Startups Push 3D Printers As Industry Leaders Falter 101
gthuang88 writes: Given the hype around 3D printing, you'd never guess that established leaders like 3D Systems and Stratasys have seen their stock fall by 75 percent in the last year. Big companies like HP, Amazon, and Boeing are getting into the field, too, but startups are still where a lot of the action is. Now Formlabs, a Boston-area startup, has released a new 3D printer that is supposed to be more reliable and higher quality than its predecessors. The device uses stereolithography and is aimed at professional designers and engineers. The question is whether Formlabs---and other startups like MarkForged, Voxel8, and Desktop Metal---can find enough of a market to survive until 3D printing becomes a more mainstream form of manufacturing.
3D printed goatse (Score:1, Funny)
It's the only thing that can save the industry.
Re:3D printed goatse (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
Re:3D printed goatse (Score:4, Funny)
He left himself wide open to that one.
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you're all just digging a deeper hole for yourself
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I can't help it. I'm a giver, and I am just giving to the community.
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A true 3D maker shows off his 3D printed bike, which only needed frame, rims, tires, sprockets, derailleurs, levers, cables, brakes, kickstand, handlebars, chain, seat and fasteners added to make a completely functioning bicycle almost equivalent to a storebought one! The marvels of 21st century technology are empowerig makers!!
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I've heard but have not confirmed it is also possible to 3D print a "fixie" bicycle, with a similar but longer procedure having the additional steps of *omitting the addition of*: levers, derailleurs, in some cases brakes to to the handful of plastic that the 3D printer emitted. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to make a sherman tank with my RepRap, only adding armor, turret, engine, transmission, brakes, tracks and wheels, switches, hydraulic pumps, pistons, and lines, levers, knobs, wires, generator
Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:3)
... and that right there is why this is a "No Shit, Sherlock" moment. Stock fell 75%. /sarcasm You don't say!
3D Printing is still too expensive, and a niche market for the general masses.
Re:Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now the only practical material I could work with on a 3d printer is plastic, and even then I'm limited to particular types of plastic. Plus, due to the texturing left by most 3d printers I'd have to plane, sand, shave, drill, tap, or die-cut anyway.
I can see design firms that need to rapid-prototype parts using 3d printers, before they ultimately design molds to cast the final plastic parts in. I can even see a few very specialized applications where the technology makes more sense, especially for one-offs, but otherwise 3d printing isn't mass-production.
Re:Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
3D printers remind me of the beige box PC industry in the 1990s, bicycle parts makers in the 1990s (with everything CNC machined and anodized), and the inexpensive MP3 player market.
What I see is that a bunch of little guys are going to fight amongst themselves, and as soon as there are a few big players, some big company will swoop in, buy them out, and own the playing field, either a single company, or 2-3 firms (just like how paper printing is now, with just a relatively few companies offering models.)
One can be creative with 3D parts, but there is a limit that the plastic from the current generation can handle. At best, it is something to make to hone an injection mold from so "real" parts can be manufactured. Plus, the parts are rough, so they need sanded and coated with something like Smooth-On's epoxy if using them directly for a task.
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Plus, the parts are rough, so they need sanded and coated with something like Smooth-On's epoxy if using them directly for a task.
The recent gen ones printing at a 0.1mm layer height produce surprisingly smooth surfaces. Even at a very coarse 0.3mm layer height a quick brush with acteone (if you're using ABS) smooths it down very well to a smooth, shiny finish. At 0.1mm, it's even easier.
That doesn't work with PLA of course, but then one chooses the plastic based on what you're going to do with it.
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I just don't find enough uses for it to justify the floor or bench space for the machine. In subtractive manufacturing where one takes away material I can work in metal, plastic, and wood. I can cut, plane, sand, shave, drill, tap, or die-cut, and if I pick up one of those tabletop mills, I could mill and otherwise create channels, and these can all be done in three different materials.
The problem is that a cheap 3dPrinter can do shapes which would require 5-DOF CNC. These are very expensive. So you can use only plastic in a 3d printer but you can do very complicated shapes. With a cheaper 3 DOF CNC you can use also wood or metals, but the shapes you can produce will be simpler.
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Re:Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you asking if having a foundery is more niche than owning a table on which one can plonk a 3D printer?
As someone who's used a 3D printer for lost plastic casting with a gingery furnace, I'd say yes, metal casting is much more niche than 3D printing. I mean sure, anyone can backyard metal cast (assuming they have a back yard, not live in an apartment), in principle, but it's a lot more work being hard physically, messy, hot, dangerous, a bit noisy depending on your air draft, and requires a fair bit of
Re:Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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You really have to do economics when doing engineering. If he shop is making 10% profit on something that is 5% of your business, how many parts do you have to sell to justify doing it yourself?
An engineer is a person who can tell you how to build something for a dollar that any idiot can tell you how to build for two.
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Real engineers know this, and have known it for a very long time. Armchair/hobbyist engineers and those with hopped up titles (I.E. the "engineers" that populate the IT industry and most of the /. demographic), don't.
An actual real-world engineer is as much a bean counter as he is a mathematician.
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I just don't find enough uses for it to justify the floor or bench space for the machine. In subtractive manufacturing where one takes away material I can work in metal, plastic, and wood. I can cut, plane, sand, shave, drill, tap, or die-cut, and if I pick up one of those tabletop mills, I could mill and otherwise create channels, and these can all be done in three different materials.
The problem is that a cheap 3dPrinter can do shapes which would require 5-DOF CNC. These are very expensive. So you can use only plastic in a 3d printer but you can do very complicated shapes. With a cheaper 3 DOF CNC you can use also wood or metals, but the shapes you can produce will be simpler.
This is a myth perpetuated by the new breed of maker: the hipster arduino connected to a led maker. With a 3-axis mill I can mill a mold for almost any practical shape. Any tool, almost any part, etc.
(BTW: I called this hype correctly more than two years ago on slashdot :-))
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Then you aren't doing interesting enough work. It is different working around a machine shop that serves engineering prototypes or research, where getting performance is more important than shaving pennies off a product price.
The problem with milling stuff for all but the most trivial projects is figuring out how to best hold an object. When you have no good, strong, flat surfaces, sometimes this becomes very difficult without numerous jigs (and not every material is reasonably castable). While give eno
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At a certain level mold making is pretty basic: If you can't make a mold with a 3 axis mill, the part is unlikely to come out.
'Any tool, almost any part' are bolder claims.
Re: Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:2)
So print a sacrifical mold and cast the part in aluminum. These are early days... It's not going to change world overnight. But additive manufacture is going to creep up on subtractive. I have a rep rap and it's not so useful, mostly because the i2 design was lousy and the mechatronics are a bit too clockwork. Related - reverse kinetics aren't simple. So what... GE makes turbine blades that are impossible to make via milling or casting. They're top down and enthusiast amateurs do the bottom up. It'll
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How can you complain about the bench space and say that you have no problem with a saw, planer, sander, drill, and mill? And then different parts in those tools for each different material you need to work with as well.
I don't have much positive to say about 3D printing, but the floor or bench space is literally the least of the technology's problems.
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There are 3D printers that work in various sorts of metals. I'm aware of steel and titanium printers (although I believe the titanium requires an argon atmosphere).
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I don't think 3d is too expensive anymore as there are a few companies providing good value for your money. New Matter in California and Solidoodle in New York come to mind. New Matters printer is ~$400 and Solidoodles line starts at $700.
http://newmatter.com/ [newmatter.com]
http://www.solidoodle.com/ [solidoodle.com]
Re: Given the hype around 3D printing ... (Score:1)
Hype is a reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the hype around 3D printing, you'd never guess that established leaders like 3D Systems and Stratasys have seen their stock fall by 75 percent in the last year
Hype is the reason the stocks were overinflated to begin with. It was easy to predict. These companies business model was rapid expansion via buyouts, but the problem is that the technology is evolving and improving, which de-values the technology they acquired.
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Ignorance of the market gets modded insightful? Other than Stratasys buying Makerbot (a single purchase), what leads you to say that Stratasys' business model was "rapid expansion via buyouts"? You should also inform yourself about the value of Stratasys vs Makerbot. Yes, Stratasys paid a lot more for Makerbot than it was worth, but that amount is dwarfed by Stratasys' value. They were not, and are not, anywhere close to the same league.
For the record, Stratasys' strategy has been to sell outdated technolog
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The point is, those acquisitions drain capital and now are not returning asset value.
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http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/... [valuewalk.com]
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Right now it is. People are going to find uses for it we can't think of today.
Your point also could have been made without insulting people.
Mainstream form of manufacturing? (Score:2)
3d printing will _never_ be a mainstream form of manufacturing.
It lives in the prototyping space. For finished parts it can't compete with other forms, with the narrow exception of un-moldable or un-machinable parts.
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Correct. And further, they'll never sell more than 640K of them...
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Correct. And further, they'll never sell more than 640K of them...
Computers had computer programs and graphical displays as their killer app. Even if you found a "killer app" like a high efficiency battery lattice that can only be 3D printed, there is still no reason that it wouldn't be cheaper to have them printed at a factory instead of each person printing their own. Printing high quality food is the only thing that comes to mind as something that could possibly get a 3D printer to be a common household fixture. Either that or printing things like hammers on demand an
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You could build a printer for extruded food today.
You pallet would be 'cheesy poofs, slim jim, cake icing, chicken nugget and milk chocolate'. Good luck.
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the prototyping space has had superior alternatives for over 20 years. the fad type 3D printers are toys, the real ones have been around for a loooong time
Re:Mainstream form of manufacturing? (Score:5, Insightful)
3d printing will _never_ be a mainstream form of manufacturing.
First of all, mainstream manufacturing uses multiple manufacturing methods, such as milling, casting, forging, deep drawing, injection moulding, stamping, bending, etc. You use the best method for the application and desired quality and quantity. At best 3D printing could supplement traditional manufacturing methods, such as for making custom parts in very low quantities. But the idea that 3D printing could be a viable alternative for several or most traditional methods is ludicrous and a sign that a lot of 3D fans don't really understand manufacturing and have spent too much time in design studios and too little on the factory floor.
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3d printing will _never_ be a mainstream form of manufacturing.
Depends on what you mean "main stream". You seem to insist that main stream is essentially mass manufacture which pretty much implies consumer products. There's a vast amount of stuff out there that isn't mass manufactured, and is in fact bespoke. Every machine shop out there is churning out small volumes of bespoke parts.
3D printing will be yet another tool in the arsenal of making stuff. It's also perfectly fine for finished parts depending o
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It's never going to be a mainstream method of mass production, but there's lots of money to be made in the prototype and limited run markets.
One would hope so (Score:3)
has released a new 3D printer that is supposed to be more reliable and higher quality than its predecessors.
I'm glad they haven't started to release products that are less reliable and lower quality than its predecessors; that's the sign of a mature field...
3D printing is like photo printing (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, 3D printing is very similar to photo printing. Most people don't print enough that it makes sense to have their own printer at home. Just like there are some people who are really into photography, and own their own photo printers, or even their own dark room, there are enthusiasts who really want to build their own stuff that would really get a use out of a 3D printer. But the majority of people who just want to print off a new battery cover for their remote control, or knob for the clothes dryer would be much better off just going down to the local Walmart or Costco and getting them to print out the object, just like they currently do with photos.
I'm not going to spend $200+ on a photo printer when I could easily get better prints by going down to Walmart and getting pictures for 10 cents a piece. Similarly, I'm not going to spend $500 on a 3D printer when I could go down to Staples, Home Depot, Walmart, Costco, or whoever is providing the service and get access to a much higher quality 3D printer. Even my local library has a 3D printer I can use for the cost of the consumables.
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there are a buttload of those nameplates on ebay, like one guy has 350 sold 150 left
really, this points out the thing about 3D printing, it usually is the very most expensive solution to a problem
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really, this points out the thing about 3D printing, it usually is the very most expensive solution to a problem.
Fine. That may be true today. The people involved with 3D printing are typically looking toward the future. It's not unreasonable to expect that 3D printers will enjoy the same exponential growth (and cost reductions) as computers, green energy, and internet access have had.
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Because 3D printers will eventually be able to make the parts to make other 3D printers. I expect to see more than exponential growth because of this. Explosive growth.
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No, those plastic squirting toys have little to do with how real things are made. There are serious 3D printers by the way that just don't deal in two types of plastic, and other ways of rapid prototyping besides traditional mills, lathes, etc. Those types of things have been around for decades and someone "looking to future" should be on that path and not the yoda head squirting path.
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There are serious 3D printers by the way that just don't deal in two types of plastic, and other ways of rapid prototyping besides traditional mills, lathes, etc.
You probably meant to respond to the guy that who was talking about plastic 3D printers. I wasn't talking about those, We can use sand and sunlight, the most abundant and cheapest feedstocks we have to print glass. There are printers for printing metal, building materials, human tissues, etc. I get that.
Traditional mill, and lathes, use a subtractive manufacturing process - you take a piece of lumber for instance and remove what you don't want. 3D printers create products using an additive process so in the
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In some cases that's true but adding little bits of molten or dissolved steel won't form as strong of an object as traditional methods. And good luck making a strong wooden object by additive methods, I think we call that carboard. We can mold glass much more cheaply than printing.
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If your application requires a piece of wood, you should use a piece of wood. If molded glass is required, you should use molded glass. No one is disputing that. Those materials aren't going away.
3D printing doesn't reduce what you can do, it increases what you can do.
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yes, I used to work in prototyping and I know the value. however, the typical hobbyist uses I see are needlessly complicated and horribly expensive alternatives to sane solutions. Like custom fitted grips for tools, there's a cheap, fast and very easy way to make one that fits your hand exactly....
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I lost one I my bike. They aren't functional so I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet. I only have 2400 level shifters though, so I really don't need to show off to anybody what my groupset is. Not that they had anything printed on them in the first place.
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Yes there are, plenty of genuine Ultegra ST-6510 nameplates for less than $9 out there. Your online shoppng skills must be truly abysmal.
Hey I have shimano parts on my early 1980s 12 speed too. I've replaced various things a few times
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There are companies that will happily take your CAD drawing and money and 3D-print something for you. It's going to be a lot cheaper than buying your own.
Trendy. (Score:1)
"mainstream manufacturing"? Don't hold your breath (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no way that 3d printing will hold a candle to "mainstream manufacturing". Many manufactured parts are made very quickly, and at scale. If you take common plastic molded part, they are likely to be running cycle times of under a minute and have multiple parts coming out of the mold simultaneously. Sure, the mold and the injection molding machine aren't cheap, but they can pound out a lot of copies of your plastic part for a long time and get the unit cost down really low. You will also get better surface finish and appearance than a 3d printed part, as well as having little or no waste (depending on mold design/part geometry) and very consistent material properties in your part.
This doesn't even get into manufacturing things made out of metal. I know there are various cool 3d printers that are using lasers and other stuff to make metal parts, but that's not going to hold a candle to the manufacturing processes that give you many of the common metal things you use every day, or that you rely on every day (think of all the manufactured metal things in a car, bus, or even a bicycle).
3d printing has a number of applications for one-off parts, prototyping and low volume work. It's definitely a great thing, the first company I worked for in the 90's paid out the nose for a Stratasys machine because they recognized the value of the tool for prototyping and getting to market faster -- but the 3d printer in no way would have ever made production parts. I'm sure people will dream up new and novel ways of using the technology, but it's going to be a long time before 3d printing ever supplants traditional volume manufacturing methods and techniques, if ever.
Why isn't it more mainstream? (Score:1)
From TFA of this Slashvertisement: "The Form 2 sells for $3,499."
Even if aimed at professionals generally, prices still have to come much lower before it's a tool for anything but the dedicated hobbyist.
just f*cking stop it (Score:3)
How many non-news articles can you possibly print about 3d printing.
I worked for 3d systems in the 90s, it was fun and vaguely novel back then. I have been hearing about this stuff like its the next new thing for over 2 decades, and what are the fantastic advances we've had during that time.. no, don't tell me, please, seriously, don't. We don't get 5 articles a week about virtual reality, or jetpacks, or flying cars,
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Some of the 'crete ones are somewhat printed.
Given the hype (Score:2)
Formlabs? (Score:2)
Had one - never turned out anything other than a pile of goo. Tried two units, same results. They blamed it on bad materials, bad setup, etc. After that was all covered and eliminated, it was a factory-misaligned mirror - and I was supposed to spend the 5-6 hours to try to calibrate it. Took 6 months of fighting to get them to take it back.
Went to a Stratasys and never looked back.
Huh (Score:1)
3D printing becomes a more mainstream form of manufacturing.
Why would it?
You can't print things fast enough with consumer level gear to make it a business, they are too expensive to be anything other than a spendy hobbyist toy.
If you are referring to industrial 3d printing that already occurs.
Not to mention most of the 3d printed stuff I come across is of lower quality than already existing manufacturing techniques.
We are in transition (Score:1)
Years from now - possibly fewer than most of us think - everyone may have and use a 3d printer all the time. (Or multiple ones.) They're obviously just not ready for mass consumption. These are the "5 MB hard drives the size of a desk" generation. (Some printer makers may be upset with that because they're way more advanced / affordable / etc.; they are the "30 MB hard drives the size of a suitcase" generation.)
Comments about limitations and sacrifice of floor space and niche and whatnot are all appropr
3D is Huge (Score:2)
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I just got my first 3D printer (Score:1)
I just got my printer this week. It's a home printer that's pretty much 'point and click' for operation. Thingiverse has a lot of files to use as I learn CAD.
The niche I see is toys. Lots and lots of toys. Different kinds of toys. If you have kids this is a great option. They don't need to be perfect, the filament runs me about $15 per kilo, and once it's running it just runs.
I'm planning on using it for prototyping some things for my business but the quality isn't there for production. But I can get