A Few Questions for Carbon

One of the most fascinating companies in 3D printing over the last two years has undeniably been Carbon. The company's high-speed CLIP technology allows for 3D printing in unprecedented times and has, since coming out of stealth in March of last year, seen incredible attention -- and growth. Carbon, now with a 180-member strong team, has been hard at work, bringing their M1 3D printer to market this past April, along with a growing number of materials to create both prototype and end-use parts, backed by an ever-increasing number of investors and supported by a higher frequency of customer interest and use. 3DPrint.com had the opportunity to interview CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Joseph DeSimone to learn more about his insights into Carbon, CLIP technology, and the 3D printing industry. Read more at 3DPrint.com: https://3dprint.com/159412/a-few-questions-for-carbon/

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This company is so full of shit. Their machine is $250k for a 3 year lease. Pretty much eliminating a value-add for prototyping short of running an around the clock print shop or high volume manufacturing. Add to this the fact that the build area is a joke and you have someone that's riding on the coattails of a patent without doing much to innovate.

they do seem to be struggling to produce machines.

At the tct this year, their stand lacked pretty much everything.
No printer, no printed samples, not even a video of the machine.

The reason given was that there were no spare machines, everyone made went out to a customer.
But given the tct is the uk's biggest 3d print show, surely that's where you would make an effort to generate new customers.

Just downloaded the pricing sheet - holy crap these things are moronically expensive.
If they can actually find enough idiots to pay this kind of money - then yeah, marketing geniuses !
https://s3.amazonaws.com/carbon-stat...on_Pricing.pdf
$40,000 a year on a minimum 3 year contract (you're way out bubba). And you DON'T ever own the printer.

But they do deliver and show you how it works - for $10,000 !
But only $5,000 for a second printer - how kind of them.

At the end of the day it's just an sla machine that prints a bit quicker.

Let's put this into a little perspective:
build volume:
W 141 mm -D 79 mm - H 326 mm



Pretty odd shape and poor in the x and y dimensions.

Does it do multi material and multicolour prints ? No.

So for the same money you could buy and own a multicolour colour, multimaterial pinter with larger build volume.

Given the massive number of 3d printers that can be had for $40,000 a year - I can't see how carbon can stay in business on a longterm basis.
At the moment it looks like they are living on investments based on their 'clip' technology.
But that can only ever pay dividends if carbon actually make a sensibly priced machine and sell bucket loads of them.
Or licence the technology to a company or companies who make sensibly priced desktop printers.

Renting small build volume sla machines for $40,000 a year - is not a sustainable business platform.

It's a heavy duty business cost for a machine which is manifestly NOT a heavy duty industrial 3d printer.

People with that kind of budget are not usually complete idiots - they can use google. I just don't see anyone with half a brain taking carbon up on this deal.