Unlike Desktop Computers, Desktop Fabrication Machines Are Not For Consumers
Why the lack of understanding what a manufacturing method can do, is the biggest adoption hurdle for the vision of “a desktop fabrication machine in every household.”
We’ve reflected a lot about why 3D printing never took off with makers and consumers as everybody imagined it would like desktop computers. Besides the hype of the media, studies of the Maker Market painted a promising picture of a movement empowering normal people with the means of production fueled by a demographic characterized by firm conviction and disposable income comparable to the desktop computer revolution. The sudden bankruptcy filings of both the TechShop makerspaces and Maker Media with Maker Faire with their long history of fostering makers, making, and maker communities, came to a surprise to many. One could say the Maker Market desperately disappointed an entire generation of entrepreneurs who wanted to empower normal people with the means of production.
I found the most compelling and reverberating reasons when I came across the story of Bantam Tools, a desktop fabrication machine that’s made for milling. The parallels with our experiences struck me so much that I want to provide you a reading experience without adding any of our reasoning added. Therefore, in the following I just share an edited version from three different sources with you from their point of view.
Bantam Tools, a pro-level milling desktop fabrication machine, shifted its focus from hobbyist makers to professionals who can use the miniature milling machine to make their lives easier at work.
The conceit of making manufacturing available to anyone is powerful. But for its founder Applestone it proved unsustainable: “We had this great maker-focused marketing message, but 90 percent of what we were selling wasn’t to makers. You want everyone to feel how empowering it is to have this tool so you want to sell for everyone, but it’s not really for everyone.” From a certain perspective, not much has changed. But the biggest change, by far, is that Bantam Tools is no longer betting its success on the basement makers it first set out to entice.
It’s a story very similar to the ones of 3-D printers a couple of years earlier: The issue, it seemed, was a lack of understanding around what 3-D printers could do Pettis, Cofounder of Makerbot, realized.
Like MakerBot, Bantam’s product promises to speed up a notoriously slow manufacturing process. The company’s machine allows people who want to prototype to slash their product development cycle by weeks. If they needed to make any changes after testing, they’d have to go through the whole process again. “What we do is eliminate that whole process of outsourcing,” Applestone says. The goal is to make hardware development so fast that it approaches the pace of software development. Something that Pinkston is working on with his startup Plethora by providing the results, not the machines itself. A prototype can be delivered to you in hours and days instead of weeks. “What if it took two weeks to compile a computer program?” Applestone asks. “Can you imagine how many fewer startups there would be working in software?”
CNC Milling can be even bigger than 3-D printing: “When I started MakerBot, 3-D printing was very similar to where CNC milling is now,” Pettis says. It’s a powerful but young tool.” Applestone says,“with a milling machine, the world is your Lego.” And Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries believes that “desktop milling has the potential to be even more significant than consumer 3-D printing.”
And while 3D printers are a far, far way from being a household appliance, they’re still selling, believe it or not — mostly to schools and businesses looking for a quick and easy way to prototype products from a desk. Those, coincidentally, have already proven pillars for Bantam’s business, with their customers being engineers, educators, hobbyists.
“We’re a product for engineers and people who want to be engineers,” she explains. “I have a very broad opinion of who can be an engineer if they want to be, but it’s not going to be sitting next to a toaster oven or anything like that. I don’t see it as a consumer product.”
In order to make tools like Bantam into the accessible, ubiquitous machines that Pettis and Applestone dream of, it’ll take more powerful technology and a closing of the gap between the perception of what’s possible and reality. The much-hyped home manufacturing revolution could still change the world — it just might not start at home.
