This is a very sad day
“Printrbot is closed.
Low sales led to hard decisions.
We will be forever grateful to all the people we met and served over the years.
Thank you all.
Brook”
Awwwwww fuck me…
Damn…I loved Printrbot products, built like a tank. I will never sell my Simple Pro now, and hopefully I can source parts for it as they wear out. Fortunately I just rehabbed it last month so it should be good for some time. I hope Brook finds his way to something else in the community.
Oh no… Printrbot, one of the classic desktop 3D printers for hobbyists manufacturer is closed. So much experience has been brought to me by the Simple Metal modding… (Even though US→EU shipping was painful.)
One chapter is closed. 
Pity.
I hope @Brook_Drumm will get OK out of it and we will see his inventions in the future again… Somewhere.
No doubt all the chinese companies essentially drove him into the ground. With everyone here buying ANET A10s and Creality, and all these <$200 printers, Printrbot just stopped receiving orders.
You’d never hear me suggesting anything other than Printrbot for someone looking for a <$500 machine. This is honestly pretty heart wrenching for me. Printrbot was THE Kickstarter 3D printing success story of the decade, and couldn’t have made a better name for itself.
Some of the first printers I put together were Printrbots as they drove the price down far enough for people to be comfortable taking a chance on them. Brook was always active, always trying to engage the community, he even started live dev streams - he put a lot of hard work, sweat, and probably tears as well into Printrbot and it always showed.
I’ve always had a lot of respect for the man, and I honestly can say he played an absolutely pivotal role in the development of 3D printing today. I really really hate to see this happen without any chance for the community to have come together to give him a little help in promoting his product a little.
Should we have a community tribute? Have everyone post their Printrbots with their story on how their Printrbot contributed to their 3D printing adventures?
Great idea Thantik! I will start writing up something tonight.
@funinthefalls If you want to write something up and pin it, I’m down for that. Nothing to give away for people doing it, but I’m sure there are a lot of people who appreciate everything Brook did while printrbot was around.
This makes me sad. I always liked the PrintrBots. Where my main recommendation for people that wanted a good printer for cheap. Which was usually the first question.
I also liked their CNC router design, the “crawlbot”.
I will miss Brook’s videos and prototypes even I have moved to profi 3D printing area some time ago. (And I was motivated to move thanks to experience established on my first Printrbot among others.)
I met Brook years ago, before printrbot. He started a local 3d printer meetup. A few months in he came to a meeting claiming he could do it cheaper and better than current printers.
A month later he had a prototype and handed a few out for us to test.
I couldn’t get it to print reliably and was pretty frustrated. But Brook was determined to make it work and announced his Kickstarter.
I thought he was crazy. What he wanted simply didn’t seem possible.
Remember this was before e3d, cheap hotends, or widely available components. Brook decided to make all of these components in-house, which was and is still quite rare.
I gave him permission to use my control board design to derive and sell.
To my surprise he had incredible success.
He taught me a big lesson on optimism and success. I learned to never underestimate someone as dedicated as him. He’s still a cheerful and friendly guy, very much the spirit of a maker.
@Stephanie_A Can you add this to the pinned post that is now in the group?
@ThantiK Done and pinned.
Very sad. I owned a second tier PrintrBot and imported it privately to Germany. His dirt cheap but reasonable well functioning printer brought me into 3d printing. Unfortunately when I was looking for a prime time printer shipping and taxes were so prohibitive I went with a European company. Now - as I am nearly ready for a second machine - this.
@Brook_Drumm1 you are such a role model for all of us. I still recall building the printrbot simple made out of laser cut plywood. Loved it and still having good memories of it.
Never liked printrbot but still sad!
@Brook_Drumm brought a number on innovations to 3D printing. Inductive sensors were found first, IIRC on Printrbot Simple. And he moved quickly to folded metal manufacturing. He moved away quickly from printed parts in favor of laser-cut plywood so he could serve customers faster.
He sent me a free Simple Metal to Spain so I could use it as a testbed for closed-loop dc-motors (as stepper replacements). The printer is still in working order.
One click printing on the cloud was a feature brought again by Brook, as one of the first if not the first graphical display showing a render of the STL file.
He moved from trapezoidal to s-curve motion profile for smoother printing by incorporating TinyG2. (Only recently Marlin has included this feature).
And the list goes on and on. And I did not mention the different versions of CNCs and other larger format printers or the latest PrintrBelt …
I had suggested Printrbot to folk for cheaper priced printers. Sometimes they would reply that they did not hear of them before and that surprised me. I guess they had less online ads.