Breaking news: MakerBot and Ultimaker agree to merge to accelerate global adoption of additive manufacturing

2 Likes

Yeah. That’s from May 12 (so not breaking, exactly).

My uneducated guess is that makerbot will try to focus on very inexpensive machines, and Ultimaker will try to go higher end (but not as high as stratasys).

The most interesting part to me is thingiverse. I wonder if it can be redeemed.

1 Like

Also Prusa bought Printed Solid.

1 Like

Wow I somehow had not heard until when I posted that. It’s interesting as mergers go: co-CEO’s.

2 Likes

They’re kinda shady now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thingiverse/comments/rhai1c/thingverse_automatically_adds_amazon_affiliates/

A real shame too. Thangs just scrapes Thingiverse it seems. Printables is really nice but is also owned by a company who is on the acquisition train so who knows. Probably more walled gardens in 3D printing’s future.

1 Like

Thingiverse has such a user base that if they gave attention to fixing what’s broken they could really redeem it. Boggles my mind how inattentive they are to it.

3 Likes

Printables is setting a good model for how to do it. Free and open source but promotes their products with “enhanced” features for Prusa owners. I’m sure Ultimaker has considered replicating this model already.

2 Likes

Makerbot is still under Stratasys though, right? So is this really “Stratasys enhances its hobbyist 3D printer portfolio with the acquisition of Ultimaker?”