What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1]  They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme.  TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors.  They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something tall without delaminating due to thermal stress.<p>The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good.  The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one.  Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money.<p>Eventually, somebody is going to get low-cost laser sintering of metal powder figured out. But not quite yet.  The Aurora Labs 3D metal printer turned out to cost about 10x the original $4000 price.  MatterFab hasn't shipped their device.  There's a low-end electroplating printer, but that's inherently a very slow process.<p>[1] <a href="http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-kno...</a>