stratasys

Stratasys acquires MakerBot in $403 million deal

MakerBot, one of the most well-known desktop 3D printing companies, has been acquired by Stratasys, the companies said Wednesday.

In a release, the companies said it was a stock-for-stock transaction worth about $403 million, based on Stratasys' stock price as of Wednesday. Stratasys will exchange 4.76 million shares of its stock for 100 percent of MakerBot's outstanding stock. By agreeing to be acquired, MakerBot becomes part of one of the leading industrial 3D printing companies. The deal also allows the publicly-traded Stratasys to compete more directly at the consumer level with 3D Systems and that company's Cube … Read more

Step into the world of 3D-printed tech couture

Before too long, techy women may just print out that little black dress instead of buying it at a store.

Don't believe me? Take a look at some of the 3D-printed gems strolling down the catwalk at the Paris Fashion Show this week. Dutch designer Iris van Herpen's haute couture show Voltage tapped the prowess of 3D-printing companies Stratasys and Materialise to create two pieces that look out of this world.… Read more

Still emerging (for now): The 3D printers of CES 2013

LAS VEGAS--No 3D printer vendor had a cavernous booth at CES. Only MakerBot held a press conference, but it was only a low-key presentation on the show floor, not some over-produced auditorium-filler.

And yet, every time I walked by a booth owned by a 3D printer manufacturer, the crowds were there in force. People are clearly excited by 3D printing here, and they had a variety of examples to learn about at the show.

I checked in on all of the major 3D printing vendors here at the show. Here's what I saw.

3D Systems 3D Systems had a … Read more

Report: 3D-printed handgun project faces setback with revoked printer lease

When I last spoke with Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed had just met its $20,000 funding goal, and he had taken delivery of his Stratasys uPrint SE 3D printer. Fast forward nine days and the outlook for his 3D printed firearm project looks less positive.

As reported here in September, Defense Distributed, a group headed by University of Texas graduate student Wilson, began navigating the uncharted material and regulatory waters around designing a gun to be printed from common plastic on a relatively low-cost 3D printer like the MakerBot Replicator.

Now, Wired's Robert Beckhusen reports that Stratasys has voided … Read more

Pulling back from open source hardware, MakerBot angers some adherents

You likely know MakerBot Industries as the poster child for the new era of 3D-printing. You might not know that, until last week, the company and its CEO, Bre Pettis, were considered shining lights in the open-source hardware movement.

Think of open-source hardware, OSHW, as the physical equivalent of open source software. The Open Source Hardware Association, founded just this past March, offers an extended definition for OSHW. Its Statement of Principles sums things up thusly:

Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or … Read more