The race to the bottom continues.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-matter-mod-t-a-3d-printer-for-everyone
Nice. I have to wonder, though, if by 2015 (their release date), they’ll have many competitors in the $249 range. I’m also a little Leary of yet another walled garden/curated store that you’re forced to use to make your hardware viable. But… we’ll see eh?
I’ve had conversations with non-techies who LOVE Makerbot because it’s “sooo easy. The other 3D printers are a pain. The software is so clunky.” Similar has been said for the Afinia/Up! printers. Clearly, there’s a market for products that are easy to use, where the ease of use is more important than some of the other factors that the more engaged/informed/experiend members in our community care about.
Just to be clear – New Matter is not making a walled garden - their printer will take G-code so you can use whatever slicer you want. But they’re adding their own software and marketplace to make it easy for non-techies to just use the machine with a simple interface.
Also, why does lower price necessarily mean a race to the bottom? I remember when I paid $3,000 for my PostScript enabled LED printer and thinking that was a great bargain. Three years later, I bought another LED printer for $300 that was just as good except it only spoke PCL – actually, the cheaper printer was much more reliable.
If you want to support high-end machines, fine. But if you believe that this technology should be embraced by the masses, you should celebrate these efforts to bring the price down, while still rightly criticizing bad designs.