By my count, it’s been tried twice.
Comment on [Louis Rossmann] Brother turns heel & becomes anti-consumer printer company
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 6 days agoOver time as 3D printers go from tinkerer’s toy to household staple, I’d expect them to become more locked down and anti-consumer.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 6 days ago
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Makerbot after the Stratasys buyout.
There were a bunch of companies that tried right after the FDM patents expired in 2009. Most of them were completely forgotten or ignored because they were closed source (and more importantly closed material) companies and never got very far off the starting blocks.
Bamboo learned from them and decided to pull the rug out after getting a foothold with finally selling decent prebuilt hardware for less than a fortune (see Ultimaker before buying out MakerBot at least).
echodot@feddit.uk 6 days ago
They would have to become sci-fi level capable before they would be considered household staple items.
CandleTiger@programming.dev 6 days ago
Bambu is working on it already — can’t print unless you’re connected to the internet and send your files through their server, can’t connect to the printer with other slicers besides their slicer.
They had to walk that back some; there is now a “developer mode” where old standard functionality is still exposed, but they’re clearly working as hard as they can to turn it shitty.