Damn, this was a pretty sad video to watch! Just another big tech company buying out the small man. Smh. Henry and Luke will really have any Creative say so within formlabs.
I think Henry's "Fix Protocol" was well put together on instructions... With a little more tuning, I think it woulda been a fair machine to play with.. I say, keep at your gifted machine and get it running... And just have fun with the whole experience of learning, trouble shooting, then hopefully, working machine and rock and roll. The problem with an affordable machine that has a media or rather powder, and not having an additional $8000 USD in seals, lip seals, O-rings, vacuum assist, vibratory basin, and many other built in services into the machine, that, like any other mechanical devices, the powder is naturally going to get into every location you don't want it to, and over time, build up, wear critical part, bushings, ball bearings, optical view obstructions, and so on... And not unlike the automobile, foreign matter wants to naturally get into critical locations, and seals of all methodologies is designed to keep that out, away from areas that are required to be clean, likewise, those same sealing systems are serve as the methodology to keep various lubrication types contained with in the machines critical locations, like wheel bearing systems, motor crankshaft to engine block fitment, and so on, and over time, things do wear out, and start to leak out, and stuff can get into these places, to don't want in.. just the nature of a mechanical system, and maintenance is and always has been a defining factor of machines, your automobile, motorcycle, shop tools, and when maintenance is lacking or not implemented into the use of the machine, life expectancy of the device, vehicle, etc, is on a scale of time, performance, works or doesn't work.. So, after my novel, I think for what this is, for the price, and simplicity of it, to keep the costs down, I say, stay at it, and make it work... The proprietary sintering electronics sounds like that will be an issue... I also have concerns for the government "over-reach" no matter which country you live in, is a serious problem to me, the machine and or media powder licensing contract and the likely, "must have network" connection to play with the machine, in my opinion is a serious problem.. what I do with my machine, is nobody's business, especially not the government's business. So much so, I have had 6 patents stolen from me over the years, and this is just one more aspect of others seeing what you are prototyping, before you can even hit the sales floor, and see every part you are designing, letting you do all the hard R&D, trouble shooting, costs out of pocket, and all any agency, competing business needs to do, is watch you network, while you build.. This is something that needs to be fought against collectively, against the corrupted gov't's of the world... Pardon the political ranting, but it is a serious problem, and if we do not start fighting against it, the whole world will be in big trouble from the people unwilling to tame themselves or relinquish their self appointed power... And that is all I'm gonna say about that...
Down with Formlabs. This makes me sad. I was so hopeful for Micronics. I hope the bag was worth it to sell out to corporate overlords. The only reason form labs bought them was to capture and kill the competition in the market. This is bad for consumers.
They bought him to keep the cheap sls from getting out. Happens all the time unfortunately. Big company with enough money to buy the company that was gonna make thier product cheaper. It's business unfortunately.
I think the best system for handling powder i have seen so far is from alpha laser but their system only allows for smal prints and it takes up some space. But i think the basic concept of having containers that only open it's lid when inserted into a slot so you can handle them in normal environment and having a sandblast box like thing where you can work on stuff. (Filling the containers or removing the powder from the print) I think the basic concept would also be do able for other less expensive printers. I am also wondering if a Zyclone vacume system could be usedd to remove and filter the powder. (As i know you can seperate things by weight using multiple Zyclones.)
Hear me out: Take the Micronics prototypes and send them in to china, to get a reasonably priced machine 😁 LDO Motors for example support projects like this and are working on a Positron, which was initally released as open source by "K R A L Y N 3D".
haven't looked into recent prices but i thought decent 3d printers start around 300-500€ now so those formlabs prices sound insane, especially with the drm. sounds to me like they should be treated like HP: don't buy it, don't give them money D:
So, Micronics was further from making it work than they thought, got cold feet and formlabs saw an opportunity to eliminate some competition that cluld significantly lower prices? Great!
why did he do this? because they are passionate about making a technology not running a business. they probably got a massive pay day and now can just chill making good money working for form labs. Sucks for us but is pro9bally the smarter option. Like Donald trump would have more money if he just invested all of it instead of starting companies.
100% the right move for them, like you mentioned this is pretty much the best case scenario for them, their uncertain project turned into a career at a stable company. Unfortunately the 3D Printing community as a whole takes the loss on this innovation being stifled.
bummed, Formlabs started in the low-end and abandoned it as soon as they had real products because the market is so much more lucrative in the professional space. That said I had their current price points.
I'm not sure if I'm misreading the situation... but it really looks like you're tearing into a couple of inexperienced fresh college grads with the best intentions..
Everything has a beginning, it has already happened with all technologies. Mistakes are part of evolution and improvement... The important thing is to take responsibility for the sale And you assume failure momentarily, it will surely be perfected soon.
Sintratek does have an "affordable" SLAS printer, so it doesn't seem all too gleam. "Affordable", considering other alternatives are in the $20k range.
One day at home I heard a sprinkling of fine metallic pings on my roof , I got the ladder and found in the gutter tiny brown magnetic grains like sugar size !
I hope Formlabs doesn’t do what I think they’ll do and drastically increase the cost of owning this printer, but I think they will. This may sound extreme, but I honestly hope that if this printer comes out at the original price promised by micronics, but you’re also locked into Formlabs materials unless you pay the ransom then I hope the project fails and Formlabs loses their ass on it. I hope the entire product is a huge failure, and most of all I hope that if this happens the world will see that it was the absurd ecosystem lockdown that caused it to fail and not the printer that people actually want.
I saw the first video and my first thought was that it cannot be used for private use and that it absolutely could not run as a kickstarter, I would think that powder printers are only for companies and not for private use yet. but a super good attempt but far too difficult and dirty
Thankfully, the parts can be recreated is what they said , on what of their videos I messed up and could have gotten a open license but I’m happy for them but worry about not being able to use 3rd party martial without spending a couple of thousands
It's a simple anti competitive move by the guys with the biggest chequebook. Affordable SLS hurts the grossly inflated price tag of FormLabs gear, so they made it go away. The Micronics team get a paycheque, the rest of us get screwed. I don'1 really blame them at all for taking the offer, as you said starting a company is insanely hard with no guarantee of success. That said, for two individuals so passionate about their project, the alacrity with which they gave it up It does make me wonder if they had come to the conclusion that they were never going to be able to make their product commercially viable and were glad to be shot of it.
