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Tangibot – An Exact Clone of the Makerbot Replicator

13 Aug, 2012 by JF Brandon in DESIGN, NEWS
Tags: makerbot, open source, replicator, tangibot
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Matt Strong has begun a Kickstarter campaign to sell the Tangibot, another 3D Printer. Wait it’s not just any 3D printer – it’s an exact copy of the Makerbot Replicator, and a relatively cheaper one at that. $1,199 instead of $1,749 for a single extruder and $1,299 instead of $1,999 for a dual extruder. Discussion and general discord has exploded across the internet, none in part due to the irony that Matt Strong is replicating ‘The Replicator’ (let me be the first to say … BWAHAHA)

What is Open Source for?

There is nothing illegal about what Strong is doing – Makerbot posted all the documentation online. Almost all of their components are off-the-shelf and the software is free. Makerbot has been a huge supporter of Open Source – in reality, the Cupcake, the Thingomatic, the Replicator, they are all derived from the RepRap project. Thingiverse is an open community of CAD designs. But it’s not because Makerbot is a wealthy Uncle that can afford this – they state “When we say open source, we mean open source. The inside of your Replicator belongs to you just as much as the outside, and we want you to get acquainted with it.” One of the unwritten commandments of Open Source is that copying and selling a product is ‘not good karma’. Its legal, but its really not a nice thing to do. EEVBlog has a great take on it below.

You’re Doing it Wrong

Makerbot released all the specs after taking the risk, supporting their customers and creating software. It’s a risky strategy, especially when this happens. If Strong actually hits his $500,000 goal on Kickstarter, that will be $500,000 that Makerbot could have earned for all it’s persistence and hard work. And have to help extra customers it never sold products to. In other words, Matt Strong is making it so risky for them to continue to be Open Source and suppress the initiative of others to innovate. What’s the lesson to the whole 3D printing community – why try when I can copy?

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Tag-a-long-bot

Matt Strong’s argument to support his campaign is simple. 1) Its legal and 2) I’m doing a favor to Customers by offering a cheaper Replicator. First off, so what if it’s legal? It’s still wrong. Lots of things are legal yet completely wrong. So be cool and don’t do it. Matt’s second point is a fairly myopic one. Consumer are not getting a cheaper Replicator. Replicators are made by Makerbot and a great deal of cost and love and butterflies in the stomach were put into it. He is offering a 3D printer, and its not even the cheapest one out there (Hello, Solidoodle? $500!). In the long-run, he is screwing the Consumer over by killing innovation within companies and the community with the aim of making money in the short-run.

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The closest thing of an annoyed Bre Pettis that I could find

The Impact

Already Matt Strong has made $15,000 in the past few days, with 25 days left to hit $500,000. Personally, I hope that he falls short of this. Usually I support any sort of 3D printer – this is an exception because….the Tangibot isn’t exceptional. The purpose of Kickstarter is to get the world to fund unique projects – I’m frankly surprised that Kickstarter allowed this. If Strong is successful, Makerbot will have to revise their Open Source policy and become closed source. This would be a real shame – they are one of the only 3D printing companies that is so gung-ho on free unfettered Open Source 3D printing.

Source: Tangibot and EEVBlog

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About JF Brandon

JF Brandon is contributing author for SolidSmack, loves his DIY, his 3D Printing, the Future and the history of Design and Manufacturing. He runs DShape CAnada and lives in Vancouver, Canada. If you see something on the Internet you think he'd like, pass it along!
JF on google+

  • ion

    Well lets get this started shall we.

    “Twisted by the Dark Side young Skywalker has become.”

    “Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun the Clone War has.”

  • JF

    Hahahahah ion, thank you. That was brilliant.

  • arasbm

    I also feel that what he is doing is wrong but it is not illegal or
    against the acceptable practices of open source. This situation reminds
    me of what google has done with Android. They made a huge amount of
    profit from a fork of Linux and it seemed unfair. I was very surprised
    to hear the response from Linus Torvalds when he was asked how he feels
    about Android. I cant replicate his response here exactly but he said
    that he always encourages people to fork Linux and try to make it
    better. The Linux kernel team are confident at what they do and do not
    feel threatened by the people who distribute their own forks of Linux –
    in fact they really encourage it. The bottom line is that they are the
    best at what they do and they have the community to back them up. I
    don’t think this guy will raise the $500000. First of all, he is no
    Google. Secondly, he hasn’t improved the Replicator in any ways. But
    even if he does succeed — which I hope not — this will be beneficial
    to the Replicator project in the long run. The owners of those machines
    will realize quickly where the best source of information for Replicator
    is and become part of that community. The guys behind replicator are
    great and I don’t think this is a threat to them or the open source
    license.

    I would buy my 3D printer directly from the source, because I trust they
    are the ones who will move the 3D printing technology forward and
    continue innovating.

  • Lee Lloyd

    What a difficult quandary. On the one hand, I find every single aspect of just copying someone else’s design, and selling it, to be offensive, and distasteful. On the other hand, I am so incredibly shocked by what a ridiculously overhyped, low quality, hipster toy the Makerbot is, that I kind of feel like they are getting what they deserve, for working so hard at marketing their mediocre RepRap variant, as the bleeding edge of the ‘desktop manufacturing revolution®’

  • www.facebook.com/ttstam Terence Tam

    My question to those that say, “Oh, but they are knocking off Makerbot. It’s okay, they’re big and their stuff is overhyped”: Would you feel the same way if it was a smaller company that he’s knocking off – one that hasn’t quite made it to Makerbot level fame and success?

    I wrote down my opinion here:
    blog.openbeamusa.com/2012/08/11/how-not-to-win-friends-and-influence-people-on-kickstarter/

    My biggest beef with all this, aside from the no-improvement, tag-along me too money grab move, is that he really isn’t doing that much work. Anyone that’s work with a CM (Contract Manufacturer) will know that the DFM is a part of the CM’s value-add; their manufacturing engineers will do all the hard work to make sure that it is manufactured efficiently. And this is information that is proprietary to the CM. I roughly estimated that the tooling for the unit will cost about $15k tops in China, and that the BOM cost per unit including labor won’t ring in above $500.00 So, toss in a top of the line Epilog laser cutter to be generous, that’s about $245k. Where do you think the rest of that quarter million dollars is going to go?

    -=- Terence

  • noko

    >There is nothing illegal about what Strong is doing
    Stopped reading right there. This is part of what Open Source means. Stopping it would be a hard blow to the promises of Open Source.

  • noko

    As I see it, he’s making an improvement in the price. Which is as good an improvement as any.

  • Lee Lloyd

    Since you asked, for me it isn’t the size, but the hype factor, that makes it emotionally complicated. If this guy were knocking off the Ultimaker, or one of the other lesser known printers, it would be an uncomplicated case of disdain for the guy doing it. However, when I see Bre Pettis on the Colbert Report, the nightly news, Wired magazine, time and time again acting like the Makerbot is the first and only option ever available for an individual to make something on their desktop (my 10-year-old Roland CNC mill would argue differently), it kind of changes the emotional equation.

    In reality, there isn’t anything particularly special about the Makerbot. It is just another extrusion printer. It isn’t the cheapest, it isn’t the first, it isn’t the best, it is just another low-end extrusion printer, with a good PR initiative. I have a hard time feeling a lot of compassion for a company who isn’t really offering anything innovative to begin with, when they are a victim of their own hype.

  • anon

    There is nothing wrong with selling copies of free software. If the
    maker of the free software does not sell it as cheap as it could be, and
    someone else gets a copy and finds a way to sell it cheaper, then he
    benefits everyone by actually going ahead and doing it. Free software
    intended for a wide enough audience will generally be available for free
    because of this possibility. The equivalent outcome for free hardware
    would be that it would be sold at a small markup over the cost of the
    cheapest known derivative design that actually works.
    The makers of
    Makerbot advanced the state of the art by planning and designing it.
    Matt Strong advances the state of the art even further by taking that
    proven design and manufacturing it cheaper. That’s what the kickstarter
    campaign is paying for, the improved process resulting in lower costs.
    The
    makers of Makerbot are free to launch their own campaigns for further
    iterations of Makerbot, if they feel like they need the dough. They
    could also try and create a new Makerbot, derived from Tangibot,
    resulting in an even lower price or high performance.

  • www.facebook.com/jf.brandon JF Brandon

    I feel a lot of compassion for them – they really did kick 3D printing into the mainstream. MB has to be very smart and swift if they want to stay ahead of their competitors.

  • www.facebook.com/jf.brandon JF Brandon

    Great post Tam spacer

    Yeah I don’t buy the argument that the replicator is overpriced – there are a lot of thing wrapped up with the price – software and support. So Matt comes along and offers a price that excludes those elements – and somehow thats a value proposition to the consumer….not really. Thats a ripoff.

  • www.facebook.com/jf.brandon JF Brandon

    I really have a hard time that lower prices mean innovation. First off, Strong’s price only include part costs and labour, not software and not support and certainly not time spent designing and innovating. Secondly, China ships cheap knockoffs yet many comment at its lack of innovation.

  • www.facebook.com/jf.brandon JF Brandon

    Why did the Hipster burns his hand on the Makerbot? Because he touched the finished print before it was cool.

    Actually – I don’t think its overhyped – i think MB is doing the right thing and they’ll be fine. I hope they start going with SLS and such tech soon … the problem for them is that they could get pummled by the big boys for patent infringement…. unlike the small guys….

  • www.facebook.com/ttstam Terence Tam

    But – a knock-off is a knock-off. Just because a company in your eyes is a more mainstream (or media wh*re) than others doesn’t change the fact that Tangibot a knock-off.

    I have zero plans on buying a Makerbot, BTW. I think they are overpriced and overhyped machines; a RapRep, Utilimaker, etc, all will do more for less. But that being said, I respect Makerbot for one thing: 5 years ago, I had a failed company selling 3D printed Zcorp parts. Back then, no one knew what the hell a 3D printer was. Now, at every maker faire, you see 3D printers, robot petting zoos, etc, and it’s getting an entire generation of young kids interested in electronics and 3D printing. And a lot of this traces back to Makerbot’s outreach.

    (And, by that definition, Matt isn’t knocking off the *best* printer either. He’s knocking off the most popular one – and using their hard work on marketing and name recognition to peddle his knock-off, to make him more of a douche.)

  • NE_Heights_Elitist

    Cry me a river. This is why intellectual property matters. Makerbot gave away every detail how to make a copy. They screwed themselves. No one else.

  • NE_Heights_Elitist

    If that company is dumb enough to post their entire intellectual property portfolio online, then it is hard to feel sorry for them.

  • NE_Heights_Elitist

    3D printing is not mainstream for anyone outside of the design community.

  • www.genomicon.com Nick Taylor

    Trouble with this post is that it repeats various lies of the copy-monopolyists, namely

    1) the “lost sale” lie.

    Just because someone acquires something cheaper somewhere else, does not automatically mean they would have bought the expensive option offered by the monopolist if that was the only choice.

    2) the “breaking copy-monopoly kills innovation” lie

    There is absolutely no evidence for this. Sure you can argue the “logic” of it, but what we actually see, in actual reality, is that innovation happens in spite of copy-monopoly… a

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