A thingiverse-alternative site that has a quite active developer.

3D Printing
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A thingiverse-alternative site that has a quite active developer. He recently contacted me informing me that the site was updated to work on netbook-sized screens too.

I know many of you are attached to thingiverse, but I just wanted to put this out there for people. Still in start-up mode. :slight_smile:

Feel free to make suggestions, etc to physibleworld@gmail.com
http://physibleexchange.com/

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Interesting. Definitely something to follow

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Really nice!
but One of the main advantages of thingiverse is/was “everything in one place /one site” , while alternatives are good , I just hope we won’t see a proliferation of too many sites, as that can hurt the hmm “accessibility” of 3d printed designs. (my 2 cents)

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Everything in one place is also the biggest risk factor with thingiverse, which along with its owners might be moving slightly away from free-as-in-speech principles.

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While Thingiverse is a great site, aren’t you basically giving your designs to them for free for them to benefit from (as well as the community)? From Ts and Cs “You hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Company and its affiliates and partners, an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into other works, and otherwise use your User Content”.

Thinking of setting up a site and shop with profit share - any thoughts?

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@Developing_Dreams , yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on with Thingiverse. The problem with a “for-pay” model is that I don’t think there’s many who would pay much for a design, at least right now. Also, how would you make sure that a designer gets paid? I think the best solution for now would be to have a Donate button. This way, if you think a design deserves it, or if you’re somehow profiting from it, you can give more than just non-financial credit to the designer.

Perhaps 5 years or so from now it will make sense to have a monetized marketplace for designs (which I believe would also help to foster more creative, high quality designs) once 3D printing becomes more reliable. If I was just playing around and tinkering with the design of my 3D printer, I would not want to be paying for a model’s design just so I can test and tweak the capabilities of my printer.

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Hi John, let’s hope they don’t do an ‘instagram’! I think if you were selling things it would have to be high quality bespoke pieces of art, rather than the design (which would remain copyright of the artists) so you’d set up a gallery with an online/shop and whenever an order is placed and the piece produced, the artist is credited (I think this is kind of what Shapeways do with their customer platforms?). A lot of people are going to start doing this independently (or are already doing it with things like jewellery) but I still haven’t seen a shop in the UK (though in the last month both France and the Netherlands and NYC got their first shops) where people can see and buy finished pieces

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It’s an interesting situation to pay attention to. As a matter of fact, I’m strongly considering opening up a place that is gallery and shop in the front, makerspace and classroom area in the back. As such, I’m trying to figure out the best way to provide proper credit to designers, especially for the more intricately designed “art” pieces. Monetarily, I’m not sure what to do yet, but I at least want to have a way, probably a QR code, listed by the designers name that will link to other pieces of their work. I think that will work, at least in the short term.

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@Developing_Dreams technically, the change in eula that was just announced by Instagram is extremely similar in wording to the change that was done on thingiverse half a year ago.

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@Jasper_Janssen interesting comment, thought it had changed but didn’t realise it was half a year ago @John_Schneider that’s the dream I think - maker space and educational and sustainable through sales/funding. Be interesting to chat further, you can always drop me an email via our website http://www.developingdreams.com

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Love it or hate it, Thingiverse collects a great deal of this movement’s early history (well starting in 2009ish). I’ve been going through and “reading” (ie scanning) through the early work with some friends, aiming to get through much of it by about March. Kind of a slog – but you never know when this stuff is going to vanish forever!

There is so much I missed, so many ideas to explore. (I’m going to share some of this stuff here – why not?) And while the site is definitely at risk of slipping away from the principles it was founded on because of the leadership at MakerBot (trust me, the staff on the ground over there still there have very much maker friendly-principles), the thing that is at risk of being lost, rather than the models that are for the most part as protected as they need to be, is the history and the community it offered.