Myself and a team of rock-star code masters and Makers alike have been working hard since August to make a Hubs replacement. We have kept eyes on the community here, on Facebook, Reddit, and other platforms to make a service that we believe can exceed what Hubs was at its peak.
This company is called My 3D Pros with the slogan More Pros Less Cons. We, as Makers both as hobbyists and professionals (I personally own a service bureau) wanted a better system and have been developing it fairly quietly for the past few months. Our first beta rollout will be available in the coming weeks, of which I will update when I have teaser images of our skins and some walk-throughs, but gone will be the days of complicated navigation.
We need the help of the community though. We are putting together a spreadsheet with printers on them, good, bad, ugly, and everything in between. This is so when a customer goes to make an order, the Maker (you guys!) do not get an order that will not fit on your machine or has unrealistic deadlines. To do this though, we need to collect data! Below I have included a link to a Google Spreadsheet where I will be adding in printers that I have knowledge over and hope that you all will join me. This document will remain public and can be referenced at any time by anyone. It is part of our commitment to transparency at My 3D Pros. Feel free to edit, add, and share this sheet. We do ask for the sections about speed that you utilize your fastest reliable print speed and not a theoretical max speed.
If your machine is custom, please add it’s frame design and just put custom in the Build Volume section as our plan is to allow each Maker to set the sizing if they happened to have built a D-bot, C-bot, etc.
Also, would love to hear features you would like to see on My 3D Pros. There is no live site just yet, but as soon as the bet is open I will share it here. Please share your thoughts and comments, would love to start a conversation on how you would like to see a service like this function and we look forward to your inputs into this sheet!
Thanks!
Grant
My 3D Pros
3D Pubs (ask me about Pubs!)
3D Musketeers
Just as a bit of transparency to everyone here – These guys have been working with some of my personal friends in the maker community and they’ve brought me in on meetings to kind of give the community a voice in the matter. I don’t really have a hand in the site other than happening to run in the same circles as the guys they hired to make it. I’m certainly looking forward to what they are trying to do for the community. The gap that 3D Hubs left by basically kicking RepRap users to the curb should end up being filled by this site and from what I’ve heard, the community is the focus behind it.
Feedback is essential at this stage, as most of the back-end infrastructure is still being modeled.
@Grant_Posner already knows that community input such as what’s been posted are required to be open and fed back to the community, so that’s why his spreadsheet is viewable by everyone.
Honestly I think a certified or vetted tier could be nice. Can’t tell you how many prints I’ve seen from people claiming they’re good, when on close inspection there are obvious flaws and issues. Just have them print a serialized/unique coded test print of your design and send it in. Really depends on the community though, it could piss off hobbyists with cheaper machines.
You’d be surprised though, a skilled operator can get a really high quality print with the right configuration and mods. Likewise an unskilled person can get really bad prints from a high end machine (typically at the cost of speed).
Anyone who claims they can print at 150mm/s is typically full of themselves, as the quality difference to 60mm/s would be absolutely apparent.
@Stephanie_A we plan to offer designations for professional users and industrial users. Certain pricing schedules will be recommended (like don’t try to compete with the cr-10 guy if you’re running a 5k printer). The added price of a pro is not needed if the pro doesn’t want it. All Makers will show up for a normal search and the customer can choose if they want a more specialized experience with a pro or an industrial user. The customer would choose if they care more about price or quality (more detailed than that obviously). If all people want is a cheap part there is no point for a professional to waste time explaining the details of it. But if someone wants an SLS print, then Jimmy down the street with a cr-10 shouldn’t be able to compete, ya know? We also are working on a way to predict if someone is outsourcing a type of printing. There is nothing wrong with this, but transparency is important. We want the customer to know if there is a middle man. It can help make communication easier at least in theory. Do you agree?
I agree on print speed, it’s why it’s a category on the Google sheet
Still working on our version of a calibration print, any suggestions would be awesome! We will require higher tiers of operators to provide this test print with higher accuracy and show with pictures including calipers. Yes I know it is defeatable by just setting your calipers differently but we take a no BS policy to cons on My 3D Pros. I’m hoping this works well!
For even further transparency all, if you use Reddit, or don’t and want to dig through my post history to make sure I’m part of the community, my handle there is /u/mobius1ace5 as it is basically on every site for this industry. I have company accounts but never use them. The goal for me is to be a part of the comminity first. I do what I can to contribute
@Grant_Posner I do high quality precision prints all the time. A very important part of the process is to thermally calibrate the filament you are using. I offer the calibration clips I have developed for your consideration as part of the process.
How will you handle DIY printers - customized print volumes? One of my issues with 3D Hubs was missing orders because I could not specify a custom build volume.
@Alex_Wiebe we will allow you to change the build volume if your printer is different, say a d-bot or something. As someone who has a 400x400x788mm d-bot it is a pain with hubs lol
@Justin_Nesselrotte sure. Feel free to email me. I will post a comment about our conversation though, transparency is important to me and the company. Grant@3DMusketeers.com
As a relative noob and CR-10 owner should I be sending info about the printer to you or not? If yes, should I only send if I want to participate or just as information source? Are you discouraging “hobby-level” printers or not.
Also, there is a public library down the street with a Makerbot that charges $0.25 a gram for prints. Do you want info like that and would they be considered an option for your list?
I never was part of Hubs so I’m unclear where the line is for participation, etc. Thanks in advance.
@Kyle_Taylor We are happy to have all users! Feel free to add your specs into the google sheet. We are simply discouraging people with professional level machines from competing with hobby level machines. It causes a race to the bottom for price and everyone loses.
If your library would like to sign up for a Maker account they definitely can be a part of everything.
@Grant_Posner Really looking forward to the site and a vetting/certification. The problem with all the other attempts at this is that it was a race to the bottom with low quality printers being the ones who showed up. While I’m glad others started these types of platforms they’ve always been a pain to use or combative with providers.
@Ben_Malcheski It is something I despised as well! I run a professional service bureau and local people with crap printers were taking the jobs, screwing them up and then their customers would come to me all pissed off because they had a bad experience. No more we said. My 3D Pros will address this issue and are dedicated to the slogan of More Pros Less Cons.
@Stephanie_A I can print at 150mm/s and for some prints the quality is perfectly acceptable. I’d never print intricate features at that speed, but large, simple designs that are required asap… yeah 150mm/s at 0.3mm layer height makes a lot of sense and can trim a full day off the build time.
your point makes sense, but so does the counter point. this suggests there ought to be some method for customers to guage speed/quality trade-offs. maybe 2 print from the same machine, one spot at say 40mm/s and the other at the fastest rate the vendor is comfortable running at? show the differences right up front?
the 3dhubs Marvin print was so simple that it really didn’t say anything at all; I can’t imagine anyone comparing the Marvin test prints of similar hubs to see which they might prefer to work with. a test print to serve THAT purpose would be interesting.
