Printrbot is closed!

[RetireeJay]

This is posted on Printrbot.com
PrintrbotClosed.JPG
I'm somewhat sad to see them go. It has sure been a learning experience for me over the last 6 years.

But to tell the truth, I'm happy now that I have a Prusa MK3 printer. The design is solid, with a metal frame, but still there are opportunities to optimize. And the current state of development is very robust, with many employees at the Prusa headquarters along with a large community of users continually engaged in improvement. Oh, and Prusa is located in Czechoslovakia, not China.

As far as I know, Plexus will probably keep this forum open for as long as there are people interacting on it. I'll continue to drop in a few days a week.

EDIT: Here is more news about the closing:

[KDog]

Wow, so sorry to hear this. Brook is a true hero in the field. I'm sure that it became very difficult to compete with the wave of cheap Chinese printers that have flooded the market. Hope there is some way that Brook can stay in the field. Certainly his education and outreach missions were top notch and his designs persist in many of the new printers out there.

[mdfast1]

I'm devastated for Brook and the team. I need to compile my thoughts on this. They will be back, I can't see them going out like this.

Jay I'm also loving my MK3, part of the "problem".

[Corey Warren]

What a bummer. My love for 3D printing starting with Printrbot. My Metal Simple still churns out parts with very little effort. After getting it calibrated and dialed in with the help from the great people on this site I rarely need to monkey with it. And I still have my original JonBot (upgraded Simple Wood) and it works great too! I'm glad I've ordered extra parts over the years like extra extruders for when they start to burn out.

I hope Brook made enough money to retire in the Caribbean.

I think I'm going to move on to the Creality3D CR-10 S4 as my last 3D printer purchase. I'm impressed with the quality and the build volume should be more than enough for even huge projects.

[Jack Crow]

RJ
That is not great news.

Just about got the simple metal dialed in to the point where it is reliable and the source of factory parts goes away.

Must be how Plymouth and Pontiac owners feel.

Figure it will be a few weeks for the details to be sorted out.
Damm this hurts.

Jack Crow aka Radio Mike

[novice]

Went to their site earlier today and while the announcement had yet to be posted, one could no longer shop printrbot causing me to wonder and return tonight. You know I have two Simple Metals on the desk that print regularly and a Play v2 kit that shipped on Monday. I have no regrets with my printrbots. Still anxiously await the Play v2 in spite of today's announcement.

[__Vinz__]

Discovered the news today while going to the site.
I am very saddened by the news for I thought Printrbot was a great company, with open source at its heart and fueled great innovation (I own a Play, which I upgraded a few times, currently working on adding the LED strip to it, next will be printrboard G2).
I hope there is a path forward for those owning a Simple Pro, as I don't know what will happen to the cloud side of things...

[Mooselake]

That was unexpected; at least from this far away it looked like Printrbot was hanging in there. I was hoping that they'd be one of the post consolidation survivors but that ended up not being true.

Possible this might become the only PB support forum again, for those unlucky enough to be recent purchasers, at least until PB fades into the past.

Kirk

[wd5gnr]

I just heard and came by to say hello to everyone. I still have my Printrbot Plus running. While my exwife was holding it hostage I bought a Monoprice Mini. And I put together an Anet A8 but I still use the plus even though I ditched the Ubis and -- as some of you may remember -- made lots of mods.

This forum was great and so very helpful as was Brook. Had I bought the Monoprice or another assembled printer first I wouldn't know what I know today about 3D printing and that has served me very well for a bunch of reasons.

End of an era

[Mooselake]

All the links I can find for Printrbot's official forum get 404 page not found errors (without even a puppy).

Amazon still has a few Printrbots for sale, sold by and shipped from Amazon. Wonder if they'll have a fire sale?

Kirk

[novice]

[marmil]

I was sorry to hear this news. I always loved Brook's drive and enthusiasm, in the 3d printer field or whatever he was exploring. Hopefully we will get to see that continue in a new venture at some point.

[novice]

[AZBotr]

That's a shame. Regardless of this news Brook and his team should be extremely proud of what they've accomplished over the years. Thousands upon thousands of people were able to get into 3D printing thanks to his outstanding printers that were affordable for the little guy. Some found out that "3D Printing Is Hard!" and ended that pursuit. But a lot of us have grown in this field, have bought other printers, honed our 3D modelling skills, and even make a little money on the side. I've got my Simple Metal in the garage still chugging away doing what it does best, and anytime I have a print job running and I walk in to check up on it, I'm still amazed at the technology and how it "just works." My Metal has a buddy now, an Anycubic Photon and that thing is amazing. I can't wait to see what we'll be printing with five years from now. Who knows, maybe my Simple Metal will still be doing its thing.

[JonS]

I'm really sadden by this news. I saw Brook briefly at Bay Area Maker Faire in May, but we didn't get much of a chance to chat (some slightly weird guy interrupted us wanting to do an interview), so I didn't get to the opportunity to hear how the business was doing (the previous year, he'd told me that he'd had to lay off a significant portion of his workforce).

I hope he and the rest of the team find new and exciting (and financially rewarding) opportunities soon.

Last time I went to the online store, I discovered that I had $100 in credit. I could only assume that Brook had gifted it to me (it might have been after I shared with him my design for a dual blower fan for the dual extruder Metal Plus, or maybe after I provided him with a GoPro for the employee discount price - he had already paid me for that). This says something about the generosity of the man. I wish him well.

[MileHigh3DII]

Really sad. I have two Plus models, both out of wood. That is all I own Brook! I did what I could.

It seemed that videos and new things weren't coming out like before. It seemed like things were off. I guess this is what happens at the cutting edge of tech.

Brook seems like a class dude, and all my interactions with people at printrbot were highly professional. My Plus' are starting to show their age and if parts get tight I'll probably go with a Prusa MK3 MMU model. I just don't feel like converting over my ceramic UBIS to the newer ones.

[WayTooManyHobbies]

Definitely sad news. My wooden Plus was my first printer, and while long in the tooth it is still quite reliable. Hopefully Brook will stay involved in the 3D printing community.

[__Vinz__]

Ok, it looks as as of today, the Printrbot support site is down as well (http://www.printrbot.com/support) so this means all docs are unaccessible.
I was wary about that so I have managed to get a local copy of all things related to the Printrbot Play, as well as the G2 board. PM me if you need access to a copy of it.

Hopefully, they will restore the support site for a while so that everyone can do that as well (or better, we can host it somewhere).
This reminds me of the bad memories of the official Dozuki forum being wiped out when PBHQ switched to Zendesk exclusively without transitioning over the existing posts

[ktfergus]

Dang, I did not see this coming! Definitely a bummer. I recently watched & it sounded like PB was going to pull thru (the part with Brook starts at 3:35).

I've been super happy with all of my PB machines; & I'm forever grateful for all the help I've gotten from everyone on this site! It's a shame PB had to close up shop.

-Kelly

[__Vinz__]

Just a note that I got an answer from Carl Ubis when writing to him about the Printrbot Cloud after they opened https://ubishotends.com/.
He said Printrbot is looking at 3 different options to continue to support the users of the Printrbot cloud, one of which would be to host the cloud SW on a Raspberry Pi.
I'll post more news once/if I have them, as I am greatly interested by this (one of my friends bought a Simple Pro on my advice, and is not proficient enough in 3D printing to print tethered w/ Cura).

[RetireeJay]

<bump> see edit on first post

[Mooselake]

Can't read the article, reached my 3 article in 30 day limit

[novice]

Short summation, Chapter 7, $859,909 liabilities, $101,698 assets.

[MartyS]

This is sad but I can't say I'm surprised, the last several years every time I went to the website I was somewhat baffled by what was available, or more importantly what wasn't available any more. I could no longer tell people that wanted to get a printer to learn on and worked well that they could get an affordable first printer at Printrbot.

Transitioning from a company that sells affordable printers for people to learn on to a company that only sells more expensive ones is a hard thing to do. They moved into an area where there was plenty of other products to choose from at the same price level. Also, if you are known for making something affordable and then move to higher end items people are going to think you are simply charging too much, doesn't matter if the product is good, the perception is still there and people will choose to spend their money elsewhere.

[JKraus04]

It looks Like Printrbot now has deleted the website. How sad to see them go.

[MauledByLove]

Ugh. Sorry to see them go. I love my Printrbot Play.

[Mooselake]

Closing in on the 1 year anniversary of PB's demise.

I still find the killed by cheap Chinese printer argument specious, as a quick look at Prusa's site and sales will prove. An i3 Mk3s kit will run you about 800 US$, nicely equipped (looking at you, multi material $300 add on) gets you into the metal plus's price range of just just north of a (US) grand. They claim to have sold over 100,000 of them and still have trouble meeting demand. That could have been the Metal Plus without the cloudy rewrite and the firmware/software distractions. My printers got left up north due to trailer space constraints, along with a wood lathe or two, and now that medical issues (should have 3D printed my own knee) have forced an over summering in sunny and prodigiously vegetated SW FL a new Prusa looks real attractive.

Anybody been keeping up with Brook? I haven't checked for a while

Kirk

[novice]

[Mooselake]

I finally checked out imahobbyist.com, an enjoyable read!

We must have a lot in common, living at the end of a two track near the great lakes and while my boat collection isn't as big it includes a 1985 AstroGlass 14' bass boat with a 50hp Mariner. The family pretty much all call it the SS Bilgerat and frequently offer to haul it to the landfill for free. It's gonna run, honest, someday. It's a step up from the 7.5hp air cooled 12' sears gamefisher from sometime in the 60s or so, full of pine needles for around the last 30+ years

Kirk