This gets the current state of 3D printers half right. I wrote the same thing seven months ago
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/28/the-makerbot-obituary/, and yes, the downfall of Makerbot was due to going closed source and shipping faulty 'smart' extruders.
However, the author gets it completely wrong by not looking at any of the other companies shipping reprap designs. https://www.lulzbot.com/ has seen consistent yearly growth, from tens of thousands a month when the first MakerBots came out to tens of millions per month today. http://prusaprinters.org/ is experiencing the same growth, and that's despite an obscene number of clones of their machine on the market. The growth of 3D printing never stopped. If you look at the well-respected companies in the field, they're seeing consistent, increasing revenue.
The trouble with the industry is Makerbot. They burned their community with the change to closed source, they killed their industrial/educational market with the Smart Extruder problems, but they were the darling of the media. When Makerbot laid off employees, it made headlines. When manufacturing was outsourced to China, tech bloggers stumbled over themselves to get a post out. As Makerbot went south, so went the perception of the industry.
3D printing is still a growing industry, and the tech in low-end printers is getting really, really good. It'll never be a printer on every desk, but if you find a household with a circular saw or a soldering iron, you'll probably also find a 3D printer. That's what it should be, anyway: a tool, and not a fetishized technology.
However, the author gets it completely wrong by not looking at any of the other companies shipping reprap designs. https://www.lulzbot.com/ has seen consistent yearly growth, from tens of thousands a month when the first MakerBots came out to tens of millions per month today. http://prusaprinters.org/ is experiencing the same growth, and that's despite an obscene number of clones of their machine on the market. The growth of 3D printing never stopped. If you look at the well-respected companies in the field, they're seeing consistent, increasing revenue.
The trouble with the industry is Makerbot. They burned their community with the change to closed source, they killed their industrial/educational market with the Smart Extruder problems, but they were the darling of the media. When Makerbot laid off employees, it made headlines. When manufacturing was outsourced to China, tech bloggers stumbled over themselves to get a post out. As Makerbot went south, so went the perception of the industry.
3D printing is still a growing industry, and the tech in low-end printers is getting really, really good. It'll never be a printer on every desk, but if you find a household with a circular saw or a soldering iron, you'll probably also find a 3D printer. That's what it should be, anyway: a tool, and not a fetishized technology.