What the Kickstarter Hangover will do to the 3D Printing industry | Hacker News Reader

What the Kickstarter Hangover will do to the 3D Printing industry

jasonevanish.com

25 pointsjevanish15 comments

Like others have noted, most of this can be generally applied to Kickstarter projects in general. Some thoughts from someone working with consumer 3D printers almost daily:

I can't see disappointment (as he's outlined it) as a consequence of these delays. It's something unavoidably bound up in home and hobbyist 3D printing in general. It doesn't matter if you have a Makerbot or Kickstarter-backed printer... there's still a learning curve in terms of mechanical operation and maintenance, 3D modeling, etc. that the average user won't have had previous experience with.

The greater consumer 3D printing market is not on Kickstarter. Makerbot machines, the Afinia, the Cube series... these are the greater consumer market. I can't see the potential pitfalls for Kickstarted 3D printers as being much different than the usual risks/mindset of people who contribute to crowd-funding stuff.

Obsolescence also doesn't seem like as much of an issue. If you get a reliable printer in a medium that will work for your needs, you're good for a while... it's more important that the user decide what they want. Print material, build size, software and hardware niceties... it really depends on what you're doing and what you need. And the person who put together a RepRap is probably much different than the person who saw the Form 1 on Kickstarter and thought it sounded cool enough to try. There are different expectations along the broad spectrum of things the consumer can buy in the 3D printing space.

That makes a lot of sense. I think you don't really totally know what you're looking for until you have one in some cases. I know I bought a Solidoodle because it was cheaper and readily available. Now that I've used it a bit, I see the value in paying for a more reliable printer with a larger build size that is at a higher price point. If I had bought a Kickstarter printer first, it would have taken much longer to get to that point simply due to the wait. And while some of the issues plague all printers, I meant to allude to the fact that those issues compound when you add in Kickstarter- specific problems.

I think this article speaks more about the general public coming to terms with how crowd-funding works in general. Kickstarter has already made efforts to help people identify that funding a project != buying a product. http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

When I give money on kickstarter, I give it on a "cound and forget" basis. Usually they are not products, but projects, like the human powered helicopter and such, also my amounts are small, 5 or 10 euros. So I don't mind if I don't see results.

It´s "Found and forget", I was writting from the Iphone.

I, personally, expect Kickstarter projects to be later than their original delivery promises. Especially if the scope expanded due to stretch goals. I've backed about two dozen campaigns at this point, and I'm not sure any of them have delivered "on time".

I'm halfway through running my second kickstarter campaign. I'm hoping to deliver the rewards a lot faster than I did for the first one; I learnt a lot about making and shipping stuff during the first one, and tried to structure the rewards in such a way as to eliminate the biggest time-sink on my end.

I totally agree with you to expect delays from estimates, but I also think many people either A) won't do the same or B) It's just hard to comprehend how different things might be in the market when you finally get it 6-12 months after you "ordered" it.

Is there a Kickstarter hangover? Genuine question--I've been hearing about "Kickstarter fatigue" for years now, and I'm not sure the data is there to support it. Anyone have any figures on this?

In my opinion, it's not kickstarter itself that will experience the fatigue, but the 3D printing category itself. Very similar products are coming out in a very short amount of time. I expect a dozen new printers to come out on kickstarter before these are even shipped. What's that going to do to people's expectations?

We couldn't be higher on the hype cycle right now. I think many people will be disappointed with 1. the a huge difference in quality between printers, 2. you can usually only print one color, 3. it's typically not a simple process to print, 4. printing takes a long time, 5. learning how to use/maintain/calibrate the printer takes a really long time

The metric of being 'on time' seems rather irrelevant; being successful at delivering a product that lives up to expectations seems more to the point.

I'm assuming at least a small factor of why delivery gets delayed is the fact that they became significantly overfunded with a lot more perks needed to be fulfilled/produced/shipped over the original amount that was planned to be provided in the timeline that these projects originally laid out.

The worst part about being on the bleeding edge is that we are bored by the time something hits the mainstream.

The fact is that 3D printing is still in its incubation stage. The market hasn't seen any concept hit storefronts in which the average middle class consumer can decide whether or not they should buy a printer...it's still 'magic'

One of these companies is going to figure out how to source at a scale that gets them into Best Buy. Then you can expect this segment to truly explode.

I'm not sure that adding features to an already late project is the best idea.

If they can cheaply and quickly add it (by leveraging someone else's hardware or software) it could be worth it, but certainly not suggesting you change the design you sent to a contract manufacturer or anything like that.

peachy printer only costs $100, that is the same price for a hot-end for normal printers. What else can go wrong with $100?

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