The Maker Pro Newsletter #1

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"3D Printing Not Limited to Those Who Own One"

From the editors of MAKE magazine, The Maker Pro Newsletter will focus on makers in business, covering developments in the emerging maker market. Our coverage will include hardware startups, new products, incubators, innovators, and maker market trends. If you've got comments or tips for future issues, please send them to makerpro@makermedia.com.

Perhaps you have heard the news that the MAKE division of O'Reilly Media has spun out as an independent company, Maker Media Inc. This new company includes MAKE magazine, Maker Faire, and Maker Shed.

Price points for industrial robots continue to fall. At the recent Automate conference in Chicago, crowds gathered around a one-armed robot from Universal Robots, selling for $34,000, according to a report in the Everything-Robotic blog. A two-armed robot from Rodney Brooks' Rethink Robotics was priced even lower: $22,000. Both products are targeted at small- and medium-sized businesses. What's stopping makers from bringing the costs down below $10K?

Indie hardware projects were the story at another recent conference, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where tech blog The Verge reported that Kickstarter-funded hardware projects "stole the show" from the corporate giants. The tech blog highlighted three watches, including Kickstarter hero Pebble, to make the case that indies were "the most interesting and innovative products at this year's CES." Independent hardware makers can press their advantage, according to The Verge, by focusing on markets that are too small for major corporations. "If Sony sold 85,000 watches, we'd call it a failure," the blog concluded. "When Pebble does it, it's a rousing success."

Meanwhile over at Kickstarter, the watchapalooza continues. Leading the list of most recently kickstarted hardware projects as we go to press: a GPS sports watch, followed by an open source gaming handheld and an iPad/iPhone power adapter, for those stuck with the old 30-pin connectors.

The Movement from Hobbyist to Pro

[Makers' Primary Workspace, graph from 2013 Purchase Intentions & Attitudes Study]

A new Purchase Intentions & Attitudes Study, commissioned by Maker Media, Inc. provides a look at the intersection of makers moving from hobbyist to pro.

Forty four percent of casual makers say the garage is still their main workspace, while 45 percent of professional makers have a designated space. The garage is second at 37 percent.

Nearly 1 in 5 professional makers favor a collaborative space like a hackerspace or TechShop model.

[Source: 2013 Purchase Intentions & Attitudes Study]

Makers' Projects Have Commercial Viability:

About 1 in 5 respondents (19%) indicated that they have been approached by a commercial enterprise about an idea or prototype.

34 percent indicated a commerce or income activity related to their making.

[Source: 2012 Maker Market Study]

The Latest in 3D Printing

Entry-level 3D printer manufacturer Printrbot sold about 3000 printers in 2012, with most of those sales in December. MakerBot now has more than 15,000 printers in the wild. We spoke to both companies, as well as Type A and TrinityLabs, to get their thoughts on the year past, and the one ahead. Read the full report on MAKE.

The Yano Economic Research Institute reports that Japan's domestic 3D printing market will grow to 7.7 billion yen ($85 million USD) by 2015. The report also finds more schools and small- to medium-sized businesses buying printers. In 2011, 638 3D printers were sold in Japan, according to the report, which predicts that by 2015 3D printer sales will nearly triple, to around 1800.

New entry Makexyz allows those without 3D printers to get 3D prints by sending their designs to nearby private individuals who own printers, making it possible to get your object the same day. This adds to the the 3D printer access already provided by Shapeways, the 3D community and marketplace in New York City, and the Staples 3D print service market test set to go live in the Netherlands and Belgium this year. To paraphrase A.J. Liebling, 3D printing is no longer limited to those who own one. [Via 3dprinting.com]

How to Design Products for People Making Less Than $2 a Day

Proximity Designs, with a U.S. office in South Pasadena, Calif., is selling simple irrigation equipment, such as foot-operated water pumps, in Myanmar. Co-founder Debbie Aung Din recently explained to Fast Company why the impoverished country makes sense as a market, for Proximity and its customers. One not-so-surprising discovery: "People who pay or work for things tend to be more invested in them," she said, adding that foot pumps that are given away are often abandoned; purchased foot pumps rarely are.

MANUFACTURING

The Case for Lean Manufacturing in the U.S.

Entrepreneur Rob Honeycutt is fundraising for Elroy, a customizable, Bluetooth-like device and plans to build part of it domestically because he says just-in-time, U.S.-based assembly will make him competitive with Chinese-made products. Plus, he says it's greener. He hopes others will follow suit. Read more on MAKE.

A Maker Pro in China

MakerBot alum Zach Hoeken Smith offers a revealing portrait of an innovative maker in Shenzhen. the industrious Mr. Chen ”maker, manufacturer, and rooftop organic gardener." His motto: "Spend less and earn more."

Tracking Manufacturing with OpenERP

Gregory Mader is an OpenERP consultant. He wrote us, wanting to introduce OpenERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to makers:

Over the last year, I have built a business on a lightweight, appropriately scaled ERP system that we have implemented with a couple of startup and newer manufacturing companies. There are a lot of people that build good things, want to take it full time, and give it a go. We can help them get setup and reduce their risks considerably.

We asked Greg to write an article on OpenERP, showing how such a system helps makers manage the process of sourcing parts, ordering raw materials, describing the fabrication process, and scheduling access to equipment. Greg's article introduces concepts and a tool for managing ERP using the example of a pet door sensor.

MARKETING/FUNDRAISING

Use Predictive Modeling to Tune Your Kickstarter Campaign

Here's some advice from an analysis of more than 17,000 Kickstarter campaigns: a target goal of less than $4,844.48 is the best predictor of success. Also aim for at least 34 backers: that's where the percentages take a turn in your favor. But those are just the broad strokes. The real value of the predictive model from BigML, recently highlighted in GigaOm, is its interactive interface: you can plug in the parameters of your project and see how the model plays out.

Learn from Crowdfunding Failures

Another set of data points worth considering, if you're thinking about crowdfunding: Kickstarter funding failures. Projects that didn't meet their goals are not celebrated on the service, not surprisingly, but they can be instructive. The KickBack Machine was launched to help people learn from history by capturing these duds and allowing users to compare them to successful campaigns.

Robot Romo's Strange Funding Round Trip



You can visit the robot cave of iPhone-controlled Romo in a recent TechCrunch Cribs episode, but the segment reminded us that tracing this bot's treads through its funding journey is also a strange, circuitous, instructive route. It starts on Kickstarter (natch), moves onto an angel investment, then a VC round, and finally back to a second Kickstarter campaign. Along the way, Romo also makes an appearance in the Nieman Marcus holiday catalog. A blog post on The Wall Street Journal's site shows how seeking funds for a hardware project can lead to unpredictable opportunities.

Equity Crowdfunding Update

What's going on with the equity crowdfunding bill that President Obama signed into law last April? Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, brings us up to date, and explains why the law is important, in a commentary on Bloomberg Businessweek. Shane is worried that the SEC, which is writing the crowdfunding regulations, may impose too many protections, making the process expensive and unwieldy for small businesses. That would be a shame, he says, because the businesses that stand the most to gain from the provision are those that are seeking less than $100K in financing. MAKE also weighed in on the topic late last year.

PEOPLE

The Amazing Backstory to the 3D Systems/Geomagic Deal

3D Systems announced this month it was acquiring Geomagic, the pioneering 3D software company founded by Ping Fu. In January, Fu published Bend, Not Break, a compelling memoir that chronicles her life as a young victim of Mao's cultural revolution, an exile, an immigrant, an entrepreneur, and ultimately, a 3D visionary. It not only offers a dramatic personal account of Mao's China, but a window into how tech companies are born and the entrepreneurial spirit. See MAKE's review of Fu's book, followed by a lively discussion in the post's comments.

The Maker Moment: Will You Jump or Get Pushed?

There's never been a better time to start your own business, say James Altucher and Chris Devore. While the high-profile technologists agree on that much, they differ on why the so-called maker movement has arrived. Both make some compelling arguments about why the time is now. More on MAKE.

RESOURCES

Get on a Maker Map



Interested in finding maker resources in your area? Want your project to be more "discoverable?" Nick Pinkston and Renee DiResta are trying to create a map of maker resources, suppliers, mills, hackerspaces — and they're looking to the maker community to help build it out. Have a look at the Maker Map.

The Maker Market List

Help us come up with a full list of companies that comprise the Maker Market. Take a look at our Maker Market List in Hackpad. Who are we missing?

EVENTS

Y Combinator Hackathon, Feb. 23

Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's startup incubator, has announced dates for an all-day (and all-night) hackathon. Says YC: The focus is on getting like-minded hardware hackers into the same space, sharing ideas, designing hardware, and ultimately creating more hardware startups. More details.

Engadget's High Tech Talent Show, Mar. 17

Engadget is hosting a sort of techie version of American Idol: Insert Coin. The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges (including a MAKE editor) at Expand in San Francisco, March 17, and will walk away with $20,000 and an Engadget review. The idea for the contest is to find makers at the early stage of hardware development, before they begin a crowdfunding campaign. See the MAKE post for more details.

NEW PRODUCTS

Makrz from PrintrBot

Makrz is an iPhone app organizing access to more than 30,000 open source 3D files for 3D printing and CNC.

Netduino 2 and Lulzbot 3D Printer

The new Netduino 2, with three times the speed and 50 percent more code space than the original ($34.99), and the AO-101 3D Printer from Lulzbot ($1725.00), are both in Maker Shed this month.

Pre-orders and Promises

The Form 1 stereolithography (SL) 3D printer from Formlabs is now available for pre-order. The high-resolution 3D printer will ship in May with a price tag of $3,299. A preview was shown at Maker Faire New York last fall; Raspberry Pi is promising a new camera board in a month or so; and pre-orders have started for the palm-sized Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter drone kit from Bitcraze. The drone is nimble enough to slalom through office stools and under tables. Two models will be priced at $149 and $173.