There are a lot of fully open machines in the comsumer/maker market and they totally make sense there, but when it comes to professional users, you don’t want to take any risks when it comes to reliability and often want a single manufacturer responsible for the performance of you 3D printer. Zortrax is using chipped cartridges with their soluble-support-based machine, Ultimaker have announced a full line of premium Ultimaker-branded filaments for the same reasons.
Do you think this “closed ecosystem” concept will trickle down to more affordable machines as well?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZE53TlIFKU
In 7 years… maybe
I think this will largely be limited by how easy the software makes it to calibrate and configure for a new material. It’s a lot easier than it used to be (I started on Skeinforge 40), since the slicers are now doing sane things with width and bridging, etc. based on layer height. To make configuration much easier, I think we’ll need a guided process with test prints.
I wonder which market is larger.
Open source market for sure is larger. In my opinion
Proprietary only filament printers where you must use theirs is similar to inkjet printer makers. It’s just not worth the hassle. What if you want to use a filament they don’t make. Sorry Dave, I can’t do that…
@Pieter_Koorts noice finish there…
@Tomas_Vit A plastics engineer that I know felt there might be polycarbonate blended into Zortrax’s ABS. At any rate, he was certain it’s not the same kind of ABS that most filaments use.
Lie may be an overly strong word, but at the very least it was a weaselly situation. https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/07/polish-3d-printer-company-zortrax-lied-about-contract-with-dell/
We all love how using non hp ink in our printers voids its warantee. Locking down your printer with chipped cartriges is about making money not delivering the best product for end users. Blending your own filament to work with your printer is fine as long as it’s not to the detriment of using other filaments. For my money I won’t consider using a machine that relies on a closed eco system if there is any other way.
I think there not to much use for them really what like
Seriousness really
We had a similar concept on 3D printers at our work, and they became a pain in the arse. You couldn’t see how much was left, the machine would sometimes not read the chip, and finally, the filament options were not great. At the end of the day, it is a way of locking you into their (often more expensive) proprietary filament.
A makerspace I was part of had a 3DSystems CubeX Duo on loan from a sponsor. The thing itself was a piece of crap with turd software, but it also had fancy looking plastic cartridges with a flimsy card spool inside that folded on itself and tore itself apart with maybe 100g of material left.