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from the story-not-written-by-Ernest-Hemingway dept.
It’s with a heavy heart that we must report Printrbot has announced they are ceasing operations. Founded in 2011 after a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, the company set out to make 3D printing cheaper and easier. Their first printer was an amalgamation of printed parts and wood that at the time offered an incredible deal; when the Makerbot CupCake was selling for $750 and took 20+ hours to assemble, the Printrbot kit would only run you $500 and could be built in under an hour.
Printrbot got their foot in the door early, but the competition wasn’t far behind. The dream of Star Trek style replicators fueled massive investment, and for a while it seemed like everyone was getting into the 3D printing game. Kit built machines gave way to turn-key printers, and the prices starting coming down. Printrbot’s products evolved as well, dropping wood in favor of folded steel and pioneering impressive features like automatic bed leveling. In 2014 they released the Printbot Simple Metal, which ultimately became their flagship product and in many ways represents the high water mark for the company.
Too bad they couldn't have used them to print money.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by richtopia on Friday July 20 2018, @03:04PM
I'm unfortunately not surprised Printrbot is closing doors. I haven't used one, but when searching to buy a 3D printer they were one of the final choices in my selection researching. The metal construction was a large improvement over the mostly plastic construction they were competing against at the time.
Printrbot is also poised as a low cost printer, and it is tough to compete in that segment. There are many decent printers in the space, and the profit margins must be low. One of the biggest advantages I saw in the Printrbot metal was the track record: the design was well tested and supported. That is worth a premium over the dozens of fly by night companies on ebay selling various degrees of complete printers.
The Hackaday article goes into more depth on these points: the Printrbot company migrated to more premium products with the influx of cheap imported printers. I have a hard time recommending anything but the basic monoprice printers to most hobbyists: for ~200USD the assembled printer will get you printing. If you find that printer lacking you can move on, but for most users printing toys of Thingaverse is the primary use of the printer. It is easy to understand Printrbot's challenges in the space.