Home Depot Begins Retail Store Pilot Program To Sell MakerBot 3-D Printers 127
ClockEndGooner writes Looking for a 3-D printer to help you out with a home project or two? If you're in one of the 12 pilot program areas in the U.S., stop into Home Depot to take a look at and purchase a MakerBot 3-D Replicator printer. "...The pilot program will offer the microwave-sized MakerBot Replicator printers, priced at $2,899, for sale, as well as the smaller Replicator Minis, which list for $1,375. 'This will open up the whole world of 3-D printing to people who wouldn't otherwise know about it—like moms and dads, electricians, contractors and DIY-home-improvement folks,' said MakerBot chief executive Bre Pettis. 'It's a good match.'"
A lot of them will be returned (Score:5, Insightful)
MakerBot has never before sold through a retail outlet that takes returns. A lot of those machines will come back.
What's the target audience? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't get here is what target audience MakerBot hopes is going to buy these at a Home Depot. 3D printers are really only viable for purchase by businesses in most cases, because individual buyers generally don't have enough use for them to justify a four-digit purchase price. Most individuals who want to use a 3D printer are going to use one of the numerous places online where you can send them a design and have them print and ship it at a fraction of the cost of buying a printer, and most businesses are going to use something more reliable (injection molding and the like) rather than buy one of these.
It seems like it would be more profitable to set up a "makerspace" kind of thing at the stores - charge people for materials and to use the printer to print out designs, rather than trying to sell them the printers themselves.
Re:and what would i do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Home Depot has a tool rental program. It would be really slick if they offered 3D printers for rental, either in-store (it could print your part while you shop), or take home for a weekend project.
This past school year I helped out with an after-school programming class at my son's elementary school. One of the projects was to design a 3D part using Python and FreeCAD. We tried to have the parts printed at TechShop, but they wouldn't let kids under 18 into their facility. So we had them printed by an online service and mailed to us. It would have been really cool to have a 3D printer at the school, so the kids could see their parts being made, and maybe fine-tune the design and print again. One of the boys designed a working toilet for his sister's Barbie dollhouse.
Re:and what would i do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Custom cases for phones/electronics projects (Raspberry Pi comes to mind), prototypes of all sorts of things (custom rings is one I saw in their twitter feed [twitter.com], heck I read a story about a surgeon in the UK who used 3D printing to make models of bones and organs to practice surgery procedures on saving several thousand pounds and several weeks vs traditional hand made models.
The question is "How much overlap is there between the MakerBot market and the Home Depot shopper market?" My anecdotal experience says there is not a lot of overlap. The pros are buying in bulk at a discount and for them time is money. Waiting hours to make a widget isn't what they are looking for. The average homeowner wants to fix a problem or do some upgrades and needs help and advice. Tinkering with a MB machine isn't really what they want either. Sure, some MB hobbyist also shop at HD but do enough do this to but what is essentially a bleeding edge toy vs a really useful tool for regular work. Toys are nice but the market is limited.
Re:and what would i do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I heard about a guy in another country who used one" doesnt really bode well for sales.