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MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China
- astrodust 10y agoThis company isn't even a shell of its former self. What a shame.
- dammitcoetzee 10y agoOf course they are. It's been lies and flim flam for a while. Worst printers on the market, just look at the reviews. They had US manufacturing going for them, but I guess even that much of their previous reputation, honor, and pride was too much to hold on to.
- sbarre 10y agoSo what would you say is the best 3D printer on the market right now?
- LastZactionHero 10y agoReally depends on your requirements and price. I'd recommend Lulzbot and Ultimaker.
- FullyFunctional 10y agoI'm looking too and based on reviews I read, I'd agree with LastZactionHero. We have three MakerBots at my company and at least the two Replicator 2X have been fraught with problems. Service from MakerBot was terrible so in the end we had to repair it ourselves as best we could. Based just on that experience, I'd recommend against them.
- santaclaus 10y agoWe've had good luck with the products out of formlabs (the print quality is awesome), although dealing with their resin is a royal PITA.
- CBalin 10y agoI've heard that the resin cartridges that Formlabs 2 uses are much easier to deal with.
- jason46 10y agoI can't comment on "the best" but I know enough that a printer can be had for roughly half the price of a makerbot that will achieve better results. The "fifth generation" makerbot doesn't have a heated bed, can't print ABS...
- CBalin 10y agoPrintrbot is probably the best of the low-budget options.
- drivingmenuts 10y agoI've been researching that for a couple of weeks, trying to find the right (pre-assembled) printer. Frankly, there's not a ton of difference in specs. I wound up having to make my decision on 1) price, 2) what I felt I could look at for a while, considering the cost, and 3) whether or not it seemed like a company that would survive a while. Prices for the same level of capability between brands vary wildly - there are printers out there that perform on paper just as well as a Makerbot and cost easily half as much. It's almost like they just tote up the cost of mfg and then make up a number to add to it. Wound up buying a Cel-Robox for $1200 ($1600 after supplies and tax, etc.). We'll see how this turns out. I might be swimming in filament for a while.
- jsjohnst 10y agoI'd say take a look at Re:3D's products.
- reustle 10y agoFirst the Closed Source discussions [1], and now completely outsourcing to China? What sets them apart from any other hardware company now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakerBot_Industries#Closed_source_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakerBot_Industries#Closed_sou...
- 3dfan 10y agoWe really should try to promote 3D printing companies that support the open source movement and local manufacturing. Maybe we should set up a wikipedia category for open source 3d printers? Product Chart has a section for 3d printers with open source design: http://www.productchart.com/3d_printers/sets/4 http://www.productchart.com/3d_printers/sets/4
- MBCook 10y agoThey tried. And the result is that as they got press and notoriety people took their open plans and made replicas in China and sold them at a cost that massively undercut MB. If they had stayed open source they would have gone under years ago, probably years before Systrays bought them. Open hardware doesn't really seem to be a sustainable business, at least not when what you're making costs as much as a 3D printer. A brand name isn't worth a ton when an identical rip-off product is 40% cheaper and performs the same.
- sharemywin 10y agoTo me the cool part to 3d printers was that they could make their own parts. Not be mass produced in China.
- jackhack 10y agoOther than a handful of minor endcap parts, everything is made in China: the control board, stepper motor, extruder, heat bed, wires, limit switches, lead screws, bearings, guide rods, filament, fasteners, cables and probably the laser-cut lexan or aluminum folded frame.
- akshayB 10y ago3D printing is a great technology but this is just sad, more jobs leaving to China.
- abakker 10y agoSo, the jobs that leave the US go to China, but maybe the company can increase sales/invest more because they have better economics, and then grow, and then hire more people. Its only a net loss in the short term, not necessarily forever.
- witty_username 10y agoBut it makes 3D printing cheaper for people and so people don't have to work as much.
- deepnet 10y agoCaveat Emptor. If you can't fork you aren't free. The Makerbot rose up from a spirit of sharing and community goodwill, made money and employed local Brooklyites - so it was a flagship for the sharing economy and open hardware. Now there is an impression that they closed it off. Make4rbot was bought by the holder of a patent for the sintering 3D printing technology, seen as an impediment to this useful methods community adoption. The price paid for Makerbot was handsome, but as everyone was doing OK already - this was perceived as 'selling out' and the goodwill began evaporating. The question then for Makerbot is: Does the momentum of being first to market trump the anger among the maker community & alpha adopters ? When I bought Minecraft at alpha, Mojang suggested it would become open - then after making more cash than anyone needs they sold it to Microsoft. I felt a bit betrayed, not because of $20 but because I promoted it and gave it to friends children and now they are tied into Microsoft which was the opposite of my intention. This problem echoes down the ages: traditionally bands sell out the truefans when they sign with the majors; the closing of the UNIX community when Bell was privatised; the emerging idea that cool hacks, hardware & software shouldn't be shared among friends, exemplified by Gates letter to the Homebrew Computer Club about BASIC. This makes new communities wonder if there is a way to prevent this - Stallman invented the GPL to stop the 'tradgedy of the commons' happening to his work & community. Is there a community GPL that could have been used for MakerBot to ensure it stayed community orientated ? Does this reflect the difference between Free and Open ? GPL & MIT, is this the tragedy of the commons that only the GPL ensures against ?
- jackhack 10y agoIn a number of ways this echoes the early microcomputer industry (thinking the 1970s-80s), when dozens of competing and incompatible standards existed. Atari, Apple, Commodore, Amiga, just to name a few. And as the industry neared middle age in the 1990s, shopping for a "PC Clone" was a cornucopia of options: a copy of PC Shopper was hundreds of pages thick, each with ads for "custom made" PC clones "built to your specifications". Lead times of weeks, hundreds of case, motherboards, CPU, RAM and Video card options existed... and prices were in the $2000+. Now it's settled down to a few big players who essentially sell poorly-differentiated commodity items for paper-thin margins. It is to be expected as an industry matures. A company must choose where to place itself. Go after the high-end boutique market and risk pricing yourself out (if one can't communicate the price/value argument to customers), or become another "me too" supplier in a race to the bottom, following all the same steps as the competition, facing extinction due to lack of margin.
- pj_mukh 10y agoTotally understand being disappointed in MakerBot for a myriad of other reasons. But the whole, "omg stuff is going to be shitty because its Chinese" is a tired old trope. If you know what you are doing and aren't needlessly cutting corners you should be fine. P.S: Not Chinese, I've just enjoyed enough Chinese mfg'd (even Chinese designed) products now to know that trope is old.
- joshmn 10y agoI've gotten about half my wardrobe from AliExpress, and I look like a million bucks. The stigma is for the uneducated. Cheap knockoffs will be cheap. But if you know how to spend and where to spend it in China — regardless of industry — you will get amazing quality for the price.
- flashman 10y agoWay off topic, but who sells good menswear on AliExpress?
- joshmn 10y agoSort by "hottest"! Just read the reviews and pay attention to ratings. Read a lot of reviews them. Triple-check sizing. If you don't know, then send a message to the shop and ask. They're really friendly and great. It might be worth going to a local tailor and getting measured. They'll gladly do it for free, but I'll usually give the person $20 as a thank you. Regarding scores: I won't buy if the "Item as Described" metric is below 4.6. I can usually get stuff to Minnesota within 10 days via ePacket.
- patrickk 10y agoAgreed. I got a whole bunch of tailored business attire for literally 10% of the European cost while on holiday in China. The quality is amazing, and the style is copied from the latest designs, just no label is applied so no infringement. I've never been able to afford tailored clothing before.
- legitster 10y agoA lot of people wonder why large companies can't just stay in the US and compete on quality, and here is a great case for why. It doesn't matter how great your workers are, you can't sell a product for $3,000 when others are selling it for $600. Especially when it's a technology still in development. And I know we pay extra for the warm and fuzzies knowing that something is made in the states, but I'm sure the home tinkerer in Indianapolis doesn't get super warm and fuzzy thinking of paying an extra $2000 just to support some exorbitant Brooklyn rent.
- talmand 10y agoI often wonder if costs could be lowered for many of these companies if they would stop locating in some of the country's most expensive places to operate and for their employees to live. I know the arguments about workforce availability and all that, but I've never seen a proper look into it.
- Vivtek 10y agoYeah. MakerBot could easily move to Indianapolis, after all. Or even less expensive locations elsewhere in Indiana, for that matter. Brooklyn is one of the most expensive markets in the United States, yet Indiana has just as many qualified technical people. Perhaps more, to be honest. Purdue is a pretty fantastic engineering school.
- calbear81 10y agoProbably could make the same case for Detroit, get access to UofM students, plenty of large warehouse space, long history of manufacturing, dirt cheap houses, and of course... exiles that were priced out of Brooklyn.
- Vivtek 10y agoOoh, yeah, hadn't thought of Detroit - I'm from Indiana myself and the GP mentioned Indy, and away I went. Point being you could find much better locations than Brooklyn without going straight to China (while keeping your own self in Coolsville).
- mathgeek 10y agoUnderstandable as to why they're doing this, but the amount of spin in how they titled their press release is sickening. "Production flexibility," indeed.
- Animats 10y agoMakerBot sucked at manufacturing. Laser-cut wood frames for a production product? Please. What they need from China is manufacturing expertise. People who can design injection molds and stamping dies. They were in love with their "replicator" fantasy of one-off manufacturing, forgetting that 3D printing costs orders of magnitude more than injection molding in quantity, and produces inferior plastic.
- chinathrow 10y agoManufacturing expertise should have been there since Stratasys bought them. The way I see it, they simply want to lower production costs, cut jobs, save money. Stratasys overpaid heavily.
- MBCook 10y agoThe laser-cut wood was when they were just starting out and more DIY. Their recent more professional printers have had steel frames.
- michaelbuddy 10y agoMakerbot is in a tough spot. They lost points with people when they announced closing off of some of their work vs remaining open source. And so customers thought they might (if they are paying premium for consumer level printing anyway) to go with Ultimaker which retained premium build quality and remained open. And month after month, other companies keep bringing printers out to compete. Microcenter is carrying Makerbot but also much lower priced generic 3D printers I think which are house branded. Dremel has a very nice 3D printer for a lot less than Makerbot and apparently has pretty good tech support too. In regards to competing with China though, it's important to know that the products from China are artificially low and that seems to benefit us but it also means that so many of us are out of work or under employed. But if you straighten out trade balance and currency manipulation Chinese products become more expensive as they naturally should be, local U.S. goods become more accessible and less expensive to a degree and and we have more people with more buying power (because employment) to make the economy work.
- glenndebacker 10y agoThe Dremel is a rebranded Flashforge Dreamer if I'm not mistaken. At home I have a Flashforge Creator Pro (a clone of a Replicator 2X, but with a lot of improvements) and I'm really happy with it. It is more than (in Europe) half the price of a Makerbot and that for a printer that is certainly on par with it or maybe be even better. It scores very high in the enthousiasts category on 3D hubs (https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers#enthusiast https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers#enthusiast) Regarding Chinese quality, I don't have the feeling that "Made in USA" is so much better if I see how many problems there are with the Makerbot Replicator 5th generation imo. That version is notorious for having a lot of quality problems. These days most parts come from Chinese manufacturers anyway... .
- studentrob 10y ago> But if you straighten out trade balance and currency manipulation Chinese products become more expensive as they naturally should be Can you explain China's currency manipulation? I don't get how this is different from the Fed printing money. Every country does it to an extent.
- Dan_JiuJitsu 10y agoTime to find a 'Made in America' 3d-Printer for my next fabricator
- 542458 10y agoLulzBot might be of interest to you. Best power-user printers on the market IMHO, and made in Indiana.
- stevenrace 10y agoThe Mendelmax 3 & Fusematic from Makers Tool Works are built in the USA and sourced from US suppliers. The guy behind it has done more for the RepRap mechanical bits, aside from Joeseph Prusa. The Lulzbot mentioned below was based on the Mendelmax 1.5. This line of printers moved RepRap from a threaded rod construction to extruded aluminum. Also the first to have linear rails instead of steel rod+linear bearings. The new Mendelmax3 is a mix of laser cut parts and extrusions - and has required less service than any of my printers to date.
- cylinder 10y agoIf Middle America wants those jobs, Middle Americans are welcome to start a fashion label of their own. But since they seem to thrive on blandness in the Midwest I doubt that's going to happen.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- seansmccullough 10y agoThat was condescending. Let's try not to make generalization about a large portion of the country.
- hiou 10y agoI understand the tone may be a little off putting but that is very true. The culture of much of middle America shames dreamers and free thinkers as opposed to working long hours and maximizing profit. That culture is causing a serious brain drain and more importantly a hard ceiling on how far a brand can reach into the unknown. Its the difference between capturing the imaginations of consumers all over the world as opposed to simply trying to scale into some generic chain store or big box retail product.
- seansmccullough 10y agoNo, it's not, that's the original poster's opinion, and it's inaccurate. Have you been to the Midwest?
- hownottowrite 10y agoYeah, I guess Abercrombie, Victoria Secret, Express, The Limited, Pink, Hollister, Justice are all pretty bland...
- cylinder 10y agoThey are.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- williesleg 10y agoAmazing that it costs less to manufacture and package something, then ship it thousands of miles on a boat, unload it and it's way cheaper than making the same product in the USA. Kindof makes you think there's something else going on. Currency? Regulation? Global forces?
- 2close4comfort 10y agoToo bad I thought it had finally gathered the ability to manufacture itself. Turns out the owners suck, too bad.
- Ninjalicious 10y agoMy crazy conspiracy theory is that Makerbot was acquired by Stratasys as a ploy to buy out the most dangerous and high quality big hobbyist 3D printer brand and then torpedo it with value engineering to allow them to sell their own in house brand (uPrint) better. Maybe that's not true, but the Gen 5 Replicator was Day 0 garbage. My Replicator Gen 5 was not functional on launch, I never got a good print out of it. The self calibration function was non-functional out of the box after one print, and the inability to manually level was designed out from the Rep2, a design so good, international manufacturers copied it in the form of the Flashforge. The Rep 5 was completely redesigned for no reason, the integral filament reel was intended to bully you into buying Makerbot brand filament on their custom reels, the "new" software made it so you could CHANGE LESS SETTINGS, like you know, temperature, or feed rate. Basically Gen 5 was a corporate ball of dark patterns and poor regressive design, completely overpriced, and shipped before it was ready to boot. One could argue that making the Makerbot brand a more closed design was a choice of positioning, but I feel that is only justified if you can deliver the ease of use value, which Gen 5 didn't. Sadly, those Brooklynite's jobs might have been doomed when the Stratasys logo first went up on the Makerbot sign.
- tailrecursion 10y agoThere are some comments here about the difficulty competing with Chinese knockoffs, but there are many small companies making high quality 3D printers, and they have good reputations: Ultimaker. Printrbot. E3D BigBox. Makergear. There are probably many others too that have been around for years but I'm not really plugged in. Thomas Sanladerer on youtube is a good source of information, and reprap.org, if you're shopping.
- yeukhon 10y agoMoving to China means more communication effort and more coordination which can really hurt your business if you do it bad upfront. Same reason why enterprise usually hires consultants rather than hiring everyone as full-time under their paycheck even though the enterprise itself has to pay more money to the consulting company: enterprise doesn't need to pay for health benefit, bonus and even travel expense; pay a premium for a package. Of course, a smart enterprise talent management should turn consultants into full time over time if when the consultants are critical for the growth of a given project...
- ajsharp 10y agolol "increase production flexibility" that's some top-notch corporate-speak.
- known 10y agoSimple solution: Impose tax on MakerBot revenues, not profits
- london888 10y agoI would have welcomed a more upfront description from Makerbot. Eg 'We're moving production to China - here's why'.
- dantiberian 10y agoI had the same exact thought. Don't dress up bad news in corporatese, just rip the band-aid off and speak plainly.