Largest survey finds UK 3D design jobs taking off. April 26, 2013 Freelancer.co.uk Fast 50, the world's largest online jobs survey, released its survey result today.
Hardware is now open (sourced) for business. Adafruit's revenue has tripled year over year, and the company projects full-year revenue for 2013 will reach $20 million.
Customers are not just limited to hobbyists and isolated makers, said Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit. "Our customers are moving more and more towards commercial endeavors and a very large portion of our orders are from professionals at very large companies," said Fried. The movement is also gaining steam at maker spaces, public workshops that offer access to production tools and the training to use them. Starting an open hardware company and building in the open. Image credits: opensource.com.
DIY Market Slows Dramatically as 3-D Printing Hits Its Industrial Stride. Buyers hit the brakes on purchasing hobbyist 3-D printers in the past year, even as industrial-grade printers are playing a larger role in manufacturing finished parts rather than prototypes.
Those were two key conclusions to be drawn from an annual snapshot of the “additive” printing industry just released by consulting and research firm Wohlers Associates. Now in its 18th year of publication (that’s right all you 3-D printing arrivistes, this stuff has been around for a while), the annual report describes a healthy and growing market for 3-D printing equipment, services, materials and processes, albeit one where the value continues to accrue to industrial applications. According to the Wohlers report, the overall market for 3-D printing products and services hit $2.2 billion in 2012, a compounded annual growth rate of almost 29 percent compared to the $1.7 billion the industry recorded in 2011.
How big can the DIY and maker movement get? SparkFun wants to know. The popularity of the maker movement, of Arduino boards, Raspberry Pi hacks and a variety of other DIY electronics projects are stunning.
Businesses such as Tindie, AdaFruit and SparkFun have been created to feed the demand for boards, kits and forums built around open hardware. Mcor announces 600% growth in sales and $2m funding from ITLG. Jun.11, 2013 3D printing company Mcor achieves increases of 600% in sales, 1200% in resellers and an additional infusion of $2 million from ITLG, propelling rapid expansion.
Mcor Technologies, manufacturer of desktop full-color paper 3D printers, today announced that the company has achieved a 600% increase in sales and a 1200% growth in the number of reselling partners over the past ten months. In addition the number of employees increased by 200% - doubling the number of employees year over year for the past three years. Mcor and global office supply retail giant, Staples, launched a new 3D printing service called "Staples Easy 3D" in Nov 2012, offering low-cost, full color 3D printed products from Staples stores. Staples' first 3D printing "Experience Centre" went live in The Netherlands, enabling Staples to make 3D printing accessible to everyone. Tesco PLC - Talking Shop - 3D Printing (Paul Wilkinson, 19 June 2013) Behind the scenes at Tesco HQ teams of technology experts work away.
Day in and day out they seek out and create the latest and very best technology. They play with it, adapt it and find out how it can make life better for customers and colleagues. Fabrication digitale : Le FabShop démocratise l'imprimante 3D en France. En décrochant le contrat de distribution pour les pays francophones, des imprimantes 3D de bureau du leader américain MakerBot, qui détient 25 % du marché, Bertier Luyt a pu concrétiser son FabShop.
Ce projet d'atelier de fabrication digitale utilisant la modélisation 3D, a d'abord été adossé courant 2012 à Batitrad.pro, la première société de Bertier Luyit spécialisée dans la fabrication de décors de spectacles. En avril 2013, Le FabShop est devenue la marque commerciale d'Avro Tech, fondée en avril 2013, dont il est le directeur général associé. Suivie par les business angels bretons de Logoden lors d'une deuxième levée de fonds en août pour un total de 350 000 euros, Le FabShop emploie une dizaine de personnes et vise un chiffre d'affaires de 730 000 euros en 2013.
Le double en 2014 grâce aux marchés français, suisse, belge et nord-africain. Open source hardware holds the same promise as software. Staples opens first 3D Experience Centre in Netherlands. April 26, 2013 Now you can experience 3D printing in the new Staples 3D Experience Centre in Almere.
Staples, the office chain megastore has just opened its first 3D Experience Centre in the Netherlands. "The Staples 3D Experience Centre in Almere is an important link for the complete 3D printing service that Staples will offer. " says Staples. Staples sees that the market and customers need more tangible experience of 3D printing. 'Patents Make Companies Unfit': Nathan Seidle Of SparkFun (Video) TagsSparkFun, Patents The SparkFun Electronics team.
TechShop Raleigh-Durham to Close. TechShop Raleigh-Durham is closing, effective Saturday, April 20, 2013. In an email to MAKE, Dan Woods, chief operating officer and VP of business development at TechShop, said “In the final analysis, it is obvious that the location is not convenient enough to the vast majority of the maker community in the Raleigh-Durham market.” The real business of the DIY movement. PALO ALTO, Calif. --Since 2006, Maker Faire has offered tens of thousands of people an annual celebration of the best and brightest in the do-it-yourself movement.
But while everyone from individual tinkerers who have built small rockets to two people doing amazing things with Diet Coke and Mentos to paper airplane masters and crafters making magic out of felt has had a venue for the last five years to showcase their innovative projects, there's never been a forum for the growing number of people and companies that are developing the new business platforms that are merging manufacturing and making.
Until now. Over the last two days, several hundred of the people behind many of the most impressive businesses to emerge from the maker movement, as well as investors and those interested in the future of digital hardware came together at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) here for the inaugural Hardware Innovation Workshop. MakerBot's 3-D Printers Let Consumers Dream Up Prototypes Of Pretty Much Anything. But Do We Need More Plastic? MakerBot Takes $10 Million In Funding From Foundry Group, Angels. The open-source hardware distribution model? (David A. Mellis) 20 July 2009 Most open-source hardware projects (including Arduino) seem not to have taken advantage of the distributed manufacturing models enabled by the open nature of their designs.
Instead, we mostly see two conventional distribution models: centralized manufacturing and artisanal production. The centralized manufacturing model The centralized manufacturing model is a simplified form of the process followed by most corporations. Here a manufacturer (the small red dot) produces the product and sells it to multiple distributor. The artisanal production model. Open Source Hardware Business Models. For background: see Open Source Hardware or Open Hardware. Open Source Hardware. Where is open source 3D printing going? « The Investment Baker - Justin Dunham's journal about making things.
Netarchical Capitalism. How Peer to Peer Communities will change the World – Interview with Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation founder. « Dangerous Prototypes · Open source hardware business model study. Made in NYC - m.NYPOST.com. Is New York’s long, sad story of industrial decline opening a happier chapter? Once the top city for American manufacturing, New York saw its industrial jobs plummet from well over a million after World War II to well under 100,000 last year. Adafruit. Business Unusual - CNNMoney.com. 13 Open Source Hardware Companies Making $1 Million or More (video. Business Models for Fab Labs. Business Models for Open Hardware.