Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
> The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects.
I've seen what people go through when they operate 3D printers. The impression I have is that they still make 2D inkjet printers look like paragons of reliability.
* 1x Prusa XL Gen 1 with 5 toolheads
* 1x Prusa Mk4IS
* 1x Bambu Labs X1C with multi-material
* 2x Voron 0.2
* 1x Sovol Zero
My experience: the typical higher-end printer runs out of the box and runs hundreds of hours (or more) between maintenance beyond wiping the plate down, occasionally greasing the rails, and blowing little plastic bits out of the enclosure. Every year I end up doing a few hour significant maintenance job on about one of the six printers.
But then there's lemons. That Sovol Zero is terrible and has been down more than it's been up, because of something in the extruder assembly. It also came with a defective camera and needed it replaced. I need to decide whether to rebuild all that with many hours of labor or just get rid of it.
Ccecil · · focus · HN ↗
Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
Maybe it's by design? I don't know.
JoshTriplett · · focus · HN ↗
I've seen what people go through when they operate 3D printers. The impression I have is that they still make 2D inkjet printers look like paragons of reliability.
mlyle · · focus · HN ↗
* 1x Prusa XL Gen 1 with 5 toolheads * 1x Prusa Mk4IS * 1x Bambu Labs X1C with multi-material * 2x Voron 0.2 * 1x Sovol Zero
My experience: the typical higher-end printer runs out of the box and runs hundreds of hours (or more) between maintenance beyond wiping the plate down, occasionally greasing the rails, and blowing little plastic bits out of the enclosure. Every year I end up doing a few hour significant maintenance job on about one of the six printers.
But then there's lemons. That Sovol Zero is terrible and has been down more than it's been up, because of something in the extruder assembly. It also came with a defective camera and needed it replaced. I need to decide whether to rebuild all that with many hours of labor or just get rid of it.