Race to the Bottom vs Feature Laden

[jlmccuan]

It seems like every day I see a press release for the newest cheapest printer in the marketplace. With seemingly the majority of new printers in the market joining the "race to the bottom" in the price wars they'll soon be giving them away if you agree to a subscription of filament. (If you think that's a good idea, remember where you got it.) Is anyone developing higher end printers for the prosumer market? Is there enough of a market in the $2000 to $5000 arena to entice hobbiest consumers to move up to a more robustly featured machine? Too many times (in activities outside of 3d printing) I've seen consumers new to something buy cheap and become disillusioned, discouraged and left wishing they had bought a better product or find themselves completely turned off and quitting.

[MiniMadRyan]

It's an interesting topic. We've seen a lot of printers already in the race to the bottom that compromised design and engineering for saving a few bucks. The QUBD One Up, the Makibox, Pirate3D, in some cases its killed the companies too. That being said, in some cases, owners of these flawed machines have taken the time to learn, and to modify/correct their printers, and by doing so, they've become members of many communities such as ours. On the other hand, there's an equal amount of users who just want a printer 'that prints out of the box' and no doubt, our race to the bottom in pricing/quality has caused a lot of turmoil.

That being said, I think there exists a low, middle and high end market for the consumer right now, and will continue to do so. We're printers such as the Printrbot Play, XZY Davinci and a few others which are bringing a fairly capable printer to consumers on the low end. They might not be feature rich, and some rely on chipped filament, but they represent a good base entry into the market.

The middle of the market, I think is populated by printers such as the Printrbot Simple, Printrbot Plus, Robo3D, Various Prusa i3s and the infamous Makerbot Replicator clones, Good solid printers that offer features and reliability without breaking the bank, and perhaps the largest segment of the consumer market right now.

It's the prosumer market that i think is posied to, if not hasn't already taken off. Printers such as the Ultimaker, Type A Machines, SeeMeCNC, Lulzbot, Felix, and others, printers in the 1500-3000 range that is really taking off. It represents a usually feature laden printer that is still accessible to the average consumer/small business. I'd argue that we are seeing more higher end machines, and the popularity of higher end machines explode over that of cheaper machines.

I think with cheaper, better quality printers that we're seeing now, over that of what we used to have, is going to really drive the mid range, and high end markets. They serve as a great introduction to the market, and a great stepping stone to a larger more feature rich printer, so I guess both end of the markets will thrive

[jlmccuan]

Good points. What we see now in the 3d printer world is no different than other market segments and I believe 3d printers in general will follow similar trends as you pointed out. The problem from a manufacturer's standpoint is which machine to tailor for what pricepoint. Some savvy manufacturers look for gaps in the current offerings hoping to get buyers from the low end of the gap to step up and entice buyers from the top to spring for a bargain. From there it's a game of adding and subtracting options and build quality to have a product that fills the gap. Ruling out technological breakthroughs that greatly reduce the cost for state of the art features, that's about how it works.

So, what features would have gotten you to spring extra cash from your current machine? What build quality or features would you have given up to have gotten a cost reduction? Remember the old manufacturing menu. You can have any two of the following three. Quality. Fast Delivery. Low Cost.

[curious aardvark]

personally I think that anything much over the $1500 mark (about £800) is not a consumer machine but more of an entry level industry price point.
You can pick up a makerbot replicator dual clone for under £400 and no end of kits and other machines for around that price.
And I've yet to see any fff machine clearly print sharper than my flashforge creator. As good - sure, and there are some cool gimmicks out there on some of the more expensive machines, but price per print - nothing comes close.

Yeah you're always going to get the 'iphone crowd' who are prepared to spend stupid amounts of money on the latest shiny gadget. When we all know that an android phone from china will out perform an iphone with one battery tied behind it's keyboard for a 1/3rd the price.

But in order to make money you need a constant stream of revenue. And the only place you'll get this is in the home market. For every business that thinks it might like to try rapid prototyping, there are a 100,000 households that don't have a 3d printer or even know how much they really want one.

I just don't see a huge future in the mid range fff desktop printer market, until the prices drop.

Sure you've got machines like the hyrel - that are amazing value for money and are versatile enough to pretty much always find a market.
But they are few and far between.

The future is in the sub $500 market. But they do genuinely need to be idiot proof. I'm not getting at anyone - hell I've asked some pretty obvious questions myself - but if even intelligent people are getting stuck right at the start of the 3d printing process, what chance does the average person have ?
They just expect things to work.

There is a limited market for the mid range machines. Unless they can clearly distuinguish themselves from the pack - I just don't see how you can grow the market significantly to cater to them all.
To put this into perspective there are people who will pay thousands of pounds for stereo equipment with solid gold cables.
But 99% of the amrket are comtent with a £50 mini- system that just makes decent noise.
Same thing with the more expensive 3d printers. Yes there will always be a few people who want the latest and shiniest. But the vast majority just want something that works quite well.

At the moment most of the companies producing mid range machines are small startups. So small sales numbers are fine.
The best analogy to the current state of 3d printing is the early automobile industry.
In the early days almost every town had 2 or three men in overalls in garages making and selling cars. Today we're down to a dozen or so global players. And a few small companies making ridiculously expensive custom supercars.
At the moment the 3d printer industry has a lot of men in sheds and a couple of larger corporations.

The first company that produces a reliable sub $500 machine that requires the user to load a filament cartridge, select an object from a catalogue and press print - and NOTHING ELSE ! Will become the Ford of the 3d printer world - god help us all :-)

[jlmccuan]

I wonder how many of these price leader companies are living in the real world. Given real world expenses of administration, product liability, warranties, and a sustainable margin, a $500 machine would likely have around <$200 in components and labor. How inexpensively could the control board retailing at >$100, 4 steppers retailing at >$60 and a power supply be bought? That still leaves all the fasteners, hot end, framework, slides or wheels, bed, wiring, shipping container, promotion, assembly, administration, etc. UL and CE listings don't come cheap either. Even small companies keeping those certs have at least one employee whose main function is to keep up those listings. To be the Ford of the 3d printing world this company would have to operate in the real world with litigation, R&D, brick and mortar and profit margins.

With that in mind, just what would this printer look like? What would be a likely build volume to satisfy the general consumer? What features would need to be included to make that product truly unbox, push a button and successfully print? Would multiple materials be available or would it be PLA, ABS, or some new all around media? Would the user be restricted to only proprietary media? What might the user interface be for a real push button with no knowledge of slicing or design software?

In no particular order, my thoughts.

Probably a proprietary media as jamming some random material through this machine would result in calls to tech support because prints were failing. Allowing other makes of media would therefore increase costs.

I could see the ability to use multiple materials if the filament were somehow recognizable to the hardware automatically and not require user intervention. Heck, I even forget to change slicer profiles sometimes so the average user surely would have problems.

The design would like have to have a nice look, possibly with exterior finish options to fit in to home decor.

Build volume would perhaps need to be at least 6"x6"x6".

Certainly auto zero and auto bed leveling would be necessary. There would also need to be a bed surface that required no coatings for the material used. Probably wifi ready and a memory card device as well. Internet connectivity would likely be a selling point.

A warranty period of at least 90 days and free parts for an addition period.

Live 24 hour tech support unless it was truly a push button, bulletproof setup. Even then, unless the manufacturer supplied all the printable objects as well, users would attempt to print objects that would have issues.

What else?

[KDog]

I think the race to the bottom is just that..a race to the bottom. We aren't going to see an increase in quality with any new decreases in cost. It is already the age of dirt cheap parts so all paying rock bottom is going to get you is cheap.

How about a focus on quality, reliability and convenience? Even the so called higher end printers require way too much user attention and knowledge. This does not make for a realistic consumer product and failure is almost certain. I don't think the industry ever made it up to the correct price point to produce a good consumer 3d printer. The basic problems inherent in FDM printing have really not been improved on and the whole market is a bit of a mess. The iPhone sells because consumers like them and they work well. You can debate weather they are the best smart phone but you can't debate the fact of their success. The first company that produces a printer that is reliable and works with the press of a button will get lots of consumer dollars. The low price point that the hobby is looking for right now is not going to be this successful printer. My guess is that when we finally do see it come to market it will be much higher priced than what we are discussing here.

[LambdaFF]

To answer your original question : I think that people are not doing the due diligence checks on at least 2 points.

1/ Yes, you can find startups that promise to sell you greater products for half the price of more established companies. But with no proven track record, and no company history, believing them is more an act of faith than a sound purchase decision.

2/ These are not simple processes and the machines require support / spares. The hype factor is still way too high in the 3d printing industry : most people gloss over the fact that it is not "idiot proof" as Curious aardvark points out, and the over enthusiastic articles from the press and manufacturers certainly don't helpHowever, some manufacturers are more honest than others on that point. If you go to the printrbot website, the sales pitch of the biggest machines (Metal plus dual for instance) is clearly : don't take it if you're not experienced. For the Pro, Brook wrote that he might even interview the buyers.

The fact is that you can't buy dirt cheap machines and expect to have an iphone like experience in 3D printing today.