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MakerBot and Ultimaker announce plans to merge – TechCrunch:
Desktop 3D printing firms MakerBot and Ultimaker this morning announced plans to merge. The new single company will be backed by NPM Capital and MakerBot-owner Stratasys and co-led by existing CEOs Nadav Goshen and Jürgen von Hollen. Existing offices will also be maintained in both Brooklyn and The Netherlands.
Both firms rode an initial wave of excitement around additive manufacturing 10 to 15 years ago, becoming two of the most prominent players in the desktop 3D printing space. MakerBot was founded in 2008 as an offshoot of the open source RepRap project. In 2013, the company was acquired by industrial 3D printing giant Stratasys. Founded in Utrecht, Netherlands in 2011, Ultimaker's team was similarly formed around attempts to productize the RepRap project.
[...] The newly formed company will spin out from Stratasys, though the parent company will maintain a minority (45.6%) stake. NPM Capital will control the other 54.4%.
[...] Pending regulator approvals, the deal is expected to close in Q2 or Q3.
Are any of our community 3D printer users? What are you experiences? Has it lived up to your expectations? And the question that I'm sure everyone has asked - what have you made?
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday May 15, @11:33PM
My younger brother works with additive manufacturing in Ford's advanced manufacturing lab and gave our family a Prusa i3 MK3S+ for Christmas last year. It's made by a Czech company [prusa3d.com] at a good price point with solid capabilities. The fun thing about it is it comes as a kit that you have to assemble; the manual is very straightforward and easy to follow. Having to assemble it teaches you all the components and how they work, which makes troubleshooting prints so much easier.
I love it. It has been running almost continuously since I got it put together. I have made toys for my kids. I have made fixtures for the house when things break or when they don't work quite right for the space we need to put them in. My son joined the model rocket club at school but we couldn't get a rocket for him to use because of supply chain issues, so I printed him one and made engines out of powdered sugar and stump remover. My wife got our daughter jewelry this past Christmas so I printed out a jewelry box to hold it all.
Gone are the days when I go to Home Depot and wander up and down the aisles, hoping they have what I need. Gone are the days of scrolling through page after page on the Internet, hoping to find exactly what I need. Now I pull up Blender on my laptop, design what I need, send it to the printer, go for a walk (or turn in for the night, depending on the print time), and come back and pop it off the print bed.
I highly recommend getting a 3D printer for yourself. The feeling of liberation and the learning curve is fun. And if you get stuck, there's an active and responsive online community of enthusiasts that quite remind me of the LUGs back in the day.
Washington DC delenda est.