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Comment by razemio | Hacker News Reader

A genuine Question. Is open hardware even possible at some point? The advances in quality and speed are nothing short but impressive. I started 3d printing stuff in my basement one year ago (Ender V3 Plus). With the quality and speed improvements, comes technology which gets more complex every year. Companies spend millions to archive this. Why would they share it? I remember building drones in my basement (still on my wall) with open source software on the flight controllers. Now I can get a drone from DJI for less money with more features, in a smaller from factor, longer flight time, pre build and under 249g. Ofc this comes at the cost of repairability, control and trust. However I can still buy the hardware I used years ago. If I wanted to, I can build a drone by myself. I guess the same will happen to 3d printers.

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> Is open hardware even possible at some point?

It already is. And its been chaotic and amazing at the same time.

We already have open source:

5DoF 3d printers with slicers

Fixed wing and quad/hexa/octocopters

Medical drug fabrication (Four Thieves)

Electrochemical synthesis lab

Open source flow batteries

Stops and starts of industrial tooling (open source ecology)

I'm going to say something that is becoming less and less controversial: copyrights and patents are the real drag here. Individuals can get patents, but can't actually enforce. So they end as weapons as companies go after each other.

Copyright is also often intertwined into patents, so that if a thing isn't covered by a patent, copyright (with firmware) takes over. Then the DMCA and anti-circumvention shit.

The other problem here in the USA is almost impossible to source parts directly, or small fab labs that can do operations.

I was looking for a 5mm thick 500x500mm aluminum plate to be cut. Waterjet, plasma, whatever. I wanted it slightly undercut. I made blueprints in DXF and pdf. I contacted 2 waterjet companies, no response. Contacted a welding company with plasma table. No response. Down the list, no response.

As a creator, how am I supposed to create, when all avenues lead to "source it in China"? That... Is huge.

Did you try SendCutSend? They are in the US and this type of thing is their main line of business.

I wasn't aware of them.

I did the thing I knew worked, and ordered from China. Got here in 2 weeks, and was reasonably priced.

And I didn't have to faff around with damned inch measurements. All the American shops demanded inches... Then again, they also never responded.

>As a creator, how am I supposed to create, when all avenues lead to "source it in China"? That... Is huge.

Trying to make a thing and not sourcing stuff internationally is almost impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

I think "sourcing internationally" is one thing and avoiding China (or any single country for that matter) is another. The current administration puts a lot of effort on being independent from everyone else. I think that approach is misguided. We have allies and we need them anyways. Unlike the Soviet Union, China has 3x the population of the US. If we want to have weight on the international stage, we need our allies. If we can source pieces from multiple countries and ideally from allies, it's IMO a very minor issue. Always needing pieces that only come from a single country, especially one that's not a liberal democracy, is a much bigger issue.

That said, I think Chinese manufacturing has a huge advantage from factories being close to each other. Getting your PCB for prototyping in a few hours instead of 10 days is a huge advantage.

That wasn't really the problem I had.

I'm also not a Sinophobe. I've ordered plenty from China. I even have a XiaoHongShu account.

As an inventor, one thing that greatly speeds up making stuff is a rapid order and getting parts. And in my case, I literally needed a rectangular sheet of aluminum. I did all the CAD work, submitted to local companies who could do it, and not a peep. I would have paid the American premium of getting it made locally.

I'm also not the only person with this problem. I know others who wanted to hire a welder for a 2 hour job. Even went to the Union hall. Nobody. Nada. And the guy was also part of the IBEW as well. Doesn't matter if you're paying.

And again, this was over a metal plate. No powder coating. No special treatment. Nothing.

I know its a very boomerish thing to say, but its like companies in the USA really don't want to work. My thing would have been small. But I would have brought more small fabrication jobs, and informed local makers that they could do this. But no.

"I know its a very boomerish thing to say, but its like companies in the USA really don't want to work. My thing would have been small"

This rings truer than it should. We had a locksmith out to give us an estimate to install several high-security locks that I can only assume would have been fairly good business. Never heard back from them. We didn't bother following up with them either because if they can't even bother writing up the estimate, how can I trust their work?

I wonder if it's a lack of competition in part based on a labor shortage and tight occupational licensing

You could get that for $75 to $150 (depending on lead time and whether you want 5052 or 6061) from SendCutSend or OshCut (both US-based), as long as you're willing to use 3/16 inch (4.7 mm) plate instead of 5 mm. They'll also bend it for you if you want.

But at a higher level you're right: availability of fabrication services in the U.S. is pretty poor, and most shops are optimized for a few larger orders, not small mix orders like yours.

maybe you're just very unlucky because there are a number of places that do this right from their website ( another commenter mentioned sendcutsend as just one example ).

Open hardware for 3D printers is actually thriving. There's a whole fleet of community designed hardware, with most innovations to consumer 3D printing still originating in the DIY community.

Multiple manufacturers have direct contact with community members to produce custom hardware at a small but affordable scale, and keeping up with rapid iterations and multiple hardware improvements throughout the year.

Some of the most cutting edge as well as niche 3D printing hardware available to consumers are being sold on small webshops operating out of someone's garage.

If anything, we're in a golden age right now. 3D printing in 2025 is a very exciting place to be.

As a person who chose to buy an Elegoo Centauri Carbon rather than upgrade his Ordbot Quantum w/ a heated bed and enclosure and to then try to re-design it to use a CoreXY motion system, I would agree that is exactly the path which we are on --- the new printer came in at a lower price than just the initial parts order for heated bed and enclosure, let alone a different motion system. All of the printers which I wanted (Positron, Prusa Core One) or was considering (Bambu Labs P1S) were over twice or almost twice the price of the ECC.

That Elegoo seems to be supporting open standards: https://www.tomshardware.com/3d-printing/elegoo-launches-aut... was one thing which allowed me to justify placing that order.

They also seem to have major bugs, maybe even some serious security issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/elegoo/comments/1mbhnmn/centauri_ca...

That's why I've only been printing to mine using a USB stick and it's not on my network.

> Is open hardware even possible at some point?

Think about this question for a second and you'll realize that it's rooted in consumerism. We always want 'quality and speed', but most of all, convenience and apparent low cost (that 'apparent' part is important). What if the product wasn't cheap or the best you could get? What if the product requires more attention than being just a consumer? Conventional wisdom says that they'd be dead on arrival. But consumerism also comes with consumer exploitation.

There are numerous examples of this today. People yearn for dump large LCD panels (cheaper ones, not the ad panels or large monitors) instead of the sluggish, invasive, ad-ridden, irreparable and annoying smart TVs that we have today. Configurable modular laptops and phones like the Framework and Fairphone are enjoying a comeback today after decades of soldered-on components (even the battery), individually paired modules, glued on casings (instead of the convenient screwed on ones), horrendously costly repairs and depressingly short service life. The (paper) printer market is so rife with exploitation that their CEOs consider their customers as 'investments' that are lossy if they don't buy ink cartridges on subscription! Similar story in the automotive sector. People annoyed by full touch screen control panels, heated seats on subscription, parts that cannot be serviced by anyone else.. I could go on for hours.

It's very tempting to give up the reparable and open hardware in favor of mass produced better performing products on account of the cost, effort and time needed to deal with the former. But as their market dries up, the inevitable enshittification of the latter sets in. In pursuit of the continued satisfaction of the shareholders, it's no longer enough for the producers to take hefty margins on each unit you purchase. They move to squeezing every last penny off of you by seeking rent on products that shouldn't be under subscriptions in the first place. Eventually, you end up spending more than if you were using the dumb devices. And then predictably like clockwork, people start lamenting about the feature creep, loss of serviceability, loss of quality and greed.

It's at this point that dumb devices market open up again. The market is small and products are costlier owing to the low scale of production. But they grow a dedicated customer base and healthy revenues that improve over time. So with this hindsight, how about we stick with the open and reparable hardware? If their market doesn't crash, their costs wont rise either. This long term strategic decision can help consumers protect their rights and their savings. But that never happens. This is one scam that the world falls for again and again and again, no matter how many times it plays out.

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