So, so tired of all the “winning”
Please explain.
I can’t promise that this is the result of tariffs, but the timing is suspect.
We were promised that we would be tired of winning.
Here’s an important mover in the maker scene going out of business.
They do have 12" x 12" pieces of cast acrylic and 1/8" aluminum for sale for $1 each, and my order had shipping cost slightly more than the base price of the stock I ordered.
No great surprise for a going-out-of-business sale, email seems to be broken.
My old password no longer worked. The reset password flow didn’t get an email through to me. When I created a new account and placed an order, I didn’t get the email order confirmation.
FYI
too bad, but they were expencive
So at the risk of starting into a politically charged debate, it seems that the tariff war that is going on is trying to prevent exactly why they say they are shuddering their shop.
On the openbuilds community forum, Rick 2.0 from openbuilds says it is due to cheaper products being widely available.
After a quick search, all of their products were produced in New Jersey and Florida.
Just saying.
Noooooooooo!!!
I definitely have substantial piles of OpenBuilds kit in my prototyping stockpile…
OpenBuilds BlackBox System X32 is my host controller, and OpenBuilds Control is my host software. I’ve only dabbled with their CAM. But it looks like I will need to find a replacement for Control! I used to use CNC.js, so I may try going back to that. But I really like OpenBuilds Control.
It has some really neat built-in features, like the “spoilboard flattener” and “check size”. I use the latter before starting every job to sanity check my g-code! I’ll need to keep copies of it around to make sure I can access all of the settings.
Well, it’s not like the repository on Github is going away. So the software will still be available, whether it is going to be maintained is another issue.
That’s a shame.
Lots of machines were prototyped using their stuff. Going to be a big hit to people making homebrew machines in the US.
I thought the tariffs were to promote US manufacturing by making imported product more expensive. Then all I heard was that Chinese manufacturers would be paying the tariffs which would imply costs would not rise. Reality is the importers pay the tariffs and it’s really just a tax which goes directly to the Treasury department.
Unfortunately nothing I’ve seen, read or heard has been done to make US manufacturing more efficient and therefore less expensive to consumers. So much of manufacturing is automated these days why is it that US manufacturing always ends up being so much more expensive? Maybe because of public health regulations around and in the factories? Something else?
I also have to ask how much of what they sell and how much of their profits or revenue were imported. Maybe they only made the extrusions in the US since they have a large number of other products for sale.
Something to consider - What a Texas showerhead salesman discovered about 'Made in the USA' labels : NPR
I found CNC.js pretty easy to use too and while Mitch still supports it, he’s primarily working with Bart on FluidNC( GitHub - bdring/FluidNC: The next generation of motion control firmware ).
CNC.js( GitHub - cncjs/cncjs: A web-based interface for CNC milling controller running Grbl, Marlin, Smoothieware, or TinyG. ) is still active too but both projects are open source and have active development. Currently the latest merge into Openbuilds Control has failed so it will be telling of active or inactive development by how long the builds remain failing.
I do have to wonder how much tariffs on raw aluminum factored into this, since they sold a lot of aluminum. And are all their raw parts made in the US? I’m not clear that, for example, all their bearings were sourced from US manufacturers.
Mark Carew may have alluded to this in the post linked to:
We’re not into the politics of it all but that also affects us