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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