China must be laughing it’s head off at the idea of open source hardware. They can now copy the designs they used to copy by reverse engineering without any worry and now they get the plans.
Take the E3D hot end. There’s a large push for people to use the original not the China clones, quality of the original is undisputed but so is the cost advantage of the Chinese clones. It’s an unfortunate side effect that your R&D ends up as a 0 cost gain and then when you’re competing with an industry that will make 10 000 copies as a test run, how do you make it viable.
Saying a copy is junk and won’t work as well means noting when you can buy the copy for a fraction of the cost, you’re going to be tempted to try one and see. Also as there are thousands of them getting one in your country is also a lot easier.
The idea of open hardware is, afaik, that anyone can use the design. Be it a guy in a garage in Belgium or a big factory in china. Unless it’s licenced “free for non-commercial use” of course.
And i don’t think the E3D v6 is open hardware, but i could be wrong.
Open source hardware is there precisely to encourage people to build it at a low cost and know it will fit with other components. If you don’t want people producing it… Don’t open source it… I don’t believe e3d is open source
… that’s just illegal copies…
Interestingly, I think the cheap clones work out well for E3D - due to all the bad copies, “the word on the street” is that E3D is the highest quality hotend manufacturer.
Now, even a good Chinese manufacturer will have difficulty getting over the public perception of Chinese hotend quality.
@JOHN_YN Public domain is just one kind of open, where the owner relinquishes all rights.
Many kinds of open source / open hardware allow the owner to keep those rights, but allow others to use the work within certain restrictions. Some of those restrictions require the user to contribute changes back so others can use them. Chinese cloners almost never do that.
E3D posts the hot ends designs in CC-BY-NC-SA. The Titan extruder doesn’t appear to be open at all but there is at least one clone for sale. I’ve heard they even link you to E3D’s site for instructions. The listing also reuses E3D’s photos.
Patents and licenses are simply not a Chinese thought process. In fact their government is trying hard to create many of their own systems, and software products and things like cell phones, and even graduating 75,000 engineers yearly, but true creativity is hard.
Gotta point out here that FUNCTIONAL designs cannot be protected by open source licenses. Only “creative” designs subject to copyright can be protected. You might be able to argue that certain design elements (like the shade of blue on the fan shroud) are artistic, but otherwise, the E3Dv6 design appears to be pretty functional and thus unprotectable without a patent.
Chinese companies do legitimately violate open source licenses all the time, but in my experience, most examples people give aren’t actually violating anything but our cultural norm.
@Nathan_Walkner Re-read what I wrote, “unprotectable WITHOUT a patent”
If they had patented it, it would be protected, yes, we’re in agreement on that.
The question is are you actually reducing your sales?
Open source actually helps as people can easily integrate into new machines, so being closed source reduces sales in that respect.
There Chinese clones are cheaper because they modify the designs for manufacturing, but because the knowledge isn’t open source, some critical features get pulled out to make the part easier to make (Ie the heavy polishing on the inside of the E3D that makes the hot end not jam)
Finally, if the person is looking for the cheapest option, do you think a premium vendor would have gotten the sale anyway? That person wants to pay $20 for the hot end, not buy a premium hot end at a premium price.
Printrbot has chosen open source and never looked back. Our hotends are made by a local friend- he’s chosen not to open source. It’s not really rocket science but there are some nuances and technique involved. Nothing patentable. But we have had knockoffs, etc. I can’t say that it has ever affected sales.
I’ve tried to figure out why China hasn’t knocked off more of our designs… I think the answer is that we do things the hard way.
-We make intricate parts in folded metal with very tight tolerances.
-We utilize high quality machined parts
-we use very intricate injection molding.
-We do unconventional things (too many examples here
-we iterate often
china should be laughing. they captured the entry level repraps and the filament market. least with china’s involvement 3DP no longer an idle dream with an affordable entry level printer, and that’s gotta be a plus for repraps.
folks often pick or are included in the kits because they don’t know any better of the issues surrounding clones. but those that do enjoy 3DP and stick around sooner or later upgrade to genuine/better quality in the pursuit of better printing.
but for god shakes why spend £55-75 if all you gonna print with is PLA and a £6.75- £12 hotend gets you going, they don’t need to be an engineering marvel to work early reprappers proved that with a bolt and washer.
thinking hotend settling into a generic design envisioned from an evolved jhead, be hard not to imagine a hotend without fins that work well.
I don’t fully understand why the bitching about china, western corporate leaders been pushing this ideology of western creation manufactured in the east on the cheap for years, barely a rumble from the general public " till they loose they’re jobs".
It is important to understand that the law in China is “buyer beware”. If you are not in China, you can’t inspect the parts before buying. You only option is to clean it up yourself or make special requests to avoid flaws that you notice which will probably be most effecive if you make repeat orders.
