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Hello 3DPrinters!
MakerX is a new product we are making to help you love your 3D printer. We are in the design stages now. You can find more details at http://makerx.io
We would much appreciate if you could fill out our 5 minute survey about what features you would like to see.
http://goo.gl/forms/3xNMtUJFcI
Happy printing everyone!
I browsed your site quickly.
Now, I'm no expert in marketing but I was quite shocked by your choice of design for your box. It is too much of a coincidence to be coincidental : aren't you afraid of actions from Microsoft ?
Print caught fire??? While I can only imagine that is is possible, and has probably happened, I would assume that since the hot end is not heating the filament to the ignition temp of the material (that would tend to be counterproductive), the chances of fire are so low that I would not be putting it as your first, and ergo main, selling point.
And if you're using an arduino based system (Ramps?), having net connectivity is somewhat trivial, even if it is the somewhat clunky method of using a second board. Especially since there are many apps that can already stream and time lapse video for you.
And you don't list what printers you intend to be compatible with. I would bet a toe (one of the small ones, I like my toes) it won't be compatible with mine.
Dispatch/Queuing? I don't see the point really. I have to physically be present to remove the previous print to start the next. Even with multiple printers, they are one shot machines. I don't always do my design / preprint work at the printer, quite often it's at a remote location. I just upload the print when I get there. If the project requires multiple prints, I naturally order my prints to allow me to do other pre/post work while one is printing.
A long list of other hmmmms comes to mind also.....
Most people with a little bit of arduino experience can replicate most of these features if they wanted.
There has been some pretty severe property damage in the past from printer fires. Although they are rare, most people do have smoke detectors in their homes for the rare fire as well. The intention is to minimize the hazard and maximize the peace of mind. But MakerX is still in the design stages and that's why were are looking for interest in the feature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marm
Understandably the technical feat of wireless print isn't large, however it is the added convenience of not needed to dedicate a computer to the printer, instead just MakerX. We are aware that streaming and timelapse are existing features, that's why we plan to support them as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marm
Compatibility isn't 100% decided yet, but the intention is to focus our support on the more commercially available ones. We envision making your $200-$1200 printer perform more like a $2000-$3000 printer. Naturally some performance is due to the parts in your printer, but we think the gap can be narrowed. However, as long as your printer supports standard GCodes or there's an open source method to create the equivalent of the GCode for your printer, we hope to have it supported.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marm
The main goal of the Queue or Dispatch is convenience of allowing you to do your placements and design before all your work is finished printing. We understand that you need to return to clean up and prepare your print bed, but we want to make it easy to start up your next job without having to go through all the steps again. Just clean it up and print.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marm
You're right that some of the functionality can definitely be supported by someone with enough time and interest in designing it all themselves. OctoPrint also provides some of the support as well. However, we are trying to make a reliable, easy to use solution with very minimal effort.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marm
Thank you very much for your feedback, we will take all your thoughts into careful consideration during our design process. We really just want to make 3D printing easier for everyone because we see the huge potential for the technology. We are very excited to help the community flourish.
Bull.Quote:
Originally Posted by MakerX
Make a $1200 perform like a $2000-$3000 dollar printer? Possibly. But that 's down to the skill of the operator and certain physical mods made to the printer. Certainly not from your features..
Cloud- does not affect the print quality
Dashboard - set in the program, visible on printer screen. Also does not affect the print quality
Journal - already in print profile.
Live Stream - does not affect the print quality
Time lapse - does not affect the print quality
Manual override - already exists, at least on printers running sailfish. Also does not affect the print quality
Red alert - printer catch fire due to faulty wiring and connectors. An app does not help with this. Also does not affect the print quality
Custom notifications - does not affect the print quality
Dispatch - this might be useful to some.
Make a $200 printer function like a $3000 printer? No.
Sooooo you're just copying Octoprint?
Hi Sabastian,
The point is that your $200 printer will be bare bones with very basic printing functionality. We want to help you understand your printer better and customize the print settings for optimal performance.
Of course the convenience features like cloud prints and web cam streaming won't make your print job better. But why not include some useful features into your printer that you only see with the higher end models? As in WiFi support. Yes, many features are supported in a variety of printers of different costs and software. We want to equalize the playing field. Any USB enabled printer can get on WiFi. They can all have manual control, notifications, system monitoring, etc. That's under making your life easier and printing more convenient.
However improving your prints our vision is more along the lines of giving a database of knowledge. Initially you will have your personal journal system. Scraps of paper with some ideas and tweaks. Maybe you save your profile each print and parse through your text file or import each one at a time to remember what you did.
We believe having a presentable representation of your printer performance will enable some great insights. Thus a convenient, easy to use, journal. More over, access to like 3D printers with their own experiments will help you learn even more.
The amount of settings, slicers, modeling software, support techniques is practically endless. We believe we can improve your experiences with some communal insights.
But for clarity's sake, I did not mean your print quality will be that of the $2000-$3000 printer. I meant you could get a lot of features that you see on those higher end models on your far more affordable model. Many of our features or versions of them exist on expensive printers but are completely out of scope of anything under $1000 - $2000. I apologize for the confusion there.
MakerX will not turn water into wine, but if might just keep some 3D printer operators form pulling out their hair and discarding their printer as a decoration. :)
Thank you for your thoughts, feedback is definitely welcomed.
Yes, there are some cross features with OctoPrint and MakerX. Copy is a bit exaggerated. We do want to provide everything that OctoPrint has that people find helpful, don't need to reinvent the wheel.Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyV
Main differences is that we want to provide the hardware side as well with some extra customization. Perhaps control and displays on any model of printer. If we can improve on features in OctoPrint and the same time than even better. They are a software solution that can be used on nearly any system to help you print. We want to provide an affordable hardware solution with it's own software to compliment it.
We have an already establish chip, the Omega, by Onion, to power MakerX. We like what OctoPrint is doing, we want to try to take it one step further.
I certainly encourage all development in the 3D printing arena. Your gadget will have zero use for me, but perhaps for others...
Your wording is a bit misleading. Nevertheless, keep it at...
While I agree with Sebastian, and I dont see a personal use for it, there are a lot of companies that have taken a disparate product set and combined them, branded them and sold them.
So what if its just like octoprint (thats a good product). some people dont want to go through the hassle of buying the pi, setting it up, all that jazz.
If i didnt have pis all over already and you told me for $125 i could have a maker x that did all of that straight out of the box and maybe more, i may buy it. who knows.
If i can say one thing about this forum, we are passionate makers. Dont take the negative feedback or questions (in whatever form delivered) as negative, or hurtful. USE IT as a learning experience. Us active members know EXACTLY what we want out of a product. This is your best proving grounds for honest feedback. So dont dismiss it, use it. Dont get defensive (we arent calling your baby ugly) just take it all in and see if everything still makes sense.
Good luck man. Im an entrepreneur myself, and within a year hope to bring to market (not 3d printing related at all) something that will forever change certain industries. Its not easy. stick with it.
Hi Dunginhawk,
That's exactly why we wanted to open this discussion up. Feedback from existing Maker's is the most valuable thing we can hope to get. We want to get into the Maker space and even if we are makers ourselves, we know there are a lot of maker out there will a lot of ideas and passions. Most importantly if we want to make a Maker product, we want to make a Maker product Makers want to use.
We've already started using some of our features from our prototype and we are finding them to be quite convenient. We really hope to make something people will be excited to use for all their printing needs.
I don't see it as being over useful for home users - but for a small company who are using 3d printers for small scale bespoke manufacturing, being able to easily manage a lot of printers from the one interface would be useful.
Also print bureas and services with a fair few machines.
So yeah definitely see a market for it. But probably not where you foresee one :-)
The other thing is your website is one of those I absolutely hate.
Lots of wordage with vague assertations.
Absolutely bugger all actual real detail.
It has - unfortunately - become the current fashion for new device websites.
Basically lots of crap that looks shiny to total idiots, but bugger all actual hard info.
So there's this box - probably - couldn't find a picture of an actual box, just a drawn image of an xbox.
How big is it, what connections does it have, how many printers can you physically plug into it. And if it only connects to your printer wirelessly - do you buy special pre-programmed wifi sd cards for each printer, or usb dongles for machines without sd card slots.
Given that most printers aren't wifi enabled.
That's the kind of actual information the maker community likes. Not ephemeral marketing graphics aimed at corporate buyers who have zero technical expertise.
And yeah this is a rant - not just aimed at makerx - but at all the same type of new launch idiot aimed websites I've seen in the last few years.
Give actual info of actual physical things. Not just ephemeral cartoons :-)
To out-sell the present competition you will need a New, Reliable and Easy-to-use design,
sold at a lot lower cost !
Not just another Copy !
Most people are Not going to be fooled by Sales-Hype !
since the Internet allows them to Know most of the Facts before buying.
Our vision would be that each printer would have it's own MakerX attached to it. Though technically possible to put multiple printers on a single MakerX, it would increase the back end complexity a bit and reduce the personalization allowed to suit each printer. We hope to attract both markets, but value your thoughts on the subject since we are definitely still in the design stages. I idea is to give every printer, regardless of it's price, a lot of very useful and convenient functions to make everyone's lives easier in the world of 3D printing.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
We are definitely missing some specific details, but we believe everything we've designed so far is within the scope of possibility. I understand the frustration though. Pie in the sky ideas with no execution is not very encouraging and as an Engineer it's easy to roll your eyes at such things.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
We actually did prototype, print and polish that box as our design. We have the physical box in the office for our first prototype.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
Thank you for pointing this out, we should probably clarify better on the website. The intention is to take the USB cable from the printer, which normally talked to the computer directly, and plug it into MakerX. MakerX then becomes the device that makes your printer wireless.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
We want to cater to your typical 3D printer to get their input on our features, so I really appreciate your honest feedback on the subject.
I completely agree and I want MakerX to be all of these things. Reliable and easy to use are our first priority in this project. We believe there's a gap in this market that we want to close for our 3D printing needs and we hope to do that for everyone. Our team is very technical and we are not trying to promise anything we don't think we can provide reliably.Quote:
Originally Posted by EagleSeven
OOh, 'scope of possibility'. So not an actual tried and tested thing then :-)Quote:
but we believe everything we've designed so far is within the scope of possibility
Ah one box per printer. See now that's definitely NOT what i got from the survey and the website. I definitely got a lord of the rings 'One Ring To Rule Them All' vibe.
Which I thought was a good idea.
So this would just be an add on box for a single printer. Hmm, then it would have to be very cheap indeed. Or people would simply buy a printer that already had a control panel and lcd attached.
Or buy a $40 android tablet, velcro it to the front of the machine and use octodroid.
Or some cloud based thing software.
And I have to admit, I'm impressed by the fact that you're answering all us cynics and standing your ground - good on yer :-)
If you need any beta testers - I'll give it a go :-)
We are in the design stages. Some of the functionality we have built into our prototype which we have been actively using to print these days. We are continuing to develop it and add more features and that's where the community feedback is really helpful. We want to design something people actually believe will improve their 3D printing experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
We may be able to support more than one printer with each MakerX, but we are thinking of it like an extension to your printer. Affordability is definitely the goal. MakerX is intended to make it so you don't need to buy the fancy WiFi printer with an LCD attached to achieve to get the features that provides the printer. One MakerX connected to two printers would allow them to both be WiFi supported, but it would retract from the ability for the MakerX to be a universal indicator for each printer since it would be connected to two at once. Since we are still designing it is possible we will got that route.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
Thank you for your praise, we are trying to be interactive with the community because you naturally know what you want to see. Any feedback is valuable for sure. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
Hey,
We've decided to give away a Delta printer! If you leave your email in the survey you will be entered to win! http://goo.gl/forms/3xNMtUJFcI
Thanks,
MakerX
Sorry, forgot to mention that the give-away will happen if we exceed 200 responses to the survey. Please share the survey with your networks to help us get feedback and increase your chances to win a printer!