Am I the only one who has found Thingiverse submissions to be lacking lately?

The past few times I have cruised Thingiverse I have been rather disappointed. Yeah there is a lot of "stuff" on there but it seems like there are fewer and fewer things worth printing. Has anyone else noticed this? Are people already migrating away from thingiverse and heading somewhere else?

---

WWW.ZATOPA.COM - Your Place for high quality 3D Printing Filament and accessories

You still look at thingiverse?

---

FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Ive thought the same thing. Seems to be more artsy type stuff.

Quote
jzatopa
Are people already migrating away from thingiverse and heading somewhere else?

You know about this page on the wiki, right? Printable Part Sources

Thingiverse... They haven't updated the main page for more than a month. Must be busy with something? Fixing their money gap?

i just found www.youmagine.com/, but ya your not alone.

---

[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

I still make my own parts and look at other 3d part repository sites guys....jeez

I just wanted to point out that they seem to be suffering a bit of the "myspace" syndrome.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2014 02:43PM by jzatopa.

---

WWW.ZATOPA.COM - Your Place for high quality 3D Printing Filament and accessories

Yeah, I agree with the "Myspace" syndrome. They have been coasting towards irrelevant for quite a while, but accelerated it when their "customizer" to balloon the number of "things" that no one will ever print. They brag about how many worthless things are posted. That by itself says a lot.

Once they got bought out, they stopped maintaining it. I highly doubt that they have a person even checking it on a weekly basis. They probably don't have the money to invest in it, and don't care anyway.

The Thingiverse counters & search tools are all out of whack. For instance, their "Featured" orange Koi Fish has been on the front page for at least a month, but it says it was only created on Feb 10th (2 days ago) by Makerbot. If you try and search "Koi" and "Fish" in the search bar, Makerbot's own creation doesn't show up! Funny thing, Makerbot entered their own contest, so it shows up first if you search for contest entries. Since ONLY one person has printed it if over a month, I thought about printing one out in Silver PLA, as a "Silver Fish". Truthfully, it would be quite funny to see tons of prints posted on Thingiverse where only one has been made by a Makerbot, but all are shown on the printer's that made them.

Google's 3d warehouse has a lot of good models, or a lot of good starts for 3d printed models. There almost always is a lot of cleanup & fixing, but there are tons of good models.

Turns out The End Of Thigiverse is Everywhere! and it's ironic that it always shows RepRap Mendel Feet when it dispays.

Jeez.

I've posted three things in the last week.

[www.thingiverse.com]

Y'all love Joe Prusa's Kool-aid, huh? Thingiverse hasn't nearly run it's course yet. Probably won't be supplanted for a good 5 years.

I'm new to these parts but my perception of the "whole" thing is just over inflated marketing. Apparently it worked though

Quote
Bill Clark
I'm new to these parts but my perception of the "whole" thing is just over inflated marketing. Apparently it worked though

Bingo. Makerbot doesn't make money from Thingiverse. They make money from selling printers. You and I are here because we have mechanical aptitude and built our own printers. Someone that buys a Makerbot likely doesn't have the skill or time to build their own, and likely aren't going to have the skill or time to put together multi-piece printed objects/devices. They are more likely to print trinkets and cool objects. So that is what now gets featured on Thingiverse. The things that their customers are most likely to be interested in printing.

Is Thingiverse dying? Not likely. They are the biggest out there. Nothing comes close in terms of size, ease of use, etc.

I don't think Thingiverse is dying, but I do think they have peaked and plateaued. If you look at the Makerbot official offerings from their own account, there hasn't been 5 items printed and posted out of all of their 18 offerings posted since the first of this year. Out of the 30,000 printers they sold last year, or 50,000 printers they sold totally, you would think that more than 5 items would have been printed and shown. Two years ago, they would have gotten a dozen prints for each of their posts, within the first couple of days. I think they filled the site with garbage to the point that not even their own customers want to use it.

I agree that Thingiverse was only made for the marketing. Once sold to Stratasys, they don't know what to do with it, don't need it, and have pretty much abandoned it.

Quote
Beekeeper
I agree that Thingiverse was only made for the marketing.

I don't think this is quite correct... I'm not sure about the timing, but Thingiverse and Makerbot were made by the same people at about the same time. Now, I've gotten in trouble before for criticizing Zach Hoeken on these forums, but to be fair to Zach, I think he created Thingiverse for genuinely idealistic reasons. Some of us kind of wish he had created Thingiverse as a part of the RepRap Research Foundation, rather than as a part of a nascent for-profit company (Makerbot) but in the early days I think he (and even Bre Pettis) had the best of intentions to "do well by doing good". Times change, I guess.

Quote
Beekeeper
Once sold to Stratasys, they don't know what to do with it, don't need it, and have pretty much abandoned it.

It seems like Makerbot and their new owners are well aware of the value of Thinigiverse. I don't have the paperwork handy, but somewhere in some Stratasys stockholder document, Thingiverse and its value was expressly mentioned.

I am not a huge fan of Thingiverse, and I'm always trying to make people aware of the alternatives (see here: Printable Part Sources ) but I have to say that every time I visit TV it seems vibrant and active and I always find new things that are interesting...

What new and interesting things? Here are some examples:
Celtic Knots for OpenSCAD
Unapod Robot Leg
Cycloidal Spur Gears and Helical Gears
Print-in-one-piece Harmonic Drive

EDIT: Here is the paperwork I was remembering - a link was posted by akhlut in this thread.

Quote
Stratasys/Makerbot merger document
[SLIDE#12: THINGIVERSE]
MakerBot’s strength comes from the spirit of collaboration we have fostered with our users and partners. We have built a strong and loyal user community on Thingiverse.com, a platform where users can share and customize digital files that can be printed on their desktop 3D printers. This site has become the single largest repository of content for 3D printing. It has more than 90,000 3D product files available for sharing and generates more than 500,000 unique visitors and 1,000,000 downloads each month.

We have only begun to tap the massive potential of 3D printing. For example, we are collaborating with other brands to create their own branded Thingiverse pages. We can work with corporate and individual clients to provide design files for printable products.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2014 04:49PM by MattMoses.

Well, at least they don't have the option on their site to 'order' a file as a 3D-print

I don't see what the flap regarding Thingiverse is all about.

Just did a quick search, and there are plenty of things (parts) for a lot of different printers, including Afinia, RepRap, Lulzbot, Printrbot, CubeX, Prusa, Up, and Ultimaker.

If you truly want something new and interesting design it yourself; otherwise you're just another consumer. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. In other word's stratasys will support thingiverse because it gives user's an application for their products. Also web hits.

I feel like a lot others here. Thingiverse took THE place ! now you need a Google or an Apple to break it down.. at least.
Like makerbot or not, they did a really nice job on that part. not anyone could do at the time they did . We can at least recognize that.

Even microsoft did wonderful things.. haha

---

the Smartrap project

[smartfriendz.com]
[www.thingiverse.com]
[reprap.org]
[github.com]
doc assemblage: [reprap.org]
NEW: Forum smartfriendz: [smartraptalk.smartfriendz.com]

In the last three days alone there have been many new postings that interest me. A selection:

- bracket to attach a camera to a rearview mirror - fits nicely with my occasional hobby of creating timelapses
- set of mini storage drawers - nice gift idea for my wife for her craft room. Should be easy to customize it for her.
- printable omniwheel robot - never tried omniwheels, looks interesting
- panning mount for #8 camera - good idea for the glider I am building and the 3D printed quadcopter I have nearly finished
- RPi camera mount with ball joint, attached to Mendel frame - I need this for monitoring the printer from the living room and also I could adapt it for my CNC machine

My problem is that I now have a total of 333 items I have "liked" and so far I've only had the time to print maybe six of them. So I probably already have years worth of inspiration in there.

Andy

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2014 07:52PM by ajayre.

Who owns RepRap, maybe it's time to cash in, and sell RepRap for a tidy profit.



[www.3ders.org]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2014 10:36PM by A2.

Nobody owns reprap.

Adrian Bowyer and the University of Bath hold the copyright (link here). The domain reprap.org is registered to Adrian. So, technically, if he wanted to sell "RepRap" he could... but I think everyone understands that if the domain were sold to anyone else it would pretty much lose its inherent value. I am kind of curious as to how they calculate how much a domain is worth, anyway... maybe it has something to do with web traffic.

A few years ago some random guy bought the rights to "reprap.com" and came on the forums to announce his new 3D printer company. Boy howdy, that caused a stir. They worked it out however, and since then reprap.com has also been registered to Dr. Bowyer.

I should be able to remember more about that. I think I was just starting to go on these forums when that happened. He would be in a hard place though had he not given up on that.

There have been more than a few people who got on the wrong side of these forums. I think the only one to survive was makerbot.

I don't think this thread was started with ill intent but more way seems to be a observation about thingiverse.
My self and others just didn't seem to find the site getting what we used to go there for.

---

[mike-mack.blogspot.com]