complete changes from one build material to another.

A founders Perspective - 
A day later after the 2012 Occupy Thingiverse - Zach Hoeken posted his view of the changes he observed to Makerbot here-

Makerbot Patent Rage Coverage - 

OpenbeamUSA has one of the best overviews of recent Makerbot patent troubles, it's well worth a read, and I don't need to repeat things here - Stay classy, Makerbot

This also contains the details of how you can file a prior art application to help block a patent that is based on someone else's work or in the public domain.

Another good summary of the Quick Release Extruder Patent Here - 

Hackaday.com covered - makerbot files patents internet goes crazy 

Fabbaloo Posted - Has MakerBot Crossed The Line? For Some, Yes


Edit:- Added more coverage -
3deee.ch Makerbot Vs Open Source

TechDirt - MakerBot Files For Patent On A Design Derived From Work By Its Community

Please discuss, share and the tag #TakerBot seems to be being used by people - 

Visual guide graphics below courtesy of Anthony Clark.

If you are now looking for a place to share, YouMagine is a very good starting point.

GitHub is also an option, and a simple method to export all your things from Thingiverse uses a simple Python script by Carlos García Saura - Look Here for info.

Repables is also looking good for content sharing, and is being further developed right now.

Ultimately work like the Thing Tracker Network, by Gary Hodgson may make it easier to link and share designs and models from almost any source, so don't stop sharing and keep it open source.
 If you see any other coverage on the Makerbot Patents, post links below. Thanks.

Other news - 

The 3D Printing Filament spool standard campaign is still going well, updates soon.

E3D Just released the V6 hot-end -I have had one for a while -  it's amazing !

++Lots++ of new things to share with you soon, new printers, extruders, developments and materials :) So long as people don't take them and patent the work as their own...


Rich.

TCT2012 show report and Industry growing pains.

I don’t normally do wider 3D printing industry news on this Blog as it’s a technical resource, but quite a few big things have happened over the last few weeks, that have made many people look in a slightly different light on the whole 3D printing industry. (Makerbot's decision to close source is discussed below)

I visited the TCT Liveshow at the NEC in the UK this week.

Todd Grimm opened the show with his presentation of where the 3D printing and Additive manufacturing industry is in it's life-cycle in a nutshell, "we are not yet ready for consumers using 3D printers" 

I had an interesting & mixed experience at this years TCT show – Quite a different one from last year, let me explain –

So last year I visited TCT in a professional capacity with suit, shirt and tie, this year I decided to go along as a Maker – Jeans and a Woolly Jumper – general enthusiast to see what reception I would get from all these many (different sized) companies looking to sell machines for the next desktop industrial revolution to the ‘general public’

I’m calling my dress code the ‘maker test’ would I get any attention at all from these companies?, I’m sad to say generally most of the companies failed, ignoring me for people in suits that actually had very little interest in their product offerings.

Last year, only Bits from Bytes and A1 technology were representing the lower-end market sector and entry level machines.

This year was very different.

The A1 technology stand was empty; they didn’t turn up on Day 1. 

 3D Systems - Cube - 

My very first stop was on the 3D systems stand, just by accident, but the Cube was on display at the front of the stand with the Cathy Lewis guarding the Cube printer.

(Cathy lewis is the 3D systems representative in the Cnet video shown lower down in this post, in an interview with Makerbot on the Replicator at CES2012)

The Cube was trying to print, but unfortunately very badly, the drive mechanism looked like it was partially blocked resulting in terrible surface quality with lots of little holes and pips where variable extrusion was occurring. It was also printing very slowly and at one set speed (I estimate about 20mm/Sec), with only slightly faster travel speeds.

What is it doing with that bridge? and why is the surface quality so bad. And why has it wasted Raft material on sections with nothing on them! - Poor software!

I stood looking at the Cube for many minutes, many other people in suits asked the same things time and time over, how much is it “$1300” says Cathy, do you have a brochure, “no, sorry we don’t” – How much are the cartridges “$50 each, and they can print about 10 of these” – pointing to a 1.5” high chess piece.

Finally, after everyone else had gone I said to Cathy it was nice to see a big company doing a reasonably low cost machine “yes, some people think we are crazy”.

I asked if she likes the printed cases (pointing to a number of Raspberry Pi cases scattered around the Cube printer) – “yes they are wonderful, people really like them”

Do you know who designed it? I ask, no says Cathy, Well I had a hand in it’s design, really says Cathy, not really believing me. How did we get hold of it then asks Cathy...

Well, you would have got it from Thingiverse, I said. At this point Cathy’s face says it all, she looks really uncomfortable and clearly wants to stop talking to me as soon as possible. We then briefly discussed what a Raspberry Pi actually was, Cathy had no interest whatsoever, and I was left wondering how they were going to sell and support this machine to the general user and enthusiast?

In many ways it was worth going to the show just to see her face, in that moment and short conversation.

It was then that I realised the Cube had not printed any of these cases they had on display around the Cube printer, but they had been printed on a Bits from Bytes machine. BFB showed my same printed RPi case on their blog Aug 16th, with no mention of the case origin or designers. – so much for Creative commons Attribution – So I’ll do it here – the Original case was designed by HansH

I then changed it in Sketchup after using a Raspberry Pi for a little while and released my derivative to Thingiverse.

Makerbot - Replicator 1/2

Makerbot had the Replicator V1 at the show, I didn’t see it actually printing anything all day, everyone else had running machines.

If you want to be a Makerbot Distributer, the Minimum order quantity is 10 machines and for that they will give you 25% discount, Makerbot has two resellers in the UK, and they were very keen to sign up more on these terms.

I was fortunate enough to be standing on the Makerbot stand when Todd Grimm asked the Senior American Makerbot Sales representative a few interesting questions, the response coloured by recent events and the Replicator 2 launch.

Todd asked about the Replicator 2, what makes this machine a pro grade (prosumer) machine and how is it different from Version1?

Makerbot – It’s now 100micron layer resolution and we have tightly controlled PLA printing materials that deviate less than 100micron in size.

This machine is PLA only, we have removed the heated bed so users can get printing faster and we have a simple 3 point levelling system.

It’s also a single extruder system only.

I was thinking – That’s a lot to remove, why is it then so much more expensive than a Replicator V1? And can’t a Replicator V1 do 100micron? It should be able?

When pushed on the reason it was now a Pro machine, the support staff were talked up as the main reason for Makerbot being different at the lower-end machines – Thingiverse was also mentioned a lot in the conversations and is obviously very important for them -

Makerbot – “Some people will not like that we have gone closed source, but they all use Thingiverse whether they like it or not, we have the biggest community”

The discussion continued, I moved on.

Sadly, they also failed the Maker test; I was reasonably ignored every time I went on their stand. I didn’t pick up a Makerbot sticker… Where would I put it now?

Maketbot are obviously seeing a change on Thingiverse, they are trying to focus on the Terms of Service questions that also sparked up debate and fractures in the community along with the bigger issue of going closed source – They even have their Lawyer trying to explain that ‘everything will be ok’ Trust us.

Can people in the community trust a company that changes one of its most fundamental founding principal’s?

Will Makerbot’s new Pro-sumer customer appear, and will 3D Systems now be free to take the entry level sector with the Cube? Do any of us now really care?

It’s never a dull moment with 3D printing.

Remembering back - On 3Dprinting.com the blog post in Jan2012 stated this about the video below –

“This is a great interview that shows the development in the personal 3D printer market and the differences between the open-source product of MakerBot and the closed-source product of 3D Systems.”

I do now wonder how different 3D systems and Makerbot will look in Jan2013 at the next CES?

If it's consumers or pro-sumers they are after then maybe the closed source 3D printer war has now started, while the open source community just marches on regardless, I hope Makerbot does not regret it's decision.

Also look out for the comment about the Replicator case looking wooden, I bet they was the point Replicator V2 got a metal overcoat!

And Cnet just posted - Pulling back from open sourcehardware, MakerBot angers some adherents

Enough of all that.

Here are some really great things I spotted at the Show - 

3D printed Mug - Bits From Bytes had a separate bigger stand (last year just a corner of 3D systems) I spotted Ian Adkins and Ed Sells (Sells Mendel) walking around; they were doing a lot of research by the looks of things.

Another one from BFB, they ignored me and so failed the 'Maker test' this time around.

There was a lot of 3D scanners at the show, this chap with the beard was being 3D scanned with a hand-held unit.

This is a Prop for a Film printed with a Voxeljet 3D printer - they can print 4m x 2m objects!

Voxeljet printers are used by Car companies to make massive prototype parts.

Propshop model-makers Ltd - Passed the 'Maker test' with flying colours, he even showed me some secret new massive 3D printed models for a new film coming out on his iPad.

Another Voxeljet print

Ultimaker - 

Yea! Ultimaker! - Always had their machines running all day! - They had the busiest stand out of almost everyone, including many of the really big names. 

Very friendly people and amazing quality things on display, thanks Ultimaker you made my Day!

I also met Paul Candler on the Ultimaker stand, he has made some of the finest profiles for Netfabb. Ultimaker users are enjoying resolutions down to 20microns!

Needless to say Ultimaker passed my Maker test.

Leapfrog - 

It's big, slow printing and looks like a BFB printer with a metal overcoat. I could not find out much more about it as they didn't talk to me :( 

Fabbster - 

Fabbster have a Closed source printer (Sintermask) that operates in a similar to most RepRaps, it has no heated bed at the moment and uses Rafts for prints. Quality is reasonable.

They have a patented stick deposit system, this is basically Injection moulded plastic sticks of material that are loaded into a magazine and snap together as they exit into a PTFE tube onto it's way to the extruder.

They have many materials including a flexible (soft PLA style) that was very nice to handle.

The machine is big and well built. They were very nice at the show and passionate about people using their printers and materials. They passed the Maker test and we chatted for some time about the machine.

MiiCraft - 

I ended up with a very bad photo of the Miicraft printer, so I'll just show some of the printed objects.

Very nice people and happy to tell and show you everything about their resin based 3D printer.

Ships from Taiwan, UV resin is quite expensive, machine is $2200 but the results were stunning! - Very good, Maker test - pass

PP3Dp - 

The PP3Dp printers are looking a little old now, but still performing well, if not a little slow to print.

Didn't talk much, they were not really communicating with the people showing interest. 

They had some free samples of screw-pots and a few different machines. Maker test - Poor (D-)

Mcor - 

Inside an Mcor 3D printer (not really a printer, it cuts models out of sheets of office paper)

They are all paper. I'm not sure it that's a good thing or not. They must be selling machines? and I expect they will do well in the movie industry, props, and animation maybe even some product design etc. but I can't quite see a good use as functional models and certainly not with consumers.

Very friendly and animated about their machines and low-cost process. Maker test - Pass

Lots of other companies were at the show, some interesting, others looking very dated. Most of the others ignored me.

Thanks for reading,

Rich.

Other news - 

The open Hardware summit is going on as I type this - Follow it and check out what's being said.

We may be getting our own Mini Maker Faire down in Bristol (UK) - keep looking out and googling for further announcements.

Check out this video featured on the Discovery channel -