Shows Over?
http://www.cityam.com/blog/1395329390/3-worrying-signs-3d-printing-industry-hitting-buffers
Really don’t see it that way. That’s the commercial side only. The closed source non innovators.
Open source is thriving. Innovations and real cost of products in most cases driving investors away from poor commercial manufactured products that won’t hold up when the market hits the households in large numbers.
@Nigel_Dickinson They aren’t non-inovators, go see what you can do with a high end Objet if you’re not convinced.
I also don’t agree there is a household market at this stage; Whats, the use case? FDM is very very useful if you are prototyping or making short runs of customised parts but none of those things work in the household market.
At some point, the Objet (or similar) technology will become mature enough for mass market, at that point, when you can print pretty much anything polymer based at a similar quality to a mass produced part, you’ve got a product that everyone will want and I when that product comes I bet you it won’t be open source.
@Tim_Rastall sorry but I don’t agree. Investors are pulling away from closed source environments.
They have seen the likes of Google do a partially closed system and Linux being fully open and can see better revenue streams from this than the old patent system…and all its flaws with claims and counter claims.
That’s how investors are working these days.
I agree with @Nigel_Dickinson , the article is more about the entrenched incumbents feeling the heat than “the industry” hitting the skids. Instead, hava a look at where venture capital from such firms as Intel[1], HP[2], VC investment firms and crowdfunding is going. I guess one never hears about the venture capital investments that didn’t happen, but my impression is that 3D Printing is still going gangbusters.
[1] http://www.vcpost.com/articles/21566/20140211/intel-capital-backs-two-3d-printing-companies.htm
[2] http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/26/3d-printing-gets-a-big-endorsement-from-hp-ceo-meg-whitman/
Being professionally on the R&D end of technology development, admittedly not in 3D printing specifically, I can say that any one even entertaining the notion that 3D printing is anything less than the next mini industrial revolution is bonkers. 3D printing is huge and its only going to get bigger. The things people are willing to admit to are by themselves astounding. Even without further development 3D printing has already proven to be the superior choice for many manufacturing modes and will become the standard.
@Alan_Henderson your right but investors dont like the model that the big players are doing financially.
If investors are baulking at the big companies it bodes well for well thought out start ups with vision.
Oooor it could be one of those valueless, contentless, hand wringing articles that don’t mean much. (There’ll only be room for 6 computers in the world, 640k ought to be enough for anybody).
I’ll say this for making my printer myself: I’m not reliant on an investor’s opinion to keep moving forward on my own priorities.
@Nigel_Dickinson I have my mini kossel and its just awesome enough that, had I the time, there are a great many facets I could improve upon. I do not even have my bachelors completed yet and I can see massive potential for growth and refinement in just that one single version. Maybe after me and my team at work get past a few technical hurdles I’ll have the time. For now I just sit back and wonder, if I can think of so many ways to massively improve this tech. then what are the people with more education and more time doing with it behind closed doors? Whomever ends up getting the money is immaterial to the point. The fact is there is lots of money to be made very quickly and some one will collect.
The high end printing market is due for a realignment. Like many times in the past, a technology emerges that initially is very expensive but as the technology matures, patents expire and there is wide proliferation, the prices dramatically drop and any company that cannot adapt will fail.
@Wylie_Hilliard I perfectly agree, there is way too much money in the wind for this to die. Someone will collect.