A sad day indeed, as Printrbot has closed. A message on the web site simply reads:
“Printrbot is closed.
Low sales led to hard decisions.
We will be forever grateful to all the people we met and served over the years.
Thank you all.
Brook”
Many of us have a relationship with Printrbot, be it owning one of their printers, getting solid advice from Brook, or benefiting from some of the innovations they pioneered.
This post will be pinned for a considerable time, please feel free to comment with stories about your Printrbot experiences, or interactions with Brook and the crew at Printrbot. In this way, we can let Brook know that the things he has done for the community have not gone unnoticed, and that he and his company will be missed.
Note: Please do not use this post to ask about parts, how to get service etc., you can email info@printrbot.com for these types of questions.
One of my guilty pleasures has been sitting down to watch the weekly edition of Brooks “Printrbot Live” webcast on facebook. Work could take a back seat for a while as I got a glimpse into the mind of Brook, and also learn about the newest tech he was developing. My favorite printer has always been my Printrbot Simple Pro. Built like a tank, great print quality, and incredible ease of use. I will never sell this printer, and will always find a way to keep it running as original as possible. In fact, I may now start a Printrbot collection, buying older models to form a sort of museum like display in my printer room. Thank you Brook for pushing for excellence in all that you did.
The thing that always stood out to me about printrbot was Brook’s desire to make 3d printing affordable and approachable to the masses. He and his team worked to take things down to the bare essentials. He and the printrbot team helped makers and kids who couldn’t have afforded a 3d printer if he hadn’t come onto the scene. This is evident from projects like the adoptabot. The local robotics club who received the adoptabot I refurbished for them absolutely love thiers. And it wouldn’t have been possible if not for the vision and generosity of @Brook_Drumm and his team. You will be missed @Printrbot , but not forgotten. The legion of lives you have touched and projects you have empowered lives on.
My experience with Brook:
I met Brook years ago, before printrbot. He started a local 3d printer meetup. A few months in he came to a meeting claiming he could do it cheaper and better than current printers.
A month later he had a prototype and handed a few out for us to test. (Fun note I had that prototype in my garage for years before finally handing it back, albeit partially disassembled).
I couldn’t get it to print reliably and was pretty frustrated. But Brook was determined to make it work and announced his Kickstarter.
I thought he was crazy. What he wanted simply didn’t seem possible. But I underestimated his ability to iterate and improve. Every week he’d have a better design.
Remember this was before e3d, cheap hotends, or widely available components. Brook decided to make all of these components in-house, which was and is still quite rare.
I gave him permission to use my control board design to derive and sell. I turned down his offer to modify it for his purposes as I was too busy. I didn’t think much of it until the end of the Kickstarter campaign.
To my surprise he had incredible success.
He taught me a big lesson on optimism and success. I learned to never underestimate someone as dedicated as him. He’s still a cheerful and friendly guy, and very much embodies the spirit of a maker.
I look forward to whatever he does next, and I know he will succeed.
Really bummed to hear this, as Brook made some simply beautiful machines (in different ways). And Brook’s excursions were always interesting. Kind of suspected this was coming, competing with cheap Chinese machines. Kind of hoping the Ubis hotends and the new PrintrBoard find a future.
My Favorite thing Brook did was PrintrBot Labs. The stuff was never promised to work, But if you could get it there, boy did you have something cool. Our makerspace still has the Big-E Brook sent us simply in the hopes that we could get it to work and make something rad with it. Brooks a great dude and I dont see him sitting still long. Looking forward to whats next.
@Dimitri_Damian A lot of us have bought, and a lot of us appreciate the designs and company but were never in a position to buy one. High regard by experienced users doesn’t necessarily create a sustainable business.
Unlike some of you hardcore reprappers, I’ve only had one printer so far: the first Printrbot Play. A fantastic machine that is making the parts for my second printer. I love Brook’s attitude about printing, open source, and reprapping. Hope to see him continue that journey even if it isn’t in the form of a company-that-sells-things™.
@Dimitri_Damian sold multiple in Germany alone via 3dDinge - and had hardly any complaints about the Simples. Sadly our preordered Plays had a lot of issues (2 out of 10).
I think Brook would have needed more Distribution, he was very US centered. But that’s hard to see from the outside of the company and easy to say in hindsight
Our @Printrbot s were always very reliable machines (and they will be in the future). They printed indoors, outdoors, at RepairCafes, in Schools and other kind of events.
This just ruined my day. To give you an idea of the impact Brook and PB had on our family, I taught my daughter how to use our PB Simple and she used it for her science fair project in 2014 (pic below). She has now gone on to complete an engineering program in her high school and is now looking to major in computer science in college.
It is highly unlikely she would’ve been doing any science major, and we often talk about how that little wooden printer set her life’s course as it gave her confidence.
Although the printer is now unused, I still keep it on the shelf as a reminder of where it all started from.
We met Brook in 2014 at a 3D printing fair, and he was incredibly gracious. missing/deleted image from Google+
