This is the same as passing a law allowing car owners to only use the manufacturer’s preferred choice of gasoline.
Answer: Stick to your open source 3d printer companies.
When talking about proprietary filament most hobbyists and users of smaller 3D printers choose a printer that can use generic filament and that can be modified to adjust the extruder temperature to use multiple materials. I sell 3D Systems Cube3 and CubePro printers and run into the argument all the time. We use a proprietary cartridge with a chip that monitors the amount of filament left in the cartridge. The cartridge ships in a vacuum sealed light blocking package so light doesnt degrade the color or plastic and the filament goes through quality control during manufacturing. Is it more expensive than generic filament? Yes if you just look at the cost of the filament per gram. What about not losing time to a jammed extruder that got that way because of cheap filament? What about not throwing away a 20 hour print 15 hours into a build because the filament had a small air bubble in it? Or clogging it for days because you tried carbon fiber in your DaVinci $499 printer? What about wasted days trying to get calibrations right to try some new exotic material?
Mu CubePro Trio almost never has filament problems because I use 3D Systems filament cartridges.
I had one problem in 100 prints. Can you say that with generic filament?
What I don’t understand is why a company such as Stratasys believes it is good for business to “criminalize” THEIR customers if they try to use other filament. What happens then in effect, is that their customers who get caught doing this, won’t recommend their printers anymore and in fact will protest against them. This is a bad marketing move in my opinion.
On the other hand it seems you can still return your printer for a refund even if you’re caught switching filament?
Great information. I’ve posted my comments.
It was the same thing in the copier and printer market years ago. Buy a Canon copier, use Canon toner. Buy a Xerox copier, use only Xerox toners. Buy an HP inkjet, use expensive HP ink. The Magnuson Moss Warranty Improvement Act is an actual law that protects consumer rights in regards to manufacturer warranties, including desktop inkjet and laserjet printers. It says
“No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or implied warranty of such product on the consumer’s using, in connection with such product, any article or service (other than article or service provided without charge under the terms of the warranty) which is identified by brand, trade or corporate name.”
Meaning they can’t void your warranty just because you use generic supplies. However, if the generic supplies cause the damage they DO NOT have to honor their warranty and repair your printer. I don’t see how 3D printers are any different that this law wouldn’t cover them so I don’t see how Stratasys can win.
The same thing is going on at Caterpillar which has digital rights management on their tractor engines. The farmer can’t fix his own tractor without voiding his warranty and I believe it is a crime to even attempt to bypass the DRM.
If I am a manufacturer and design a product that uses consumables, I want to make money on those consumables. That’s ongoing revenue instead of one time revenue. If I spend millions in R&D to come up with the right formula for those consumables and some lab overseas just reverse engineers my product to make and sell cheaper, who will eventually ever pay for R&D on anything? It would be a losing proposition. 3D Systems and Stratasys have a huge portfolio of technology in additive manufacturing because they have made a profit (Hint: profit is not bad) and use a good chunk of that in R&D, engineering any buying up good companies. There’s a reason there are not 100 companies making metal sintering printers and multijet printers. It’s very expensive to get in to without profit.
Not crippled Nathan. There’s a place for them (no not the trash lol). Some people want a dependable printer they don’t have to jack with and if something goes wrong, the company fixes or replaces it. Plenty of people buy HP ink from HP even though generics are available for a third the price.
@Nathan_Walkner Well the difference is price, packaging, marketing and even distribution. Those Keebler Elf cookies probably get to your supermarket by a route driver while the generic cookies come on the store truck.
I’m not disagreeing with your point but having owned a print shop with lots of Xerox and HP equipment, some generic supplies are good and some just suck. I do use generic supplies but it’s definetly hit or miss on generics.
@Artie_Moskowitz No offense, but how is the US Copyright office going to stop the Chinese from doing anything? If 3DS filament is that much better than the competition, then 3DS has nothing to worry about. If the formulation is unique (lol) then I’m sure they have it protected. If the competition can produce a filament this is as good as or better than 3DS can, and take it to market, well maybe 3DS can buy 'em. 
As an FYI, we are happy with our Projet, and it is a very reliable printer with insanely high consumable costs. The Cube on the other hand…
@John_Driggers No offense taken. They really can’t stop generics when you have a 3D printer and can make parts to bypass any proprietary design.
Glad to hear you like your Projet. I’ll find out real consumable costs soon. My Projet 660 and 3500HD max shipped today.
@Artie_Moskowitz Hey that’s great that you like proprietary filament. That doesn’t mean it’s the best solution for everyone. Theres only one reason to make it illegal, and thats to squeeze out competition. There may be a day when you want to make something really large, or flexible, or resistant to a certain chemical. What if your printer gets discontinued? Keeping it open ensures the oem will sell a good product at a compeditive price.
I’m surprised the CubePro is supposedly doing so well for you. Its predecessor, the CubeX was terrible. The CubeX had a LOT of filament problems, despite being in a cartridge. The cartridge also houses a corrugated cardboard spool! Our maker space has a CubeX Duo and no one uses it because it’s garbage. The software is bad, the mechanism is too heavy for its motor and frame and it’s slow. There’s nothing about the CubePro that indicated that it’s actually improved anything other than the outer shell. I’ve had conversations with owners and users of other CubeX machines and they said the same thing. 3D Systems won’t take returns and they wouldn’t fix it.
This isn’t going to effect anyone using open printers or even Replicators. The aim here are lower cost clone cartridges for the pro level cartridge based machines as well as high end resin vats.
+Artie Moskowitz I think is selling the benefits using a CubeX too hard with regards to dedicated cartridges. Most of the issues I encounter while printing (15-20 kg/month over six machines) aren’t jamming issues. Failed bridges, adhesion, over extruding from pressure issues (burping). Some jam but not for the reasons he listed but because they get used so much they clog and need to be cleaned. Most of my material is made by a Stratasys owned company.
@Ross_Bagley I am not going to argue against free trade and criminalizing it is just stupid. Just pointing out some people dont mind paying more for convenience and a perceived…and sometimes real quality difference.
This conversation has just been about FDM and that is a saturated market. There are hundreds of filament printers on the market so I guess a lot of people have soldering guns. Not sure about Stratasys but 3D Systems expensive direct metal printers that use powder do not require you to use proprietary raw materials. They have open products from other manufacturers that are on my spec sheet for use. So we argue about $20 filament instead of $20,000 vats of resin or $40,000 boxes of powder. There are several companies making great raw materials but when you buy generic without doing some research you may get good material and you may not.
@Artie_Moskowitz and a bit about protection and expiration of IP. Two year ago the lowest cost UV resin I could get was about $400 a liter - now with the opensource SLA printers coming online due to expiring patents, I can get a very nice resin for $60 a liter and castable for $150.
If I were 3DS, I think I’d be keeping a weather eye on Autodesk.
@Nathan_Walkner Stratsys is profitable as a general rule. The loss last year was because they paid too much for Makerbot and it has too many internal problems at this point. Those that are buying Stratasys machines are not looking at low end Repraps or even higher end prosumer machines like Makerbot. They are spending five or six figures on the machines and are used in a different environment than a Reprap would be used.
It’s misleading and hyperbole to think that whatever FDM patents that might be left are going to be enforced on small providers. There is no money there. It would cost them far more to file than they could ever hope to get. The future is in sintering and to a lesser extent stereo lithography. The fused deposition process isn’t accurate enough or fast enough compared to the other processes to be used in anything buy lower end applications.
@Nathan_Walkner Makerbots are high end prosumer machines. Do you you have any direct experience to be able to make an informed comment on the features or advantages of professional level additive such as SLA or SLS manufacturing hardware? While 3DS and Stratasys could be said to punitively enforcing their patent portfolio, they aren’t patent trolls. A patent troll is a company that exists solely to litigate patents they own, but do not use.
@Nathan_Walkner I have a couple hundred hours on several Makerbots of various generations as well as experience with commercial machines. You are looking at from a very narrow window of consumer/prosumer machines which are a small fraction in terms of revenue of the commercial market.
The introduction of Reprap and the expiration of the patents has had little effect on the businesses of SSYS or 3DS. They had largely moved from depostion to SLA and sintering. SSYS took a pretty big charge for what appears to now be the ill advised aquisition of Makerbot. Other than that they still do well. What the valuation of Makerbot proves was at the time (and even now) the consumer 3D printing market was widly overvalued and exagerated. The markets have started to recognize that as well.
It’s quite a leap in logic to say that by SSYS wanting to apply the DMCA to the firmware/chipped material cartridges in the high end machines is somehow going to impact our consumer machines that do not use that technology. This isn’t about spools of plastic but vats of resin and cartridges of powder