Anet A8 3D Printer.

[ukracer]

It was never a concept of not for profit, as I said, I don't know where you got that from, it was commercialised by the original university and researchers selling hardware kits the minute they got fully self replicating devices and the firmware/software to support it.
It was only ever concieved as a way to lower costs to get development going for home users, by allowing the expensive custom parts to be made at home by other printers. Nothing about that was ever not-for-profit, it was merely cost reduction of vital parts, to kickstart evolutionary development.
In fact one of the main drivers behind the entire point of getting 3d printers in homes was to drive forward small business popping up and being able offer highly specialised, customisable or bespoke products without the huge barrier to entry of jigs, moulds, patterns, etc.
Yes, that's right, one of the main points of RepRap was to help encourage many more for-profit commercial ventures.


"Since when is making money giving back to the community" - since they spend their own time and money making new evolutions of designs open source so people can make their own improved parts. Which they've done for a long time.

As an aside to that, after all your bluster about none-profit, not giving back to the community, development, etc - you seem quite happy to spend your money with a commerical for-profit company in China that contributed nothing to RepRap at all and merely made the cheapest copy of a hotend they can in order to grab the most profit from other peoples work.
How's that for irony.

Well its a bit " ironic" that one of the reasons we are not able to compete at sensible price is POSTAGE. Not so much as it used to be china knocking out cheap crap i think i have a genuine E3d block coming in the post with 4 Nozzles so i can check the quality.

Running with a nozzle as small as .4mm is always going to be difficult so i guess QC does play its part but a machine in china should be the same as a machine in the UK producing identical products.....given the fact i dont sell BUT have done in the past and at the time saw support as more important than profit. My partners...loosely termed only saw £ signs.
I would love to know how loosing Me ,Michael and Nasir affected their business.

What i found more ironic is that trading standards were not interested in anything i was trying to tell them even about dodgy electrics and bogus CE marks. They were more interested in Data protection BUT not about running a complete company on hookey software and actually cloning the Dongles.

So i am far more aware on chinese antics but Ebay and British Authorities only see the money they get from the sales.

 

[mrsbruce]

So, we are down to whether I believe there is an irony that the 3D printing concept was originally free access, and is now commercialised, and whether you accept that is irony.

I never claimed that reprap were handing out free kits willy nilly, I have only pointed out that they gave free access to their files, and software. It was a point of pride with the nice reprap man.

 

[ukracer]

The concept was to take the open source, develop it, and reshare the upgrades. Never bought a kit, Someone printed the kit from the free files, and I gave them the cost of the parts. All with the blessing of that nice reprap man, who wanted everyone to access it.

My whole point is the irony of such an open system now being commercial. Not whether commercial develoment is good or bad. The irony.



Actually, I buy from a British company, but he admits to most stuff now being imported from China due to profit margins being tight. How’s that for irony.

Sadly, the hubby never had any interest in buying a lathe, so I can’t even make them for myself. Maybe Santa will get one for me, and I can ‘give back to the community’ by turning 0.4mm nozzles.

You would not want to make nozzles for yourself.....absolutely no point. Even for me and i have lathes etc.

Too fiddly when a cnc will spit them out in seconds.

 

[PhillipM]

Yeah, subsidised postage is an issue, I can order parts from china with postage cheaper than me sending a letter in the UK.

I have some spare e3d nozzles you can have, but they're only for 2.85mm filament, and I don't think those machines will run it without changing the extruder as well.
I've just listed some Rigid.ink roll ends in freebies too.

 

[PhillipM]

So, we are down to whether I believe there is an irony that the 3D printing concept was originally free access.

It wasn't, the first parts for the RepRaps were made by commercial 3d printers.

 

[ukracer]

I know i am digressing my own thread further but i was involved in an Open Source project for a number of years.
One guy got rich we all worked for nothing in the hope of a viable online T shirt designer at the end of it all.....in the end Tom sold his site and the new owner now offers a paid service which does not even work.....and all our hard work went up in smoke as he wiped our forums from the server.........

 

[ukracer]

Yeah, subsidised postage is an issue, I can order parts from china with postage cheaper than me sending a letter in the UK.

I have some spare e3d nozzles you can have, but they're only for 2.85mm filament, and I don't think those machines will run it without changing the extruder as well.
I've just listed some Rigid.ink roll ends in freebies too.

Where...lol

 

[ukracer]

It wasn't, the first parts for the RepRaps were made by commercial 3d printers.

Must have been chicken and egg situation.

 

[mrsbruce]

It really depends on the machine and set up. My machine is happier with a 0.4mm nozzle, but I have experimented with 0.3mm and 0.5mm (0.3 was due to not having my glasses on). The larger one I swapped over to when I had problems with my filament. It did the job, but prefer 0.4mm.

One of the joys of a cheaper system, is you’re not so worried about trying things out (nor is your bank balance).

 

[PhillipM]

Must have been chicken and egg situation.

3d printing was around before RepRap, reprap was just designed to bring the costs to entry down and drive forwards a new cottage industry by allowing the expensive brackets and machinings to be made by other reprap machines instead of being cast or cut from billet.

 

[PhillipM]

Where...lol

It's probably waiting for approval.

 

[mrsbruce]

Must have been chicken and egg situation.

 

[ukracer]

It's probably waiting for approval.

Must be as i cant see it...lol

 

[mrsbruce]

3d printing was around before RepRap, reprap was just designed to bring the costs to entry down and drive forwards a new cottage industry by allowing the expensive brackets and machinings to be made by other reprap machines instead of being cast or cut from billet.

No, sorry, still ironic that a system that even you accept was open, is now so commercialised.

 

[ukracer]

It's probably waiting for approval.

Found it...

 

[PhillipM]

It's still open source, open source doesn't preclude commercialisation, even if you believe it does.

 

[ukracer]

It's still open source, open source doesn't preclude commercialisation, even if you believe it does.

Yeah...that took me a couple of years to get my head round it all....

 

[mrsbruce]

It's still open source, open source doesn't preclude commercialisation, even if you believe it does.

Nor does it preclude non-commercialisation. I see you are now diving into wikipedia.

 

[130]

Must have been chicken and egg situation.

If you mean which came first the chicken or the egg, it's the egg. Reptiles laid eggs millions of years before chickens evolved.

If you mean which came first the chicken or the "chicken egg" we need to know if by "chicken egg" you mean an egg laid by a chicken or you mean an egg a chicken hatched from.
If the later it is still the egg because due to evolution the thing that laid the egg the first chicken came out of was not quite a chicken.

But what's going to boil your noodle is how often a chicken had to evolve independently before it took hold.

Eg. first chicken has no one to breed with...…...dies out.
Second chicken gets stepped on crossing the sauropod road.

And so on.

 

[130]

Nor does it preclude non-commercialisation. I see you are now diving into wikipedia.

If you acknowledge that the "Open Source" nature precludes neither commercial or non-commercial models then the situation is neutral. Essentially it is neither and can be both so you defeated your own point.