As we develop this 3D Start Point resource for people getting a start in 3D printing, we explored the idea that we might want to sell or endorse the best 3D Printer we could find. Should we put up a mini-store with the “Best 3D Printer” for sale?
First off, we are not sales people. You meet a good salesperson, give them anything to sell, and they’re going to go and sell it. We have to sell something that we absolutely believe in and love. That’s the thing. Finding the best 3D Printer to sell is a tall order for us.
Best 3D Printer is Not Yet Universal
It’s not that we’re not happy with the 3D printers for sale out there. There are a lot of them that have some really good things. But the 3D Printer that might be good for our what, maybe not work well for yours. We don’t think there is a printer that is so universal for any kind of “what” out there that we can fall in love with and for us, love is required to go into sales.
We are more interested in something that we’ve talked about as part of a book that we’re writing now. We think there are opportunities to bring 3D printing to more commercial applications with great profit and success. For that it really is not about 3D printer price and standardization, but about making or selecting a specific 3D printer that does one specific job very well. That’s the thing. We’re not a store. That’s not who we are and not what we do. That’s the obvious why we don’t want to sell 3D Printers.
Pushing 3D Printers Forward
We also think that we’re here to help push the 3D Print technology be more mainstream and to become more usable. We are not here to endorse something or hawk cheap 3D Printers. It is a lot more interesting for us to educate on what is a 3D Printer and give a viewpoint on how easy a particular one is to use, what types of applications can that printer do best. We are more interested in continuing to help people figure out what are the best tools and products, accessories, printers, to help them do what they need to do than trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of printers in stock and move them.
But on the flip side of that, 3D Printer salespeople and manufacturing or import companies out there need more great examples of the power of 3D Printing. Imagine if instead of being asked every day, “How much is a 3D Printer?” people saw your 3D Printer as a means to make things they can’t find anywhere else. Things that highlight what your printer can do better than anyone’s and things that are not makeable by any other process besides 3D Printing. Printing the same things over and over, like a vase or a cone or that over-printed elephant is not only boring, it doesn’t really show what your printer can do best.
A 3D Printer of Our Own Someday?
Different printers are good for different kinds of things that you want to print. We don’t think it’s possible today with today’s state of 3D printing technology to make one universal printer that is going to make everything that any potential customer’s going to want to build. It gets more specific and opens us up into selling the Best 3D Printer to start-up, the best for prosumers, the best for 2-color… We are better off sticking to our 3D Printer reviews. Selling 3D Printers just not our thing right now. Taking a good look at what the 3D Print industry can do to increase the mainstream acceptability of 3D Print products is what we’re providing. We’d rather give a 3D printer a fair shake review and help spread the word about its best features than spend our days worrying about selling. Of course, that doesn’t mean we are ruling out the possibility that someday we might be selling a 3D printer that we designed and built.