3D Printing Community responds to COVID-19 and Coronavirus resources

How is the 3D printing community responding to COVID-19? As the now pandemic Coronavirus takes hold over the globe, we see countries implementing travel restrictions, social distancing measures, and work from home policies. Even the more developed countries are seeing their healthcare systems overloaded and fatigued by COVID-19. In the more severe cases of the […]

The Maker Movement Unmade? Part 4: Attack of the Clones

Read parts one, two and three of this series. 

Determining a definitive cause of the economic misfortunes of some companies in the open source hardware and maker spaces might prove difficult. However, there was one factor that did seem to clearly impact the desktop 3D printing industry was a flood of low-cost 3D printers from overseas, particularly China.

Starting around 2011 or 2012, clones of open source 3D printers, specifically the MakerBot Replicator, began to appear in the U.S. market. In some cases, the machines were of lesser quality than the originals and, in others, they performed on par or better. In most cases, they were less expensive. Among the earliest copycat brands were Wanhao and FlashForge, which sold the Duplicator and Creator replicas respectively.

At first, it may have seemed as though these Chinese companies were only in the 3D printing business to turnaround a quick profit by taking advantage of open source designs. In part, such skepticism likely stemmed from the different attitudes towards intellectual property, which has resulted in the so-called “pirating” of Western-designed (but often Asian-manufactured) technology.

On the left, the MakerBot Replicator 2. On the right, the Wanhao Duplicator 4.

However, over time, we learned that some of these brands were following in the same maker spirit as their Western counterparts. As Vice General Manager Frank Hua writes on the Wanhao About Us page, “Several Roommates used all [of] their pocket money and bought one Thing-O-Matic from Makerbot. This precious awesome machine brought these college students great enthusiasm [for 3D printing] and help[ed] these budd[ies pursue] their dream. On 1st Oct, WANHAO [replicated] the Thing-O-Matic and named it DUPLICATOR ONE. This 1st Generation Made In China 3D printer has combined most of the advantage[s] of RepRap and Makerbot, and upgrade[d] the extruder to [a non-block] one.”

While the open source aspect of a variety of Chinese models has sometimes been called into question, a number of companies continued to innovate and improve on their foundational copycats. Today, Wanhao has a broad range of 3D printers, including SLA, DLP and FFF. FlashForge products were so well-received that the German engineering multinational Bosch began selling its own version of the FlashForge Creator Pro under its Dremel power tool brand.

As of 2017, China had the most makerspaces in the world, thanks to the government’s Made in China 2025 initiative. The program, launched in 2015, aims to shift the country’s focus from manufacturing low-cost goods for the rest of the world to designing and making high tech products and services for the domestic population. In some cases, this has led to thriving labs of innovation, while in others, the result has been the creation of empty lounges without fabrication equipment.

Xue Yujie at Sixth Tone argues that the stagnation of the maker movement in China is in part due to government pressure for makerspaces to spin out startups and patents. Adafruit points out that similar outcomes can occur with venture capital firms in other parts of the world when too much money is poured into a project and the focus is on forced growth, rather than organic growth.

Electronics at a Shenzhen market. Image courtesy of The Long + Short.

An article in The Long + Short, however, frames the concept of “making”, in the makerspace sense of the word, somewhat differently. The authors describe in the detail the Chinese city of Shenzen, the once-quiet fishing town that now manufactures about 90 percent of the world’s electronics, including pirated goods. Whereas the word “shanzhai” once referred to counterfeit goods, the authors suggest that it now represents the pinnacle of open manufacturing.

With open air markets selling everything from scraps (“reels of resistors, bags of PCB boards, iPhone volume buttons by the bucket”) to complete products (“3D printers, drones of all sizes, and fake Apple watches with bonus features like front-facing cameras”), the city is constantly “making”. These goods are not just mass manufactured products for the rest of the world, but even “niche, often culturally specific products no big companies bother with.”

The authors highlight the hoverboard as a paragon of shanzhai innovation in that the self-balancing scooter had no single inventor but was created in a collaborative fashion online and through informal manufacturing networks. Once it became popular, over 1,000 factories began to produce the item without concern for branding.

It was this same open ecosystem that may have contributed to the transformation of the desktop 3D printing industry and maker movement. The Long + Short authors also highlight how quickly product development can occur in Shenzhen, where the components needed for a prototype can be found “at the market around the corner, or more likely ordered to your exact specification as soon as you want it… Build your prototype, head to the assembly line to push out 10,000 of them, put them out to market, see what sells.”

3D printing, in general, is pitched as a tool for speeding up the design cycle, but, in the case of a massive contract manufacturer, owning the means of production itself speeds up the entire manufacturing process that much more. Located just off the coast of the Chinese mainland on the island of Taiwan, New Kinpo Group oversees the making of such name brand goods as HP printers and Dyson Vacuums, as well as its own line of products.

da Vinci 2.1 AIO 1 with built-in 3D scanner.

At CES 2014, the manufacturing giant unveiled its first desktop 3D printer, the da Vinci 1.0, under its new 3D printing brand, XYZprinting. With a price of $499, the system was among the least expensive on the market at the time. As the stocks of major 3D printing companies like 3D Systems and Stratasys started to crash, XYZ’s printer line began to blow up, including low-cost SLA and DLP systems, as well as FFF 3D printers with price tags as low as $169.

Just as in the case of the Shenzhen electronics manufacturers, New Kinpo Group is able to move quickly from design iteration to manufacturing. The variety of systems sold by XYZprinting to this day is extremely broad, including many variations on the same model (with wi-fi or without; with LCD screen or without; with all-in-one 3D scanner, laser engraver and full-color inkjet printhead or without). The company is consistently able to showcase new technologies, such as food 3D printers, with which it can test market readiness and then decide whether or not it will release them.

Based on one report, at one point, XYZprinting boasted more printer sales than any other company in the market, likely overwhelming the competition. As a result, other manufacturers may not have been able to keep up. Brook Drumm, for instance, remarked in a post-Printrbot interview that “cheap Chinese-made printers, AND Amazon.com selling them, AND Americans choosing to buy them – it all contributed significantly to Printrbot’s demise.”

After the 2014 stock bubble, the 3D printing industry began to experience more growth in the industrial segment with the consumer sector seemingly entering a decline. With that dynamic in the works, XYZ has since decided to shift focus on industrial and professional printers, as well. All of this played into this author’s perception that perhaps the maker movement had started to die off.

However, based on communications with a number of prominent members of said movement, ranging from RepRap luminaries like Richard “RichRap” Horne to former Silicon Valley execs like Carl Bass, it hasn’t died—just transformed.

Read parts one, two and three of this series. 

The post The Maker Movement Unmade? Part 4: Attack of the Clones appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

3D Printing Buying Guide 2019

What a difference a year makes. Once again we’ve seen some monumental shifts and changes in the 3D printing landscape for desktop 3D printers. At the low-end competition has been murderous with many players forced from the market. In the midrange and higher-end systems, we see more sophistication and refinement. Many vendors are improving their systems to cater to users in reliability and usability here. Compared to only a few years ago, 3D printing is becoming much more accessible and cost-effective to do. In higher-end systems, we are getting easy to use systems that are accurate and reliable. 3D printing is still not simple, but it is getting much better for you, the user.

We created this guide to be a resource for you. We hope that we can help you find some systems that are worth considering at every price point.

The desktop 3D printing market consists of low-cost desktop 3D printers for around $500, midrange systems for approximately $1,000 and Pro systems for above $2,500.

Low-Cost Desktop 3D Printers
In low-cost systems, printers barely work or function intermittently. There is often some assembly required and a lot of tweaking to be done. With Tender Loving Care, these printers can work. They’re for those who are budget constrained or want to impulse buy a printer. I’d recommend them to someone who likes to hardware hack and modifies things but not if you’re going to print a lot of stuff. It would be perfect for the mechanical engineering student who has time to invest in improving it.

It’s worth noting that specifically in this segment, paid reviews, and affiliate links are the norm. Due to this, many may have gotten have an overly optimistic view of these printers. Many reviews online contain falsehoods and over claim. Simultaneously some marketing tactics employed by players in this market segment are deplorable. They include behavior such as negatively reviewing each other’s printers. In some cases, companies are claiming that a competitor’s printer has had disastrous failures or fires (additionally, sometimes these things actually catch fire as well). Even for our market, this is very cowboy territory, so buyer beware.

XYZ Printing Da Vinci Nano $221

The Da Vinci Nano has a tiny build volume, but this compact printer has an enclosed printer that comes with software and anything you need to get started for $249. Print quality is not stellar, but the ease of use, especially out of the box is good.

Monoprice MP Select Mini Pro (V3) $199

In aluminium, I also think this looks fantastic.

Monoprice is good at improving and rebadging existing printers and selling them at extremely low price points. The previous versions of the Select Mini V3 built up quite a following. This printer engendered a lively Facebook group that helped you support and improve the machine. In some cases, it seems to have gotten out of hand with people spending much more on upgrades than on the base machine. Although there is a lot to be said for sticking to the old V2 version, given how much information is out there on how to hack it, the new V3 irons out a lot of kinks for a low price. Build volumes are small, but this still is a competent printer that’s relatively easy to use.

Creality Ender 3 $229

The Ender is a value-engineered printer with a large build volume that needs tweaking, love, and care. By no means a high-quality experience or part. But, if you do give it that care this can turn out to be a real workhorse for you.

Anet A8 Plus $249 

I’ll probably get a lot of flack for this since the previous version had issues with catching fire. Reviewers that I know and trust however have managed to run this one without any hitch for months now. Simple and a lot of bang for your buck, now with an aluminum frame.

JG Aurora A5S $399

There seem to be some QC issues with the JG Aurora printers but there is a community to help you with that. Some people are ecstatic with them while others complain of assembly and wiring issues. At any other price point, I’d find this difficult to recommend, but the results that selected people have been getting from this machine are stellar.

Flashforge Adventurer 3 $449

I love this thing. It’s enclosed, relatively well built and for around $400 to $500 is a great buy. Flashforge has been plugging away at making better and better printers for years now, and this one seems a real winner. There is no real community around this printer yet, but it’s worth the extra money to have more ease of use. Heated bed, wifi, filament end detection, cloud printing, simple nozzle removal, it packs a lot of features. The only super annoying thing is that it limits you to using 0.5 Kg rolls of filament which means that you have to spool on a smaller spool interesting filaments.

Wanhao Duplicator 7 $430

We are seeing a huge expansion in low-cost DLP and SLA systems. Partially due to consumer interest and partly because these systems have few moving parts, these are becoming more available. Better optics and lower cost light sources from LCD, DLP and other sources are also feeding this trend. There is a massive amount of systems out there now. The one with a track record at $500 is the Duplicator. Please be careful with all SLA and DLP resins, but the fine detail will amaze at this price point.

Midrange Desktop 3D Printers
Midrange systems are best for people who want to print parts. They are more reliable than entry-level systems and have components that last longer. With a lot of tweaking, some of these systems provide high-quality parts. Official Prusa i3s, for example, can with correct tweaking make great parts even for manufacturing. We’re seeing better prints in this category and more things such as touchscreens while automated bed leveling is becoming commonplace. In this category, more people are paying attention to the ecosystem, so looking at filaments, settings, and software to enable better prints and better user experience.

Prusa i3 MK3S $999

The best just got better. The Original is an amazing assembled 3D printer for $999. If you want a first printer, buy this one. If you want a printer to hack, modify, and improve, buy this one. If you want a motion stage for your bioprinting lab, buy this. Well calibrated Prusa’s make some of the highest quality FDM 3D prints out there. Yes, there is a steep learning curve for a beginner, but this could be your first printer and your last one as well.

Craftbot Plus $999 

A Craftbot Plus is an excellent printer to buy for around $999 while the Craftbot XL is a large build volume workhorse for $1900. I love what Hungarian firm Craftbot is doing on software, support and most of all on building these reliable fire and forget 3D printers that are a dream to use.

Pro 3D Printers
Pro 3D printers are meant to be used for businesses. Generally, more effort has been put into ease of use, component quality of the hardware, user-friendliness of screens and software as well as print quality. Build volumes and speeds should be higher as should overall performance. These printers now are approaching “printing with a few clicks and some user knowledge,” and hopefully we’ll see more “fire and forget” and less “guess your way to a part” in the future.

Formlabs Form 3 $3500

Uniquely, Formlabs has a wholly integrated vision for the desktop from materials to manuals and software. Formlabs top-down ecosystem means that you are constrained to a certain degree. But, in place of this comes an ease of use that other systems simply do not have at all. The Form 3 comes with more refinement in software, sensors, and better screen removal, which should enable more accurate parts with both more extensive and more delicate cross-sections. The Form 3 is new, so it has a limited track record as of today. If you want to opt for more of a track record, get a Form 2. This is still the best desktop SLA and one of the best printers out there.

Ultimaker S5 $6000

The S5 is a reliable printer that can repeatably make FDM parts with a lot of accuracy. $6000 is a lot of change when compared to a lot of other printers out there. If you want ease of use and are using this as a central printer for your office or just want the least total headaches, then the S5 is a great tool. I’m still in love with the print cores feature of these machines and their overall simplicity for me as a user.

The post 3D Printing Buying Guide 2019 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

REVIEW: The FlashForge Adventurer 3, reliable, high quality 3D printing for $449

The Adventurer 3 is an FDM/FFF 3D printer from manufacturer FlashForge. The first of the company’s Adventurer series, this compact desktop system was launched at CES 2018 alongside the Creator 3, Inventor IIS, Guider IIS, and Explorer Max 3D printers.  With over a year on the market, the Adventurer 3, which maintains a build size […]