Goodbye, Desktop Factory, we hardly knew ye. This company was supposed to offer a sub-$5,000 desktop 3D printer. Alas, they are no more and they’ve sold their IP and assets to an unnamed buyer.
But a funny thing happened as we launched our effort to sell Desktop Factory. We found interested parties who do understand the exciting potential for this breakthrough technology. We found companies that value the industry and can visualize the myriad applications for this affordable printer. Most important, we have found organizations that engage with customers and truly want to be a part of this next major wave in additive fabrication.
And, along the way we have found the best opportunity to place the assets, the intellectual property and many of our people with a leadership brand; a company with the resources and the desire to deliver on the promise of a truly low cost, easy to use 3D printer. We are cautiously optimistic that we can successfully conclude this sale of Desktop Factory within the next 30 days.
I think the problem here was overreach. People love 3D printing, but the technology is advanced enough to ensure that a 3D file sent to services like Ponoko and Shapeways would come out as expected and so the real need to have a desktop 3D printer is a bit of overkill. That’s not to say I wouldn’t kill for a 3D printer – and I don’t doubt any one of you folks would enjoy one as well – but sadly there’s just not a lot of opportunities in life that require a really quick plastic prototype.
Good luck, Desktop Factory, and here’s to the sub-$1,000 desktop 3D printer. Then maybe we’ll pony up.
#1 baby! Yeah!
^ #1 douche bag, looser
I know you are but what am I?
Is that the best you could come up with?
Saw a presentation of the competition Makerbot (makerbot.com) a couple of months ago at Internet Week NY. For at least 17 seconds I thought to myself “Oh, what a bunch of dorks”
…I Then I realized the potential. Get 3D models for anything from door handles to toys from the free community exchange. Plug it into your sub $2,000 home-made machine and watch it creates Frankenstein for you.
While this may not be to the quality of a plastic molding, laser cutting or CNC machine (yet), look at where cell phones and PC’s were only 20 years ago. If this is not a birth of an exciting industry, I don’t know what is
Exactly. There are many legitimate uses for a 3D printer, from handyman jobs around the house to scale modeling.
Too funny. My guess is ricoh, or sadly , canon will by this mess. A leaderless name from the past headed this
I’d venture the biggest mistake they made was not properly designing it from the beginning.
Based on their claimed need to redesign the unit to be more robust because they apparently neglected to consider average consumers wouldn’t treat the product with professional-technician kid gloves, it’s apparent they went into the first design effort with a strictly engineering mindset.
This is, imo, a case of where having an industrial designer involved from the beginning – to remind them of the human factors issues – would have saved their company. A shame.
Wish them well and hope that whoever bought them out has similarly big plans.
Hmm… I’m not sure I agree with your statement.
Industrial design has some role to play with human factors, but I don’t think the machine was “too difficult” to use. In fact, most average consumers who would even consider dropping over a thousand dollars on a 3D printer are probably pretty well versed in solid modeling and 3D printing to begin with. Again, this wasn’t something that was to be sold in Sears or Staples to your mom. Rather, it was to be sold to technologically savvy people who wanted the ability to create what they drew up, such as industrial designers or engineers or people who would even know what 3D printers are.
In fact, having experience with 3D printers of all sorts (due to having graduate degrees in ME and design, yet no job), I’d reckon that the printers and using them are the easier side of the job, and that actually creating or modeling your figures are more difficult.
Truth be told, the problem is that at this price point, the (limited) masses are not really ready to put down the money or resources to buy and operate these machines. Printing fluid can cost hundreds of dollars (even on the cheaper machines), and that is how these companies make their money, no different from a normal printer whose toner costs more than the machine.
I didn’t claim Desktop Factory said it was “too difficult” to use, Jonathan, so I’m unsure from where you’re quoting. I wrote that they said it wasn’t sufficiently robust. Too very different things. I’m unsure how I could have been more clear.
Furthermore, that’s not something I’m simply guessing; that was the reason I recall that *they* gave for pushing back the development schedule. They said, from what I recall reading in their newsletter/on their site, that they needed to redesign the unit to better withstand the target market user’s less delicate interaction and that this modification was the cause of a significant delay. My understanding was that they reached this conclusion after initial testing.
I’d venture you’re equating “human factors” strictly with useability. Human factors is more than how the controls are accessed and manipulated. From Wikipedia:
“Human factors involves the study of all aspects of the way humans relate to the world around them, with the aim of improving operational performance, safety, through life costs and/or adoption through improvement in the experience of the end user.”
In this case, the human factors problem isn’t in how the unit is operated but in what appears to have come from not accounting for differences between how they themselves used the machine and how the target market used the machine. This would, in my opinion, fall under differences in how “humans relate to the world”.
In other words, most people mash the buttons too hard, causing it to break, compared to the lighter “tap the buttons” approach used by Desktop Factory engineers and testers. That’s oversimplifying, since it could very well have much more to do with the way that the “printing fluid” is refilled or how the end product is removed, but the results are the same.
The first design couldn’t hold up to how non-Desktop Factory employed testers were using the device, so they had to reinforce certain design elements.
That’s how I understood the issue, Scott. Wish I knew the specifics; would make a good, if unfortunate, example. I was pulling for them.