Stratasys Sues Bambu Lab Over Patents Used Widely By Consumer 3D Printers (arstechnica.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A patent lawsuit filed by one of 3D printing's most established firms against a consumer-focused upstart could have a big impact on the wider 3D-printing scene. In two complaints, (1, 2, PDF) filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, against six entities related to Bambu Lab, Stratasys alleges that Bambu Lab infringed upon 10 patents that it owns, some through subsidiaries like Makerbot (acquired in 2013). Among the patents cited are US9421713B2, "Additive manufacturing method for printing three-dimensional parts with purge towers," and US9592660B2, "Heated build platform and system for three-dimensional printing methods."
f There are not many, if any, 3D printers sold to consumers that do not have a heated bed, which prevents the first layers of a model from cooling during printing and potentially shrinking and warping the model. "Purge towers" (or "prime towers" in Bambu's parlance) allow for multicolor printing by providing a place for the filament remaining in a nozzle to be extracted and prevent bleed-over between colors. Stratasys' infringement claims also target some fundamental technologies around force detection and fused deposition modeling (FDM) that, like purge towers, are used by other 3D-printer makers that target entry-level and intermediate 3D-printing enthusiasts.
f There are not many, if any, 3D printers sold to consumers that do not have a heated bed, which prevents the first layers of a model from cooling during printing and potentially shrinking and warping the model. "Purge towers" (or "prime towers" in Bambu's parlance) allow for multicolor printing by providing a place for the filament remaining in a nozzle to be extracted and prevent bleed-over between colors. Stratasys' infringement claims also target some fundamental technologies around force detection and fused deposition modeling (FDM) that, like purge towers, are used by other 3D-printer makers that target entry-level and intermediate 3D-printing enthusiasts.
There should be "use it or loose it" for patents (Score:5, Interesting)
In trademark law, there is a requirement to strongly enforce your trademark or risk not being able to enforce it at all. Something similar should exist for patents that bans patent holders from holding off on patent infringements waiting for the use of the infringing thing to get bigger before suing.
Re:There should be "use it or loose it" for patent (Score:4, Informative)
In trademark law, there is a requirement to strongly enforce your trademark or risk not being able to enforce it at all. Something similar should exist for patents that bans patent holders from holding off on patent infringements waiting for the use of the infringing thing to get bigger before suing.
There is. It's called laches [wikipedia.org].
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In this case, "leeches".
Just looking on the surface of it . . . (Score:2)
The first of the two patents mentioned here, heating the print bed to prevent rapid cooling of the first layer would seem to be intellectually obvious. Unless they duplicated the exact mechanism, good luck.
The second one mentioned, a purge tower. Okay, if I drop the unwanted tailings on a conveyer instead of building a tower, will that do? Better yet, I can keep the existing process, I'll just use the tailings to print a purge wall instead of a purge tower, that ought to obviate any patent in that regar
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The build plate as described in the patent may cover all modern "PEI" type build plates, although the spring steel base doesn't appear to be covered.
But if they win that argument, they own modern 3D printing.
For a very long time, enclosed print chambers were a violation of Stratasys's patent, and when that patent expired, they basically said "That's OK, we have other patents".
The purge tower, I would have to consider an "obvious" development, but I'm neither a lawyer, a judge, nor a jury in the most patent-
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I use an Elegoo that just moves the print head off the build plate and takes a dump on the desk.
Sounds like this other company is just causing problems.
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I still use tempered glass with painter's tape rather than a PEI sheet. Others like Garolite (G10) sheets.
Some printers just dump some filament down a chute ("poop") rather than making a purge tower.
Stratasys is just throwing their entire patent portfolio at the wall and hoping something will stick, or at least that they can deal a fatal financial blow to a couple leading manufacturers of 3D printers so they can bog things down and milk crazy high margins for a little longer.
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Personally, I use a PEI sheet with some goo called "Vision Miner Nano Adhesive", and it is simply the best adhesive I've used in 12 years. Everything sticks perfectly over 55C, and pops loose under 50C. And one coating lasts for many, many prints.
I partially disagree with your assessment. First, it's completely stupid, because Bambu's customers and Stratasys's customers are totally different segments of the market.
So really, this sounds like a cash grab from a successful company to me.
Re: Just looking on the surface of it . . . (Score:3)
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I switched from FDM printing to SLA a while ago.
It's so much simpler and more reliable than FDM that I'm about to sell my FDM printer.
FDM can produce some great prints (and has a lot of cool specialty filaments) but I found it to be very fiddly and inconsistent. More often than not it became an exercise in frustration.
Maybe it's just me, but SLA printing has proven to be a lot more reliable and consistent than any of the FDM printers I've owned.
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Had many of the same complaints. Then switched to a Bambu X1C. I'm somewhere around 700 hours of print time, and I would say that 95% (or more) of my prints have been successful. Once I added "Vision Miner Nano Polymer" adhesive, that went up a bit.
It is ridiculous how reliable (and quick) this printer is. My most recent project involved printing 20 or so "multiboard" panels for a storage wall, usually in stacks of 4. The only issues I had were separating the individual boards from the stack.
There's a
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Bambu does the poop thing. It also uses a tower, but they call it a "prime" tower. The idea is to purge the poop, but use the tower to get nozzle pressure up before actual printing. They could probably just switch to priming in the infill before running the outer walls. That should hide any imperfection in the infill. Wouldn't work for every job, but probably close enough.
Personally, I think both are pretty obvious and would have been the first thing I thought of to solve the problems. And I despise patent
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It could also just start slower and ramp the speed up after a color change to give the nozzle time to stabilize the pressure.
Supposedly, patents are only permissible for the purpose of advancing the useful arts and sciences. Too often, they do the opposite. It took patents expiring and the work of garage inventors to move 3D printing from an expensive niche thing to an affordable thing actually being used in real products people buy.
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> heating the print bed to prevent rapid cooling of the first layer would seem to be intellectually obvious.
Not to typical patent examiners. Their IQ's drop 20 points when they walk into the office.
"A method to subtract IQ points using building proximity."
Oops, prior art: playing dumb is job security.
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The USPTO gets paid when you apply, and they get paid again when you grant, and they get paid again when someone challenges your patent, and they get paid again basically ANY TIME ANYTHING HAPPENS so they are only motivated to make more interactions with the patent office occur and nothing else. They get paid when someone challenges you and they get paid when you respond to the challenge. The fee structure is public information and makes the whole scam quite obvious. They get paid more for granting than den
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Nobody at the USPTO is getting rich by collecting fees. It's a non profit as well. The top people may be making deals so they make money before or after being installed in leadership but that isn't a result of service fees.
It's how government services avoid taxes; by charging usage fees. People have an irrational hatred of paying for something they are not immediately using themselves and so we must play tons of games (often wasting MORE money) to avoid triggering too many voters.
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But subconsciously they know that handing out more patents will make more demand for their job. Something is making them hand out too many overly-obvious patents. If it's not money, then check the water there.
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It is obvious and has been done for many years now. I guess I'm safe, I use an old school tempered glass plate covered in painter's tape to print on.
CNC machines have long used a force gauge to tram the tool head.
Stratasys innovated some things back in the '90s and a bit into the early 2000's. They made machines costing a quarter million and up (still do). Then, the rest of us invented 3D printers that can actually be afforded and operated by individuals (they're as cheap as $100 these days). This is Strata
Re: Just looking on the surface of it . . . (Score:2)
Well in that case (Score:2)
Well fine, I'll stop 3d printing until the patent expires. Wankers.
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I won't. Fuck them.
widely violated (Score:2)
Had to help a friend of mine to the bathroom after they healthily drank moderately last Friday. I knelt them down at the Purge Tower, where they ejected 3D multicolored chunks. (The girls at the bar were not impressed, so I guess you could call these "tailings".) Although I have never heard these words before, I would challenge the patent because the process is obvious to everyone schooled in the art, and that it has been going on long before the patent was filed, and that everyone is doing it.
This is in th
That's not the end the tailings come from. (Score:2)
What did BambuLab sell? (Score:2)
Specifically for the purge / prime tower the printer itself does not implement the patent, that is done by the software which the user downloads and installs on their machine.
The "Letter of Patent" provides protection against others from importing and selling a product that implements the patent.Providing BambuLab does not host the server providing the software (BambuStudio) in the United States it is then the end user who imports the offending product.
Is Stratasys going to sue every single BambuLab printer
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Bambu uses the poop chute to change filament, but it uses a purge tower in the slicer as well to ensure clean transitions between filament in the model.
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No need. The patent is exhausted when the sale happened. All Stratasys will do is demand Bambu pay up for those patents. Once that money is paid, the patent is licensed to all owners of the printers.
That's how it works. Stratasys cannot go after customers if Bambu pays up as the patent is exhausted as its license fees are paid for that instance, nor can they collect if you sell the printer to someone else down the line.
Anyhow, remember that Strat
Really amazing (Score:4, Informative)
I submit a thorough breakdown of the issue [slashdot.org], with links to multiple sources covering different aspects. 15 minutes after my submission, an AC posts a submission that just takes the first link from my submission, scrapes two paragraphs from the article, and bam, approved. What an amazing coincidence.
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We're all poor schmucks, look at what we have been reduced to: Generating more page views for crypto-shills. Do you think they have any sense of irony when they post stories like this [slashdot.org]?
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We're all poor schmucks, look at what we have been reduced to: Generating more page views for crypto-shills. Do you think they have any sense of irony when they post stories like this [slashdot.org]?
I'm puzzled as to what the motive was. I did several keyword searches to make sure there were no dupes since the lawsuit was filed last week. And then an anonymous one pops up 15 minutes after mine? These days I use the format "I'm not saying it's aliens. But it's aliens" and replace "aliens" with "some kind of algorithmic/SEO monetization scheme". I wonder if one of the sites I linked is considered a competitor or not on the "collab" payola here. Or maybe there's some affiliate boost with ArsTechnica to dr
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What an amazing coincidence.
Guess what, it probably is. We humans find coincidences in everything. I saw this story come up yesterday, so I predicted it would show up today on Slashdot. As is often the case if you look in the firehose there are multiple people submitting the same story at the same time. It's no conspiracy, you just weren't the first.
Heck this is Slashdot. I'm sure your submission will be posted by another editor tomorrow. Not coincidence as much as modus operandi.
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It's no conspiracy, you just weren't the first.
See that's the thing. I actually was the first.
It seems reasonable to presume the story submissions show up in a column queue listed by timestamp, and the editors would read them (or at least scan the titles) in order. The titles are clearly referencing the same thing, and with only 15 minutes between them, they would have been either right next to each other in the queue or very close.
That seems odd, and non-random. It seems like there would be some reason why the second one, posted by a non-member, with l
No xkcd cartoon on (Score:2)
...recursively dumb bots? I'm shocked! This is Slashdot!
Correction, (Score:1)
wrong story reply. Sorry.