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Interesting chart from 3dhubs.com:
http://3dprinting.com/wp-content/upl...ribution-1.jpg
Shows which printers are listed most on their site. The Ultimaker is #1, but mostly popular just in Europe, while Makerbot is most popular in North America by far.
I'm surprised Solidoodle is so low on the chart. If you go to their site they seem extremely popular, with all the people at their forum. Being from the US I have heard the most about Makerbot, and am quite surprised that Ultimaker is #1. Interesting that Cube is so far down the list as well. I thought they were much more popular as well.
I am personally surprised to see that RepRap is that popular. I also would have though Solidoodle was more popular than RepRap.
There are so many printers on this list that I have never heard of. What is Prusa Mendel? Seems very popular, yet I never have heard of it before.
AFAIK the Prusa Mendel is a type of RepRap. If you were to group them together then that would make the RepRap a close third.
I've taken my Solidoodle along to the local hackerspace on occasion, and I tell you that it was always well out-numbered by the various flavours of RepRaps being assembled, worked and debugged there. The whole thing about printing the parts on another machine is very attractive to the hacker community.
The inclusion that I'm most surprised about is Zcorp. I'd have thought that those machines would have been sufficiently unaffordable to keep them further down the list, but then again I suppose they have been in business quite a bit longer than most of these consumer-level machines too. I can't see the situation lasting too long though.
The number of printers on 3Dhubs (2,012 as of this moment) is far too small for this chart to have much significance (imo). Ultimaker is so well represented because 3Dhubs is based in Europe - look at their "top 5 communities" - all in The Netherlands and Belgium.
wow makergear didnt even make the list lol
RepRap stands for Replicating Rapid Prototype. RepRaps can print at least some part of themselves to make a new printer. My guess is that if you add up all the RepRaps on that list they will outnumber any of the commercial printers.
Prusa comes from Josep Prusa. He is a Czech engineer who invented the Prusa Mendel, Prusa i2 and Prusa i3. What is noteworthy about him is that his inventions are truly open source and kits of them are sold by many online vendors. He really stands by this and was very disappointed and vocal about it when Makerbot went closed source.
Printrbot was also a RepRap when they did their first Kickstarter. Brook found out very quickly though that it is a nightmare to mass produce $800,000 worth of printed printers.
Cheers,
KDog
Josep Prusa is an awesome guy. I truely think Prusa is a company that will be around for a long time. I have a buddy with the i3, and it is fabulous!Quote:
Prusa comes from Josep Prusa. He is a Czech engineer who invented the Prusa Mendel, Prusa i2 and Prusa i3. What is noteworthy about him is that his inventions are truly open source and kits of them are sold by many online vendors. He really stands by this and was very disappointed and vocal about it when Makerbot went closed source.
We just ran a survey ourselves. Keep in mind, it only has 84 respondents and is in no way statistically significant! Nearly all respondents were US based.
Of users with intermediate to advanced design skills, MakerBots held 30% of the market.
Of users with no design skill, or beginner level design skill, MakerBots were quite a bit below Solidoodle, Printrbot, and RepRap.
People with more experience are buying the more expensive machines, and people with less experience are going for cheaper machines.
Drew Taylor
https://3Dagogo.com
That sounds like a realistic result. It shows that as people gain more experience with 3D printing, they are able to progress to the more complex machines.Quote:
Originally Posted by DTaylor
I was going to ask where the DIY machines would fit in, but I think that there are very few in the whole 3D printing community who would bother with designing and producing their own entry level machine. I bought a Mendel Prusa i3 for $US595 plus postage. Landed at my door it cost the same as the first CNC machine I built, and the Prusa was cut out ready to assemble.
Old Man Emu
Google trends gives an interesting graph:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore...idoodle&cmpt=q
I really thought that MakerBot was more popular than Ultimaker. I also thought Cube was a lot more popular than what this graph shows. Honestly I don't know how accurate this graph really is....
The google trends graph seems to be a bit more accurate. It shows that Makerbot is well out in the lead.
The Google trend graph is based on searches? If you frequent the MakerBot forums, you would see that there are thousands of discussions mostly related to solving inherent design deficiencies, griping about customer services and people producing fixes and replacement parts. That has to skew the graph!
DTaylor, I thing you are spot on about the trend in buyers! Like most hobbies, people start to get in "on the cheap" until they see if it is something that they are really interested in and then they invest more into it. I see it with RC Hobbies, Robotics, Gun enthusiasts, Car Enthusiasts, and 3D printing enthusiasts.
Derek, were you at Maker Faire NY? Joe has been there the past few three years and everyone that has met him would agree with you. We have built tons of printers since 2010 and last year we built several Prusa i3s. They are compact, easy to build, solid, reliable and have great printing volume. While there are scores of under $700.00 3D Printers out there now, you would be hard pressed to find many better than his design.