Dell Partners With MakerBot To Resell 3D Printers and Scanners

An anonymous reader writes "Dell today announced a partnership with MakerBot to offer Replicator 3D printers and scanners to small and medium-sized businesses looking for faster and more affordable ways of prototyping. The products are slated to become available for purchase on February 20 in the U.S."

But ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But ... do they come with the schematics to produce replacement parts for your now overpriced and under supported Dell 3D printer?

Re:But ...

[game kid]

It's MakerBot, so they'll offer that as a bullet point and then send you an addendum that says "About that schematics thing...lolno" in hazy corporatespeak [makezine.com].

Not just "another IT purchase"...

[Brad Goodman]

I can understand their desire to get I to this business - but as it stands now, this is sort of a "specialized" market and customer. It's not just like an IT department is going to throw one in on an order because "their vendor" (Dell) sells them.

Much more likely to be purchased by an artistic, engineering, manufacturing-type of group - under greater control and scrutiny than "I need a [standard] PC" like a lot of boilerplate Dell IT purchases.

Maybe these consumers would go with Makerbot, maybe not - but their gonna need the machine with the right specs - not just whoever is on the approved vendor list.

So - don't know if this will be good for MakerBot and Dell. But then again, maybe I'm just short sighted - and a few years 3D printers will be as ubiquitous as 2d ones - and that's the game they want to be in.