Anker Is No Longer Selling 3D Printers (theverge.com) 41
Anker has indefinitely paused sales of its 3D printers, with no clear plans to resume or release new models. Despite promises of ongoing support, critical replacement parts like hotends and extruders have quietly vanished from the EufyMake site, leaving customers and the maker community in the lurch. The Verge reports: In March, charging giant Anker announced it would spin out its 3D printer business into an "independent sub-brand," stating that the new EufyMake would "continue to provide comprehensive customer service and support" for its original 3D printers the AnkerMake M5 and M5C. Now, the 3D printing community is wondering whether that was all a euphemism for exiting the 3D printer business. eufyMake is no longer selling any 3D printers and has stopped selling some of the parts it would need to provide anything close to "comprehensive support."
Anker confirms to The Verge that it has stopped selling the M5 and M5C 3D printers indefinitely. Spokesperson Brett White could not confirm that the company will resume selling them or create any future models. He says that "sales have been paused." "My understanding is that eufyMake has not ruled out creating new 3D printer models in the future. But the brand has ended sales of the M5 and M5C for the time being," White tells The Verge. The 3D printing section of EufyMake's website is currently empty of printers. The only gadget EufyMake now sells is a UV printer that creates a 3D texture atop flat materials.
Anker confirms to The Verge that it has stopped selling the M5 and M5C 3D printers indefinitely. Spokesperson Brett White could not confirm that the company will resume selling them or create any future models. He says that "sales have been paused." "My understanding is that eufyMake has not ruled out creating new 3D printer models in the future. But the brand has ended sales of the M5 and M5C for the time being," White tells The Verge. The 3D printing section of EufyMake's website is currently empty of printers. The only gadget EufyMake now sells is a UV printer that creates a 3D texture atop flat materials.
Re: Anker (Score:2)
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Same here. I've bought numerous Anker products, from USB car chargers to a replacement battery for my laptop. I've found the quality to be good.
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Wow, that would have taken you a whole 10 seconds to check [amazon.com] before posting.
Re: Anker (Score:2)
Definitely not, Anker makes solid stuff.
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Well, they used to. Hopefully you don't have one of the millions of power banks recently recalled, or the bluetooth speakers also recalled. As the recall only affects a certain range of serial numbers, it sounds like a problem with a specific vendor's batteries.
https://www.anker.com/product-... [anker.com]
https://www.cpsc.gov/search?se... [cpsc.gov]
Well, duh (Score:3)
When a company spins off a product line "into an independent sub-brand", it's almost always because it's an underperforming business unit that's been dragging the overall company's profits down... and they want to jettison it as quickly as possible.
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The market also has limited exposure. Unless you live in a larger city, don't expect your loca
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Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
I use a 3D printer to make little parts all the time for my farm. Everything from bushings to brackets, to gaskets and seals. It may seem slow, but it's a lot faster than making another trip into town. I almost never deal with supports. I design my parts to print without supports if I can. But supports don't take long to print and don't take long at all to remove. I print mostly ABS, PETG, and TPU for my practical and functional prints.
I think if more people had experience with 3D printers they'd them more useful than they ever imagined. Of course learning CAD is part of what makes them so useful, which is a bit of a challenge for a lot of people.
For the somewhat mechanically-inclined DIYer, watching videos from youtuber "Functional Print Friday" is pretty enlightening as to what they can do, and do relatively quickly.
Re: Well, duh (Score:3)
Constantly using mine.
And "clean up" of support parts has gotten much faster, easier and cleaner than it used to be.
I think that:
A. 3D printing is a cutthroat low margin business. With so much great open source software, to sell a 3D printer you mainly need a box of off the shelf extrusions, some stepper motors and an Arduino.
B. After seeing the Bambu Lab printers in action, any FDM printer maker could be forgiven for heaving a sigh and thinking "why bother?" They're way TF ahead of most of the hobby gear,
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B. After seeing the Bambu Lab printers in action, any FDM printer maker could be forgiven for heaving a sigh and thinking "why bother?" They're way TF ahead of most of the hobby gear, and capture users with value adds like their easy multimaterial AMS unit bundles.
Bambu has earned a lot of hate for starting to make their printers dependent on their cloud services. I think - or at least hope - that there will still be a lot of people who won't go for that. So maybe enough buyers will say "Fuck You" to Bambu that other printer makers will stay in the game.
When it's time for me to step up from my little Neptune 3 Pro, I sure as hell won't be looking at Bambu.
Re: Well, duh (Score:2)
I'm well aware of the enshitification play they're making, and run mine on LAN mode and have blocked firmware updates at the router.
However, most consumers (and that _is_ their market, not printer hackers) simply won't understand or won't care. That's the sentiment I see online.
I'm taking a wait-and-see on any more Bambu Lab equipment at my place.
All that said, my P1S and AMSes are stellar equipment, and the prints are the best and fastest I've had, bar none (and I've been printing for over a decade).
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You can run Bambu printers in LAN only mode and IMO that should be the default. Bambu made the mistake of forcing WAN and then later they security hardened their APIs & service and broke 3rd party compatibility which angered a lot of people. I don't think its unreasonable to protect their cloud service but it was unreasonable not provide 3rd party APIs, or make cloud the default to begin with. The only thing cloud adds is the mobile app and some network flexibility (e.g. printer and computer on separate networks). But if you don't need that you're better off switching the printer to LAN mode.
I'm not sure that Bambu regards forcing WAN as a mistake, given that doing so mostly killed LAN-only mode for X1 users who had already installed the then-latest firmware. Bambu had to know that would happen, but they proceeded anyway. It seems to me that the only mistake they acknowledge is turning up the heat on their pot of frogs too quickly.
It's also unclear to me why the cloud is required to make the mobile app work and to allow the network flexibility you mentioned. Granted, for the average user the cl
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They would have been better off defaulting to LAN, but offering cloud for people who really wanted it. Maybe they could
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The only things I have ever printed with my 3d printer were mods for it. No idea what to use it for really.
Re: Well, duh (Score:2)
I use mine for both functional and dress-up parts for rocketry, repair parts for all kinds of things, utility items I don't have around (box for micro drill bits, under-desk mount that turns USB extensions into desk-mount USB outlets, fan mount to de-smoke a stinky guitar I bought used), my own tool designs, replacement knobs for things that haven't been made in decades, fidget spinners for the kids, any kind of maker part I need, electronics enclosures, stuff i don't want to go to the hardware store for, t
Re: Well, duh (Score:2)
I should add: it takes a decently functional 3D printer.
My first printer was pretty much a hobby project to build the printer. It had a small build volume, no heated bed, and didn't go a great job.
My second printer was much better, larger, more useful, but still required a lot of care and maintenance and some special accessories to work well.
My third printer is a marvel. A little bigger print volume, more capable, but "it just works". It's almost difficult to turn out a bad print with it. It's gotten much e
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I use my (second) 3D printer all the time for stuff around the house, for my bicycle, professional audio, etc. It's great to make custom parts exactly the form factor that I want them. But you're right, there is a fairly steep learning curve in both hardware...my first printer was "OK," but taught me the basics and what I wanted...and in CAD. And then of course there's learning the different materials and related tuning. It was a lot of fun hours invested, but I now have something I can just crank about
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2xKobra 2 Max's
3x Kobra 3 (2 are combo)
2x Kobra 2 Pro.
The only problems I've ran into is the hotend getting gummed up occasionally that requires a tear down and nozzle replacement. And by that, I mean once every 4 months or so. The Kobra 3's are running pretty much non stop. 90% of my prints are PLA, 10% are TPU.
I've been tempted to buy a Bambu because of
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but the general use of 3D printing isn't very practical
3D printing is perfectly practical. When people print something on paper it's usually because they need it *NOW*. It's very rare that you print a practical device that is needed now. You're not breaking your leg and running to your 3D printer to make a splint. Comparing a 3D printer to a 2D printer is silly, the latter puts text on a piece of paper. Rather compare a 3D printer to finishing a project that may involve printing a stencil on your 2D printer.
My printer prints only practical things, which is to s
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The issue for Anker or any other company trying to enter the market is that you'd have to produce an *exceptional* printer to stand out from all those brands. That's the reason Bambulabs is ascendant right now because their printer offered a lot of
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I'm not surprised Anker are leaving the market either. I've got to say, some of the new breed of printers are really pretty awesome. There's not much room for profit any more.
I bought a Bambu A1 - £300 or so (call it $450?). It prints in super-high quality faster than my old printer could print draft. It's also really well calibrated, so a 50mm part really is 50mm, circles really are round, etc etc. Hell, this thing's got a mini LIDAR in it to check on the extrusion. If you buy their more expensive pr
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The end goal for them isn't a printer where you can print whatever you want.
They know the market for people who know how to use CAD software is limited, so they're focusing on the people that basically want "Star Trek Replicator" in their house. Their bigger play is to have an ecosystem where they can rope in manufacturers to allow people to have a printer at home that can make goods without needing to manufacture them ahead of time. They're even laying the ground work to move away from delivering 3D models
sad (Score:3)
I can't tell you how close I came to buying one of the anker 3d printers but instead opted for the bambu x1c a few years ago, but it was darn close. This is a warning shot for EufyMake as it makes the brand look like they're in the business of abandoning hardware in under 5 years.
Translation service (Score:2)
"That was a stupid idea, and the comms people told me abandoning the chumps we already sold to would bite us in the ass. So we're really hoping Pasadena falls into the ocean or mermaids are sighted or something, and did you see the new Superman movie?"
3D printing is last decade's fad (Score:3)
It's all about agentic AI now. Try to keep up, gramps.
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This is like saying that because of the rise of NoSQL, SQL is the last decade's fad. Not even close. SQL is still the backbone of many businesses. NoSQL has its place, but there are still many business tasks for which NoSQL can't beat regular old SQL.
3D printing has come into its own, moving from being a fun new toy, to a core tool for everything from manufacturing prototypes to dental implants. 3D printing isn't going anywhere.
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I'd be hard pressed to use AI to do the things I do with a 3D printer!
Now if someone joined an AI to a 3D printer... Hey HAL, make me a replacement bracket for my car's e-brake release lever. Okay, Dave, coming right up.
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3D printing is a faded fad, it simply turned into a boring mainstream. Literally everyone can get something 3D printed on request now, either through one of the countless online services, or through a friend (you likely know someone who has a 3D printer).
Things that are common are boring. Also in the field of plastic 3D printing we've gotten over the innovation stage. Most 3D printers provide just incremental improvements over the previous generation. It's not newsworthy as it was a few years ago when reall
Juvenille (Score:5, Funny)
Totally juvenille but I always chuckle a little when I see the URL for this company, www.anker.com
Once needed a bracket (Score:1)
This is why open hardware matters. (Score:2)
Fortunately, it looks like it isn't too hard to modify the Anker printers to use different hotends for people who want to keep their printer going a while longer.
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