Both new and old Thingmakers use that time honored technique: give the customer the razor and make money selling them the blades. Old Thingmakers require bottles of Plastigoop for the molds, the new will require spools of filament. I remember Mattel selling expansion packs for the Thingmaker, usually a blister pack with one new mold and a bottle of Plastigoop in a strange color. http://fortune.com/2016/02/12/mattel-3d-printing-toys/
Not to be too snarky; but, it seems to be a real 3d printer as-is. It is small and I’m sure that the consumables (and most likely parts too) are pricey; but, it is one of the first 3d printers targeted to non-hobbyists. This thing will have to be very user friendly or the public will reject it. It needs to be more like a toaster and less like a Heathkit radio and that will be real progress.
@Alan_Thomason I don’t know, I personally do not own a 3D printer. But reading the horror stories told in this community, I wonder how foolproof they can make such a unit.
@Winchell_Chung that’s the problem. Even the best printers break down. Our “ready to go out of the box” Cube 2 was awful and continuously broke. Unless they have figured out something that others haven’t been able to, it will be a flop. The tech just isn’t ready for the average user who just wants to hit click and never have an issue.
@Griffin_Paquette that’s what I was worried about.
If it somehow works reliably, abet making tiny items at a slow rate, then Mattel will make a fortune selling filament.
If it is unreliable, Mattel will have a public relations nightmare on their hands.
At any rate, the price mentioned for the Mattel printer seems a bit low end compared to other printers. They had to cut some corners somewhere. That’s why I figured this would be a “toy” rapid prototyping machine, compared to an M3D micro printer or something.
They’re taking the shaver router. Who cares, they will send a new replacement printer if yours breaks, so long as you buy the filament. If the prices are reasonable, this could be big.
Also you might be suprised at the accuracy. A 2D scanner gets several thousand lines per inch and its a sheet of metal with some pulleys, steppers, etc. Gonna be interesting to see what the speed is. But custom stamped sheet metal and reusing the techniques used to make 2d scanners, it might surprise.
Kinda related. Because the parts are all a certain shape, they snap in and then the app controls the plotter pen to draw on faces. No imagine if the shapes were even more plain, just containing standard sockets for mounting and snapping together.
The app could then let you bulk out the parts, add sculpted details. Then you would snap in a UV gel pen which would bulk up the model, then a small CNC bit to carve it smooth according to your design. Then remove, clean, snap it back in and color it.
As opposed to the M3D this seems to use a very bog standard control scheme heavily based on 2d scanners. Its not sexy at all, may not even using steppers, but a dc motor and a encoder ( making it servo feedback based like most recent scanners too ).
All I know is from the articles. Apparently the control software was written by Autodesk, runs on iOS and Android, and is also compatible with other printers.
The original ThingMaker sold blister packs of additional molds of various critters. Mattel can do the same with this, as long as their models are locked down with some savage DRM
One thing i wonder about is in the video it said it was a nonfunctional unit, but there were 3D prints everywhere. So what printed them? I hope it was s demo unit so it accurately displays the expected quality. Id hate to hear it was another 3D printer. I would think an announcement deserves a real demo from a real working machine. If it didn’t print, it didn’t happen.
The software was built by another guy who was acquired by Autodesk- it was called modio to begin with. Cool guy and good software. I’m sure it has been reworked by Autodesk though.
The app is actually already out on the Google Play Store if anyone is interested (not sure about iOS). I played around with it a bit and it generated some STL files which looked pretty good. Seems they’ve done a good job designing the parts to work without any kind of support, and the ability to simulate how the final object will move is quite nice.
But I have my doubts. One of the things I made was a heart necklace that used chains which printed in one piece. My PrintrBot had a hell of time printing it out, and in fact I still haven’t gotten one to print out 100% satisfactorily.
Hard to imagine they’ll be able to build a machine with better performance for so little, unless they are taking a big loss on the product upfront to try and gain a foothold in the market.
To those saying they are selling the machine at a loss to make money on filament, in the interview it’s revealed the machine will use standard PLA rolls as Mattel specifically didn’t want to alienate existing 3D printer users. No doubt they will have their own branded filament (which will probably be marked up considerably), but at least they aren’t pushing people into DRM’d proprietary rolls of filament like other manufacturers have done.
I love how it looks. Smart design. I hope it delivers and I hope kids love it! If they can produce an awesome $300 printer- more power to them.
May the best billion dollar company win. Just kidding there! If kids are happy with it, how could anyone see that as bad?
I think it’s smart to carve out a niche for kids toys with such a cheap printer. It’s a pretty realistic expectation to say “this thing makes toys”. We all know if it can make silly fun toys, it can also make useful, functional items, but toys is a low bar that could succeed.