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: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @10:18AM (1 child)
At last! At last, he had found it! It was just as the legends stated: A fountain of eternal sustenance lies between The Two Great Hills of the Desert. This fountain was named 'The Fountain of Miracles', due to its alleged ability to quench one's thirst and satisfy one's hunger. The impoverished child had made the perilous journey and located it; now, he could finally fill his swollen belly. Thus, the boy walked up to the white fountain and began drinking the miraculous brown liquid which seemed to drip endlessly from its hole. Ah, the taste was truly indescribable. But then, something moved; it was the fountain.
The fountain had moved. At first, the boy was confused, but his confusion soon turned into shock and dismay. The fountain... was actually a man in disguise. No matter how much the boy rubbed his eyes, this fact did not change. Yes, the fountain had been nothing more than a fecespot. It wasn't long before the young child noticed that the man was grinning at him. But that grin... was highly unusual; it seemed to radiate an aura of oppression that one could feel even from far away. It was at that moment that the boy realized his folly, and it was also at that moment that the man moved.
"Yum!" the man repeated over and over, as he forcibly violated the child from behind. Yes, this boy had the tightest hole yet, and so the man had to make sure to enjoy it to the fullest extent. And to truly enjoy this delicacy, he had to get a little bit... rough. So, the man slammed. He thrusted, he slammed, he choked, he bent, and he stabbed. Then, silence. The boy could simply not keep up with the man's playfulness, and so he became silent.
Despite that, the man was satisfied; this catch had been a good one. He was glad he had decided to masquerade as a fountain which brought about miracles; the large pile of children's corpses hidden nearby was a testament to the efficacy of the strategy. Now, the man had to toss the body into the pile and resume his position, as the day was still young.
How many pieces of trash could the man throw onto the pile today? He couldn't wait to find out...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @11:35AM
San Francisco is so beautiful this time of year.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Friday July 20 2018, @02:03PM
#3, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The sad thing was how low the bar was on being an "advanced technology"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 20 2018, @02:04PM (1 child)
Today it's the blockchain.
"The" blockchain, is if there is only one.
Somehow, some way, the blockchain startup founders are able to raise VC even for blockchains that has a trusted party. That's being done by lots of financial companies who require their own approval for new transactions on their chains.
That defeats the whole purpose of blockchains, that being the distributed consensus. Somewhere - Medium I think - I read of such trusted-party blockchains as being nothing other than "unwieldy databases" that to a far-poorer job of everything they do at all, than would real databases such as MariaDB.
But it's cool that your database is unwieldy, provided your venture firm keeps those hookers and that blow coming every single work day.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @02:22PM
3D-printing the perfect blockchain dildo.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 20 2018, @02:34PM (1 child)
Oh come on; that's just mean-spirited.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 20 2018, @04:59PM
I can see how they would fail overall if the product couldn't handle such a simple task [pinshape.com].
(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.