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Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?
- digdugdirk 1y agoWhile I'd lean more towards plain ol' capitalism as the reason for small market players going under, the final point of the article (discussing patent related legal barriers on existing open source innovation becoming a main strategy of large industry players) is a very important one to keep in mind for people on this site in the hardware startup space: "This is a story from 3D printing, but all the areas with heavy open hardware development are in Made in China 2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 and its successors. Make sure you keep an eye on the filings around your expertise, it is incomparably much easier to do something now than later."
- tw04 1y ago> While I'd lean more towards plain ol' capitalism as the reason for small market players going under He seems to point pretty directly to Chinese subsidies allowing those printers to be sold under cost. That’s not capitalism.
- jeffreygoesto 1y agoIt is. Maybe not the capitalism you like.
- nicce 1y agoNot much different that using ChatGPT/any commercial LLM. They are not really profitable. They want to capture the market.
- MarkusQ 1y agoPrivate companies spending (and potentially wasting) money investors voluntarily gave them because they think it may lead to a big payoff down the road is capitalism. Companies doing the "same thing" with government handouts (where the ultimate source of the money had no say in the matter) is not. It's like the difference between companies that hire workers and those that use slave labor. They may have otherwise identical business models, but the later are operating at an unfair advantage.
- nicce 1y agoI don't really see difference. If we would know the true motivation of the government, then we could make a difference, but until we don't know it exactly, then there really isn't. It is entirely possible that that government is giving money against shares or future profits. It gets problematic and different if, for example, let's say the motivation is to use it as political leverage or even installing backdoors and collect user data.
- RobotToaster 1y agoAmazon operated under cost for years to capture the market, how is this any different?
- trentnix 1y agoAlso partially subsidized by the government, who charged their mom-and-pop brick and mortar competitors sales tax while Amazon avoided subjecting their customers to sales tax for many years. That, plus Amazon's ability to operate at a seemingly perpetual loss, was absolutely predatory. And the government sat on its hands and our representatives loved all the Prime boxes stacked at their doorstep. It has ensh#ttified entire industries that once depended upon retail as their interface with customers.
- _bent 1y agoHow's it not capitalism? If your definition of capitalism requires governments to either not exist or not act to improve the conditions of their subjects (including companies), you have a definition of capitalism where basically none existing or only failed states have a capitalist system.
- sitkack 1y agoI think what you meant to say is "that is not an enforced fair and free market" which is much different than capitalism. The free-market folks talk about something that works in theory as an ideal, but has never actually been put into practice.
- tomrod 1y ago3d printing isn't dead. The policies and programs that encourage it's adoption with lower cost are. But my bet is on clever people figuring out and systematizing things to reduce the current high cost items.
- alanbernstein 1y agoThe claim is about open hardware, not 3d printing in general. And the claimed problem is that the clever cost reduction is Chinese state subsidies.
- polotics 1y agoPrisoner's dilemna world of so clever top-down Chinese strategizing on top of a 996 vs. Tang-ping aka. "lie down flat and get over the beatings" society. Maybe it's time for China to adopt a long term view about where this is all going? They seem to pride themselves on that.
- cameron_b 1y agoThe article's assertion is specifically "open hardware" 3d printing, facing patent challenges [ other parties patenting designs released as "open" to the community ] especially in China, open hardware designers can't get their work manufactured in China ( in this very example, but similarly in any other country where the patents are filed ) or imported/exported because they become Infringing materials of the patents filed by other parties who have copied their designs. Open Hardware designers are having to become international patent experts, which is more expensive than releasing the designs to the community for free.
- BoredPositron 1y agoIt's time that prusa gets outside pressure their printers stagnated in innovation and got more expensive. They don't even have machines in the entry/starter category anymore. Why should anyone buy from you if he gets a better experience for less. Especially now that they started to abandon their own core values just have a look at their new offerings they are the opposite for what they plead here. Less open.
- fidotron 1y agoExactly. Bambu really showed how the overall user experience can be, while prusa etc. persist in the enthusiast niche, which isn't as big as it was now that alternatives are available.
- Palomides 1y agothis is an article about patent trolling and government involvement, not innovation or competition on price
- BoredPositron 1y agoIt's deflection.
- Workaccount2 1y agoGetting government money to develop products without needing to ever be profitable is a pretty huge hack.
- bdcravens 1y agoWhy do they feel the need to talk about it? Because their $1000 (which was recently reduced in price even) bedslinger is outclassed by a $349 Bambu Lab A1, and they have lost their position as the printer to buy.
- dns_snek 1y agoWhat are you talking about? They're talking about it because it offers an insight into significant reasons WHY they can't match Bambu Lab on price.
- bluGill 1y agoFortunately patents are very time limited - and so all those will expire in a decade or so and then you can make whatever.
- cluckindan 1y agoIf it only was that easy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening
- a1o 1y agoI am still waiting for video encoders and decoders patents to go away so we could have easy open source implementations that are royalty free, not patent incumbed to be easily available in open source applications that could be also commercial. We don't have any decent easy to go ones since Theora.
- Palomides 1y agowhat kind of business can afford to sit around for 20 years waiting for a patent to expire?
- simpaticoder 1y agoThe real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs justice system reform with an eye toward making actions take 100x less time and 100x less money, approaching free for consumer and IP actions. Given the advent of computers, the internet, video conferencing, it is outrageous how much of the current system requires physical paper, physical presence in a courtroom. It is outrageous how the slowness and cost of the system itself is used by the wealthy to bully the poor.
- klntsky 1y agoThat would bring down the price of patent spam even more. The problem is the cost of protection relative to the cost of attack, you can't do much.
- RobotToaster 1y agoIt would allow anyone to patent spam though, that could be a good thing.
- brookst 1y agoHow? Compare to email spam where the cost is zero. Is that in any way better than a world where it takes substantial capital to send email spam? Lower cost = more patents = more patent trolls = less innovation.
- frantathefranta 1y agoMaybe they think it'd be a good thing because it would eventually phase out patents?
- john01dav 1y ago
- razemio 1y agoA genuine Question. Is open hardware even possible at some point? The advances in quality and speed are nothing short but impressive. I started 3d printing stuff in my basement one year ago (Ender V3 Plus). With the quality and speed improvements, comes technology which gets more complex every year. Companies spend millions to archive this. Why would they share it? I remember building drones in my basement (still on my wall) with open source software on the flight controllers. Now I can get a drone from DJI for less money with more features, in a smaller from factor, longer flight time, pre build and under 249g. Ofc this comes at the cost of repairability, control and trust. However I can still buy the hardware I used years ago. If I wanted to, I can build a drone by myself. I guess the same will happen to 3d printers.
- vhab 1y agoOpen hardware for 3D printers is actually thriving. There's a whole fleet of community designed hardware, with most innovations to consumer 3D printing still originating in the DIY community. Multiple manufacturers have direct contact with community members to produce custom hardware at a small but affordable scale, and keeping up with rapid iterations and multiple hardware improvements throughout the year. Some of the most cutting edge as well as niche 3D printing hardware available to consumers are being sold on small webshops operating out of someone's garage. If anything, we're in a golden age right now. 3D printing in 2025 is a very exciting place to be.
- mystraline 1y ago> Is open hardware even possible at some point? It already is. And its been chaotic and amazing at the same time. We already have open source: 5DoF 3d printers with slicers Fixed wing and quad/hexa/octocopters Medical drug fabrication (Four Thieves) Electrochemical synthesis lab Open source flow batteries Stops and starts of industrial tooling (open source ecology) I'm going to say something that is becoming less and less controversial: copyrights and patents are the real drag here. Individuals can get patents, but can't actually enforce. So they end as weapons as companies go after each other. Copyright is also often intertwined into patents, so that if a thing isn't covered by a patent, copyright (with firmware) takes over. Then the DMCA and anti-circumvention shit. The other problem here in the USA is almost impossible to source parts directly, or small fab labs that can do operations. I was looking for a 5mm thick 500x500mm aluminum plate to be cut. Waterjet, plasma, whatever. I wanted it slightly undercut. I made blueprints in DXF and pdf. I contacted 2 waterjet companies, no response. Contacted a welding company with plasma table. No response. Down the list, no response. As a creator, how am I supposed to create, when all avenues lead to "source it in China"? That... Is huge.
- drchiu 1y agoBetter printers came along, were not "open", but they were easier to use and maintain especially for first-time hobbyists and even for print farms.
- transcriptase 1y agoOne must admire China’s pivot from 30 years of essentially ignoring IP and patent law to the detriment of Western companies, to now weaponizing IP and patent law against the rest of the world.
- lenkite 1y agoMany Chinese CEO's are graduates of Western business schools. They learnt the Holy American Dao of weaponizing IP and patent law from established US business culture.
- bdcravens 1y agoCapitalism, at least the American version of it, has a rich history of ignoring property rights, labor laws and ethics, regulations, etc. If anything, China has, and is, out-Westernizing the Western countries.
- dizlexic 1y agoI really love takes like this. Talk about China as an emerging power in the 21st century while excusing them using tactics from the 19th. 10/10
- oblio 1y agoI don't think China is necessarily being excused, but even immoral actions can draw admiration, due to the sheer complexity and brazeness, especially considering that on paper, the groups these actions are being done to are not groups of toddlers, they're equality aggressive countries themselves, historically.
- RobotToaster 1y agoThey even copied lawfare techniques from American corporations, lol. It will be "interesting" where this takes us. If the American government decides to just ignore Chinese patents then we could see the Berne convention become a paper tiger (or even more of one than it already is)
- bluGill 1y agoFor most people this is just fine - your goals were not to build a 3d printer it was to build something that just happens to be build able on a 3d printer. That is the something you are building is the goal, not building a 3d printer. If the goal isn't building a 3d printer then buying a 3d printer that someone else has already debugged and made to work is the better way to get to what you really want to do in the first place. In a way this is good. 3d printing is neat, but it got too much hype which was taken away from other useful things makers should also have experience in. More makers should think of injection molding when doing plastic parts. Many plastic parts makers are making would be better as metal done on lathes and milling machines (or if you want to have fun shapers and planers - both obsolete but still a lot of fun if time/money isn't important). Wood working has never really lost popularity, but it should be mentioned as a good option for makers. There are also cloth options - sew, knit, spin, tat (my favorite). There are plenty of other ways to build something other than 3d print. Finally along those lines, for some just drawing something up in CAD and sending it off to someone else to make is a good option. FreeCAD has come a long way finally has reached 1.0, or you can pay for one of the commercial options - some of them are reasonable for makers though read the fine print.
- pjmlp 1y agoAs it happens with FOSS anything, that is not what the general public cares about, rather getting something easily at a store and fulfills their needs, which aren't how the thing works, rather as a tool for their actual work.
- bluGill 1y agoYou have limited time. That year needed to build and debug a 3d printer (if you are single a year would be way to long, but for those with kids that is way too short) is a year that you can't spend on whatever your real hobby is. If you real hobby is 3d printers then that is great, but if not you shouldn't. I work on FOSS projects, but most of what I have installed on my system is a per-packaged distro from someone else who made it work (I have FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and Arch - each slightly different) because I don't have time to do linux/BSD from scratch even though I could. I have built gcc, but most of the time I just use the pre-packaged gcc so I can get on building the project I'm interested in.
- Workaccount2 1y agoAs a hardware guy, and someone who loves coming up with fun product ideas, China is the ASI LLM of the hardware world. Like don't even bother trying to compete, they are faster, cheaper, have better yield, and don't really need to be profitable. Imagine what the software industry would look like if an LLM could look at any completed software product, and a few weeks to a month later have made a perfect copy of it. It would totally kill any drive you have to make a product. That's the current reality of hardware in the western world. About 5 or 6 years ago I developed a product that cost me $75 in parts per unit (probably $60 if I could get to scale). The Chinese counterparts competing in the same category cost $70. I needed to sell at $200 to make a profit. People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too. Those $800 Chinese printers are extremely capable after all.
- motorest 1y ago> People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too. What problem do you think needs fixing?
- clarionbell 1y agoDependence on foreign power with potentially misaligned goal? Collapse of manufacturing sector, leading to rise in poverty?
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThere is no misaligned goal. China isn’t out to destroy the US. It’s more jealousy of being overpowered. It’s sad but I think this is ultimately the brutal truth we have to accept. There’s no other logical outlook on this. Literally if left to its own devices China isn’t interested in the war. The US is out to do everything to stop Chinas ascendency to become the new world power. And of course both sides as a result will increase military presence but neither side wants to engage in war.
- mrguyorama 1y agoWhy have they built innovative Taiwan invasion barges if they do not want war? Building weapons to sink American carriers and boats and having a limited nuclear arsenal can be seen as trying to prevent the US from being able to blockade China from it's food and energy imports. But there is no possible way to wave away the literal Taiwan invasion barges and the planning they signal. That's not something you build unless you plan on invading your island neighbor.
- Fokamul 1y agoCitation from blog: > The fact you hold a prior art in your hand, doesn’t mean much. The patent will still prevent you from importing/selling etc of the “infringing” stuff. Could you please explain this to me? Let's say, they (Chinese) patent some complex part of my open-hw 3D printer, how this prevents me from importing parts of my 3D printer from other countries? Let's say from China. Company, which originally patent trolled me, must sue me first, no? And they care about patents? Since when?
- sokoloff 1y agoSuppose you created the original prior art and want to get your original design manufactured on China. The Chinese manufacturer might the best in the world and cheapest source but unwilling to defy the Chinese patent. Your tiny order isn’t worth their whole business, but if you did the original design that feels patently* unfair to you. * sorry, couldn’t help myself
- vhab 1y agoThis could have been an interesting take from anyone but Prusa. While they've earned themselves a great deal of goodwill from past contributions to the ecosystem, they're a failing company pivoting to dark patterns in an attempt to cling to relevance. It's heart breaking to see they still haven't been able to take a good hard look at themselves, and understand their own role in why they are scrambling. Blog posts like these might be heralding the beginning of the end for Prusa.
- Palomides 1y agowhat dark patterns?
- the__alchemist 1y agoAnd with Prusa, falls non-Chinese 3D printing.
- gubikmic 1y agoPlease elaborate
- sho_hn 1y agoYour comment is essentially just an ad hominem that doesn't react to the content of the OP, or enumerate any of its claims. You are claiming to know better, but not substantiating anyhing. It's FUD, and the worst kind of comment, because it doesn't take the debate seriously.
- CivBase 1y agoAs someone who is interested in owning a 3D printer someday and is leaning towards Prusa, I'm very interested in what dark patterns you're alleging.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- the__alchemist 1y agoThis is a microcosm of what's happening all over the physical device world, and manufacturing: Everyone (Except Prusa; thank you for your service!) outside of China is forgetting and losing capabilities. My Raise3D printer is high quality and reliable. It's a nice piece of hardware. The PCBs I order from JLC are high-quality, built-to-specs, and whenever there's an error, it's a design fault. They are cheap, and arrive in 10 days. I don't like the idea of being this dependent on China, but it's where we are. Weaponizing patents a risk? Problem. Placing the knowledge of how to build civilization in a single country? Problem. At least someone is carrying the torch forward, so it could be worse.
- CyLith 1y ago> Everyone ... outside of China is forgetting and losing capabilities. To me this is the fundamental problem with the notion of intellectual property and its protection: so much of it is trade secret and undocumented (let's be real, we disclose as little in patents as we can get away with). Companies come and go, and in the process, institutional knowledge of how to do things is lost because there is no incentive to make it public for others to replicate. This also means that once lost, it must be rediscovered later.
- silverliver 1y agoThis is why open source software is stronger than ever despite its shortcomings and efforts of large orgs to kill it. Rather than bending backwards and treating it like property (as originally demanded by Bill Gates in his open letter decades ago, we did the right thing and treated it like knowledge (e.g. like mathematics). Intellectual property was a horrible flawed idea that the world will continue to pay for dearly for decades after it is finally discarded.
- tiku 1y agoAs someone that had open-hardware printers, they suck. They were fun to play with but not really ready for every day use. So perhaps a bad thing for the hardware side, but as a consumer/user I want a smooth experience.
- Symbiote 1y agoPrusa's printers have a reputation for being easy to use, but cost more than the Chinese competition. Your comment is ignorant nonsense.
- zevon 1y agoThat is hardly a function of the printers being Open Hardware. There are lots of unreliable commercial printers as well as fiddly open ones. However, the most reliable ones in the desktop space have mostly been open - like the old Ultimakers or the Prusa MK series.
- sublimefire 1y agoThis is very much a bad faith argument without any specifics. I found Prusa to be good enough. Do you have any examples of open hardware printers that were evaluated that did not meet the bar? Regardless the topic is about open hardware being squeezed using shady tactics. It means leas competition, less innovation. Rules to kick such players should be easy to enforce as opposed to required to pay quite a lot for such an action.
- josefprusa 1y agoHi! Josef here! I was just recently sharing a little update on socials, here is a copy: Since I posted my “OHW is dead” article, you’ve been asking me about “that patent”. I didn’t want you to miss the forest (thousands of filings since 2020) just because of one tree. But let’s take a look now. In this case: the MMU multiplexer (we open sourced it 9 years ago). Anycubic (another IDG Capital-backed company) used the tactic of filing in China for an easy initial grant: CN 222407171 U > DE 20 2024 100 001 U1 > US 2025/0144881 A1. The playbook: file a Chinese utility model (10-year patent, same protections, lower examination, already granted) claim that priority in Germany (again as a utility model, already granted) file in the US. Cheap to file, but expensive and time-consuming to fight. I already wrote why prior art isn’t a magic wand that solves it immediately in my article ⤵ And there are many more, we just found a new juicy one! Edit: Emojis stripped from the original, tried to fix it a bit ;-)
- sitkack 1y agoAll of Open Source needs a sunlit patent pool, a searchable database of documented inventions AND all of the follow on ideas around them. This could provide a way to force patent examiners to do their jobs and allow the Open Source Community to crowd source invention bombing the proprietary world. How does one lookup these patents? They need more exposure so they can be refuted.
- superxpro12 1y agoI work in a different industry, power tools. Somehow the USPTO allowed Milwaukee to patent a circ saw that spins at a certain rpm... The things that get through the patent office are braindead. Patents are just weaponized legal minefields now. They've totally lost their original intent.
- yellow1389745 1y agoI recall a container of multimeters seized at the border because they were the wrong color of yellow... I may have bought an American meter once, but it was a fluke. Never again.
- conorbergin 1y agoIf you are a hobbyist or small business in desktop manufacturing you are basically forced to buy Chinese products. I have never owned a Prusa, but I have owned several Creality and Bambu Labs printers, because I could get the same utility at half the cost. The same goes for soldering irons, linear actuators, oscillscopes, etc. I still buy European hand tools (Knipex, Wera, etc) because I know they won't break in a year, so they are good value in the long run. Often the choice is whether to buy a used, last generation tool of eBay, or a brand new next-gen tool from China. The choice depends on how flawed the Chinese implementation is and the gap in utility between the generations. The main problem with Chinese products is the lack of accountability. The same product will be sold under multiple brands, or by dropshippers, and you have no idea who actually made it, there are some strong Chinese brands that buck this trend, i.e. Bambu Labs. When you buy western tools you are buying peace of mind, something I can't currently afford.
- jononor 1y agoForced I don't know... But of course the financial incentives are very strong, as in many categories the Chinese brands have remarkable and sometimes astonishing value-for-money. But for a small business, the cost of these tools might be quite low relative to manpower anyway, so paying 2x might not be a big deal. We got 8 Prusa machines at our local hackerspace, and 10 at previous startup lab I was at.
- alnwlsn 1y agoChinese stuff these days has pulled far ahead of the Harbor Freight reputation of my youth. I can't remember the last time I've seen a proper "Engrish" instruction manual, most of the things are well designed and well built. Meanwhile, the "good old American brands" seem to just be selling out for cheaper and better profit margin products, so you'll be ending up with Chinese stuff anyways, which is sometimes worse than the actual Chinese brands.
- Workaccount2 1y agoThe Chinese stuff is now more often than not better. You cannot be the world's manufacturer for 30 years and not get good at making stuff.
- thenthenthen 1y agoIt was dead when I saw Joseph’s face on my Prusa Mini boot screen
- MortyWaves 1y agoYou can’t be serious…
- thenthenthen 1y agoUh yeah? Prusa Mini has his face as boot screen. Cannot find any ref’s online sadly (I sold the printer). Edit 1: speaking from a Prusa perspective I guess.. Edit 2: wait, i misunderstood ‘you cant be serious’? Not sure but what I tried to address was a cult of personality. Thats not something I feel fitting in this whole context.
- Workaccount2 1y agoChina, being a planned economy at heart, has a "VC" system that is essentially just the government deciding what needs to be developed, and then Chinese banks lending without any practical strings to those developers. Profit and loss, ROI, business plan, aren't really factored in. China wants to develop AI? You have some experience and want to start an AI business? Great! Here is a few million go make AI. This is the system that led to those infamous ghost cities and billion dollar high speed trains to nowhere. China puts the carts before the horse, and hopes at at least a few of them get to the destination. They're not unfamiliar with burning tens of billions to get a few hundred million of value. It also means that if you are competing against one of these chosen industries, you are not competing, because they are just burning daddies money, whereas you need to make interest payments.
- tonyhart7 1y agoI mean they are 2nd largest GDP economy with "world factory" title some words you said can be true of course but its clearly working out for them
- dralley 1y agoThere are some pretty big cracks underneath the surface. But yes they certainly have been successful at drawing in the manufacturing at the very least, even if it's ultimately not very sustainable.
- tonyhart7 1y ago"There are some pretty big cracks underneath the surface" they are just as vulnerable as western counterpart has, I can assure you that just media narrative that make it overblown. Yes western can sanction them and hurt them but they also hurt western economy in the process
- dralley 1y agoI'm not referring to sanctions or tariffs. I'm referring to inefficient resource allocation, debt, unsustainably low margins, companies not making any profit, etc.
- tonyhart7 1y agounrelated to the topic but theme of website is so horendous to read
- Anduia 1y agoThe author decided to use Open Sans, which is a quite narrow font, and font weight 350, so my browser (and, I suspect, yours) renders it with "Open Sans Light" at a fixed 300 weight. That is hard to read with that gray #707070 over white. I don't know Tailwind so perhaps it is not easy to fix.
- detritus 1y agoYeah,thank God for reader mode, as I can't bloody see a thing, sat here on a beach as I am right now.
- Nifty3929 1y agoTFA didn't really make the problem clear to me. I think it something like this, but I'm not sure. Can anybody clarify? Problem (?): We can't produce open hardware for things that others have patented. Chinese companies (and maybe others) are patenting lots of things, including things we might have ourselves developed and intended to keep open, so it makes it difficult and/or expensive for us to continue developing. Is that it?
- casenmgreen 1y agoThis is an important and significant article. 200% tax relief on R&D was news to me (i.e. you get paid to do R&D), and indicative of what's going on.
- sam_goody 1y agoThe real issue is that we allow patents at all. Given the lopsided cost that courts bring to the table, patents only help the big players- since only they canafford to play. I invented something I ttruly think could change the world. Went to a patent attorney. He said basically - create a patent, wait till someone unsuspectingly builds a product with the same basic idea, and then sue the pans off them. If you try to develop it yourself, the patent will not help - the chinese will copy it and laugh, and the americans will copy it, modify it, and then sue you because they can push more patents than you can defend yourself against. In the best case, they may offer to settle for a small fee if you give them all your IP for free... I have yet to see anything good from patents, but over the years I have seen just how much they prevent anything new from coming to the world.
- ndiddy 1y ago> But around the year 2020 we registered the first mention of 3D printing as a strategic industry by the Chinese government. We know that now, after a few years of research. We first realized something is off when the price of the parts is higher than the sale price of a complete machine in some cases. That is what sparked our interest and research into the subsidies. They exist, and are very efficient https://rhg.com/research/far-from-normal-an-augmented-assessment-of-chinas-state-support/ https://rhg.com/research/far-from-normal-an-augmented-assess.... Our industry, desktop 3D printing, faces a bleak future. Comparable to the automotive sector as if only one high volume car brand, say Audi, remained outside of China. That’s it. An inch away from complete dependency on China in an vital piece of tech, the one absolutely critical for creation of new IP. It seems like the real problem here is that China is able to identify strategic industries, subsidize them, and see the subsidies result in increased production and lower prices, while Western countries aren't. I'm not sure if Prusa themselves can do anything about it, but unless the West gets its shit together and decides to actually try to compete, it seems like eventually every advanced manufacturing industry will be mainly Chinese.
- eemil 1y agoEven if the patents are only valid in China, this is going to hurt western companies a lot. If you're manufacturing a product in China, you'll need to either: 1. Pay the patent trolls, giving them power and hurting your margins 2. Move manufacturing to a more expensive, less competitive country In the long run, you could argue that point 2 will lead to domestic manufacturing which everyone wants. But unless you can find a way to make these companies actually competitive (e.g. tariffs on chinese printers), I think the more likely scenario is these hamstrung companies will wither and go out of business.
- alnwlsn 1y agoNot IP related, but I built a Voron printer a while ago, which is sort of the last word in DIY printers. It's not so much a printer as a parts list and set of instructions, but something that's not lost on me is that most of the core components are Chinese parts. I don't just mean screws and bearings (though they are too), you might install a board like this [0] which is a Chinese designed board I'd describe as open-ish. You get the firmware and schematics, but not a BOM or board layout. But that doesn't really matter, because nobody is going to make this board themselves anyways, you're going to buy it assembled, from China. There are other boards, but they are more expensive. The majority of Voron builds use Chinese hotends. There are a lot of custom "for Voron" kits and components being made and sold there. Can you find a PEI-coated spring steel bed that isn't made in China? So while it's definitely more open than a Bambu printer, it's not really any less dependent on China. I guess it would be technically possible to do a "no China" build, which would be an interesting (but expensive) project. 0 - https://github.com/bigtreetech/BIGTREETECH-OCTOPUS-V1.0 https://github.com/bigtreetech/BIGTREETECH-OCTOPUS-V1.0
- MegaDeKay 1y agoI bought my Voron Trident as a kit (from a Chinese company) and it is wonderful. As you say, there is an almost complete dependence on components made in China, but at least I can swap out / fix / upgrade parts as much as I like. I've also been able to make use of the schematics on the controller boards to troubleshoot issues myself and other people were having. Very happy I went this route vs Bambu. This printer is "mine" and I don't need to worry about some company suddenly taking features and capabilities out from under my feet as Bambu has done. For anyone that feels strongly about this kind of thing, dive in and build a Voron.
- steine65 1y agoAgreed! I love my Trident. This is the best hobby I have taken up in a long time. So fulfilling. Especially now that I'm learning freecad. Getting started can be expensive. There is an awesome community on discord that loves to help, and there are lots of small businesses that sell every part you can think of, custom mods from github, and if you email them they will respond promptly and personally. 10/10
- lvl155 1y agoWell they quite literally steal everything you push out. Anyone who’s done it out in the wide open knows this reality. Sometimes they will have the copy out faster than you. What’s the point? And customers do not care at all. I heard it so many times. People lack moral compass because they grow up in environments where you’re rewarded for stealing and cheating.
- qwertytyyuu 1y agoChina learnt patent trolling. Damn
- isawczuk 1y agoDid whole 3d printing boom started because some of the patents expired?
- TD-Linux 1y agoI do not understand the connection between the patent concerns in the article and open-source 3D printing. In particular, the patent issues seem to be the case for all non-Chinese 3D printer companies, whether open source or not. I am not sure how sharing your designs makes this worse (I suppose with the original drawings it's a bit easier to write a patent in bad faith - but certainly not necessary). Something like a defensive patent grant might make a lot of sense (see Opus, AV1 etc) but that's also independent of whether the implementation is open source or not.
- jeffWrld 1y ago[dead]
- captainmuon 1y agoTheir business model might be dead, I don't know. But the latest Prusa printers are as far as I know not really open - I can't download the schematics for free and make a clone, can I? And also a truely open schematic that I could download that way wouldn't be affected by patents, as long as I'm not selling it. Granted, commercial development with open core might be in trouble. But first, that is not a technical nor a business problem, that sounds like a political problem. Prusa is literally the leading european name in the 3D-printing industry. Surely they can get an appointment with some government officials, who are concerned about manufacturing capabilities and future technologies - who pull some strings, and then every patent clerk will receive a memo to double check the relevant patents when someone tries to register them. Second, Chinese patents have a different weight than EU/US patents. As he writes, they are a dime a dozen. Probably not worth caring about, unless they are targeting the Chinese market. And if they are, the best defense would probably to register some patents their themselves.
- skybrian 1y agoWouldn’t Prusa abandoning open hardware (for some components) be a prominent example showing that open hardware is dying?
- ungreased0675 1y agoChina won’t enforce the patent of a foreign company against a domestic one. If anything, filing a Chinese patent assists copying and clones, because there’s less reverse engineering to do.
- Palomides 1y ago>schematic that I could download that way wouldn't be affected by patents, as long as I'm not selling it not true, there's no personal use exemption for patents
- RobotToaster 1y agoThere effectively is a common law exemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_exemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_exemption
- neoden 1y agoIf someone could reform patent law in such a way that it could be done in one country without jeopardising its interests, how could this be done?
- cwmoore 1y agoLANAI, but maybe some kind of free market global license auction would better incentivize invention and reward prior art. Perhaps even outcompete the current authorities. Clearly stovepiping the generation of IP monopolies and laundering them across borders and through unrelated court systems is a captured perverse incentive structure.
- nickpinkston 1y agoHaving spent my whole career in the manufacturing tech world after starting in the maker world (I started HackPgh), I love Open Hardware, but find it not a great fit beyond boards (Arduino, RPi, etc.). I think the core issue is one of how expensive / complex the iteration cycle is, with even sophisticated circuit boards being possible to make on a hobbyist budget, but sophisticated 3D printers and other complex machine tools quickly get beyond what a single person's budget / shop can really support the development vs. mass produced closed machines. Add to this that even the extremely well funded hardware startups: MakerBot, FormLabs, DesktopMetal, OnShape, etc. have all either totally failed to create better tech at all, or have been quickly commodified without a major impact to the hardware development process. I've been asking: "When was the last time a new hardware dev product got >50% market share throughout industry?", and I think the answer is SolidWorks in ~1995 making affordable(ish) 3D CAD software. This means all hardware dev tools have lagged, not just open source ones. My take is that we need more non VC funding (gov't / foundation) of the basic science and early R&D, as VCs are forcing these companies to commercialize too quickly, and the tech doesn't get there, as operations is hard enough, let alone with half-baked tech. This happened to my last company Plethora, doing automated CAM + rapid CNC. I did a podcast series on this: https://manufacturinghappyhour.com/112-accelerating-the-pace-of-innovation-and-hardware-manufacturing-with-nick-pinkston/ https://manufacturinghappyhour.com/112-accelerating-the-pace...
- fidotron 1y ago> Add to this that even the extremely well funded hardware startups: MakerBot, FormLabs, DesktopMetal, OnShape, etc. have all either totally failed to create better tech at all, or have been quickly commodified without a major impact to the hardware development process. They simply succumb to the tendency to rest on their laurels the moment they start making money, and then especially stop investing in software, which is where Bambu have their edge, as many of their improvements are software related. i.e. if you spend upfront in software you can create an improved experience with the same parts for every subsequent unit. The Chinese have actually internalized this lesson, while in the west we have forgotten it.
- nickpinkston 1y ago
- Roark66 1y agoYou know why IP is so strongly enforced? Because the US has been throwing all its strength behind it. This is why many countries around the world adopted heavy handed IP rights, because they came with a carrot (cheap loans, investment from the US) and a stick (sanctions). Now that the US positions itself as an adversary to other democratic countries I give it 5 years for these IP laws to stick. Everyone kinda hopes it's just Trump that lost his mind and next US govt will go back to normalcy. I doubt this very much. Once it becomes clear Trunp's symucessor is exactly the same well see US IP stop being enforced. This has a disadvantage of no protection for genuine innovation, but who are we kidding? There is none anyway where it matters most (China). So why do we handicap ourselves following these stupid laws while the Chinese just break them and the US... Well in the US whoever has most money for lawyers wins. For open source/hardware to thrive Ip laws have to be abolished or at least changed a lot.
- amluto 1y agoIf the US cared about remaining competitive with China, the government would attack this. Example approaches: a) Smallish hammer: disallow priority based on Chinese patents. b) Big hammer: if anyone wants to manufacture anything in the US and sell to the US market, give an automatic patent workaround. For example, there could be compulsory licensing, at enforced and genuinely reasonable prices, for all patents, foreign and domestic. If someone wanted to build an SLS printer or an e-ink display here ten years ago, they should have been allowed to while paying a small amount (small enough that the whole enterprise remained profitable) to the respective patent holders. Submarine patents should be completely inapplicable: if I opt to buy compulsory licenses, there should be a limited period for any patent holders to announce themselves, and then the patent holders could fight over the (capped) royalties while I continue to manufacture and sell the product. c) b, with the system built in a way that works for open source too. I should be able to publish open source things with zero risk regardless of patents. I should be able to sell them and other people should be able to deploy them on their own under terms like (b) that make it economical to do so.
- softfalcon 1y agoI think I agree with you. That being said, I have doubts anything will change because I have a feeling that this system is continuing to "work as designed". These failings are exploitable and since the US government is somewhat bought and paid for, this is how it works. The intent might be to keep it this way.
- vel0city 1y agoI do think there needs to be reforms about non-practicing entities holding large patent portfolios. Maybe we should have some kind of FRAND (or FRAND-like) requirements for their portfolios.
- amluto 1y agoI gave the e-ink example quite intentionally. The patents were held by a practicing entity. You could buy their mediocre implementation of their excellent underlying invention at an outrageous price and probably not with the specs you wanted. I’m all for rewarding inventors like this for their inventions. I do not think that the reward should include any sort of ability to stifle use and further development of the invention. The law should make it possible to build, sell, and profit from a better e-ink product at a lower price. The law should make it possible to sell things that use H.265 at a credible price without needing to be involved in the mess of figuring out who owns what patent. If patent holders, practicing or otherwise, want to sue each other, fine, but I don’t think there should be any requirement for the companies building and selling products to be parties to those legal messes at all. As far as I know, radio in the US actually mostly works this way. To broadcast a copyrighted song, you pay a fee, and that’s it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ZooCow 1y agoThis post unfortunately isn’t drawing the necessary distinctions between utility models, published applications, and issued patents. And it isn’t focusing on the claims. Patent law is complicated and it is easy to draw the wrong inferences. You can follow the prosecution of the US application here: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/applications/18608960 https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/applications/18608960
- yellowapple 1y agoYet another example of how intellectual property has done vastly more harm than good to intellectual pursuits.
- NewUser76312 1y agoStuff like this is sad, especially looking at the costs involved. It just shows the stark contrast: China is interested in building and being competitive (through unruly means as well as legitimate ones) while the US is a 'lawfare society' prioritizing paperwork and bureaucracy and not moving to help actual physical industries that matter. We don't need more of our economy relying on lawyers and paper pushers. We need builders and innovators back at the forefront. China gets this.
- Ccecil 1y agoI started in Reprap in 2011...frequently spoke with Prusa and many, many others in IRC. Watched the development and commercialization of the whole project through the years. My main takeaway (and one that I attempted to point out often) is that the value of the Reprap project and it's OSHW nature was not to "own a machine"...the true value was the process of building the machine, tuning and evolving. This all began to stagnate in 2014 when the "You are a fool to build your own printer when you can buy one prebuilt" came about. This seemed to be spread by people who either had no idea what they were doing...or were intentionally planting the seed of doubt. We were told that it was better/easier to buy 10 and throw away 5 in a year since it was more cost effective. My current printer I built in 2015. It needs very little work but has evolved slightly through the years...mostly in electronics since it is my test platform for the V2 Smoothieboard development. It does not have a lot of the software "magic tricks" but it prints very reliably and solid (even after being toted around to events). It was once said to me by Logxen "Opensource hardware is engineering on an artist's business model". IMHO...saying it is dead and giving up is the same as quitting doing art you love because someone else paints better/faster/cheaper. A quote attributed to Limor Fried says it best "I'm going to keep shipping open source hardware while you all argue about it". @josefprusa...since I know you frequent here...don't forget about the impact the projects have on the world. There are bigger things than just money. There was a time you cared about OSHW enough to get it tattooed on your arm. edit: grammar
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago> My current printer I built in 2015. It needs very little work but has evolved slightly through the years... "It needs very little work" is very different from "an amateur with no knowledge can use it". You're overwhelmingly more qualified to adjust it and keep it running, you even enjoy that part of the process. I've come to accept that an overwhelming majority of people are not 3D printER enthusiasts, they're barely even 3D printING enthusiasts. They're artists and minifigure builders and engineers and mechanics, and they care about the printer itself just as much as they care about a random screwdriver. Many don't even want to understand how the thing works, they just want it to work. With those values, yes, buying one off the shelf that's assembled and tuned and adjusted and tested and can immediately begin making parts with decent reliability is better than building one.
- immmmmm 1y agoI have a good friend who’s in the “hi end desktop cnc” bizness (with some very cheap models). Asked why he doesn’t do 3D printers (he designed plenty) and he told me the market is SO competitive and products so cheap it’s impossible to compete. Designing a controller for his machines and as much as I would love to put the thing as OH, I don’t even think of it. His company: https://www.badog.ch/ https://www.badog.ch/
- chiffre01 1y agoWow ~$17,000 for a CNC router? You could buy a used Haas/professional mill for that much.
- iLoveOncall 1y agoMeanwhile the fastest 3D printer available is open-everything and can be 3D printed: https://www.printables.com/model/572689-the-100-v11-the-fastest-3d-printer-based-on-a-prin https://www.printables.com/model/572689-the-100-v11-the-fast...
- Palomides 1y agothe t250 is out, faster and better they're cc-by-nc, though, which is not really open source
- robomartin 1y ago@Prusa. I want your company to survive. We have Prusa printers and our own self-made high-speed printers. I use the Prusa's all the time. They just work. Not the fastest, but that's not a problem. When we need fast we use our own brushless servo-driven stationary table beast. Build a good MK3/4 style 350 x 350 x 350~500 printer and I will likely buy it. Not interested in the other stuff. Don't even care about multi-material. We use 3D printers for design validation and to explore concepts. Don't need the complexity at all. Don't need crazy speed. Just a good solid printer that works reliably and I don't have to think about. This isn't a hobby, it's a tool. I want it on the network and don't need (can't have) external connectivity (ITAR).
- andersa 1y agoThe world would be a better place if we just completely abolished the patent system. There is no need to come up with convoluted new schemes, just delete it, done. The resulting progress will be incredible.
- zoobab 1y agoHow to make the EU patent reform even more unaffordable for small players https://ffii.org/unified-patent-court-is-100x-more-expensive-and-an-sme-killer-europe-is-commiting-an-economic-suicide/ https://ffii.org/unified-patent-court-is-100x-more-expensive...
- dodos 1y agoI very recently was in the market for a 3d printer and was interested in making a voron or something diy, but even ordering parts from china it would've cost about double just getting a pre built with better software presets, less room for error, and about the same specs from a Chinese company. It's hard for me to comprehend how diy buying parts individually from AliExpress can be more expensive before shipping,but I guess that's what economics of scale get you.
- mrheosuper 1y agoi've never own a prusa printer, they are too expensive for me. I know it's great, it's reliable, but 3d printing is just a hobby to me after all. That's why i have to cope with less reliable solutions from Anycubic and Ender. Now I own a bambulab. They are as cheap as the one from Anycubic, but much more reliable and easier to setup. I honestly don't know how can they make it so cheap, even my a1 mini, cost less than $250, has wifi, a camera for timeplase. Back in the day all you can get is a controller board with monochrome LCD running 8 bit mcu. The westerner had a big head start, but they became greedy. Ultimaker could be the today Bambulab if they had spent more on RnD, and tried to bring their tech to broader market.
- ychnlt 1y ago[dead]
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoIn my humble opinion, if a work is a community project it should stay open regardless of some small feature tweaks, and any kind of commercial revenue should be used to support the original authors as it literally costs people nothing as a tax deductible donation. The key word here is "Should", as different places have different cultural values regarding intellectual property. Some see bad faith verbatim cloning as lucrative business opportunities (it rarely is), and creatives as a natural resource to be exploited (unfortunately they often are.) Notably, a large part of the community quietly financially supports this cloning practice, and rarely follow their lofty ideals when purchasing. Commercial opportunities are naturally degenerating in a saturated market, and businesses that did innovate their own unique products owe people nothing. Note, competing with free is a bad business model, and the faster cloners fail the better. Prusa was boosted by the rep-rap project, and has spent decades rehashing the same core designs. It is not a sustainable growth strategy. =3
- net_rando 1y agoIANAL, but seems that what you need is Defensible Publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_publication to create reliable prior art
- roody15 1y agoReminds me of cellular phones / I hope that one corporation doesn’t lock down the 3d printing industry in a similar way to cell phones. We really have two types of smartphones Android based and iOS Apple. The patents surrounding wireless radio transmission and cellular connectivity esssentially make it impossible for any competition outside of mega corporations. The cost is so high that likely only Microsoft could attempt (again) such a move or maybe Amazon or Space X. “ Extensive Patent Portfolio: Motorola has a large number of patents related to cellular technology, with over 1,900 patent families considered essential to 3G, 4G, and 5G standards, according to Lenovo. Strategic Acquisition: Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2011 was largely driven by the desire to acquire Motorola's patent portfolio to defend Android. Licensing Agreements: Motorola has entered into cross-licensing agreements with other companies, such as Sharp, to share their respective wireless communication technologies. Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs): Motorola holds SEPs related to mobile phone signal standards, obligating them to license these patents to competitors on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. Patent Disputes: Motorola has been involved in patent infringement lawsuits, including cases against companies like Hytera and Apple, regarding their cellular technology patents. ”