So Bre Pettis finally sold Makerbot Industries for 1/2 billion dollars. It definitely puts your monthly ABS budget & the concerns of whether to splurge on the 2 color extruder in perspective when you realize the founder walked away with at least 1/4 billion dollars.
Once again, it's not the revenue from Makerbot sales or speculation on the value of being able to print goods, but the enormous library of widgets users of the Makerbot submitted to thingiverse.com for free, over 100,000 in total, & which Bre was able to monetize with the acquisition. Like the instagram & tumblr acquisitions, a massive amount of data was created for free while the true value of it was monetized by just a few individuals. Is that the way open source hardware is supposed to work?
The answer we're supposed to give is yes, the world should be based on legions of people producing data for free & the true value of that data being concentrated into 1 top individual in these massive buyouts. The creators of the data should not be compensated because we all want to be the top guy.
We've had these massive payouts for data since the internet got big in 1999 & the amount of data that cost nothing to download became truly massive. Initially they were in the form of the Redhat, VA Research IPOs, later in the form of the modern social network giga acquisitions, maybe now the open hardware giga acquisitions.
The concept of data that we create in full faith that it's supposedly free having a massive amount of monetary value in the invisible hand of the economy isn't going away. Neither is a landlord going to turn around & open source his rental properties just because we provided the data that paid for his assets for free. It's well known that wealth is being concentrated at the top a lot more than it ever was & times are much harder for the rest of us than our parents.
But what if the creators of the data were compensated in the buyouts instead of the total amount being focused at the top guy? Would the creators of the data not be able to hire people on their own, create jobs, buy stuff on their own?
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@R.Lefebvre & R.D.Statwalt Thank you both for also trying to be helpful, I'll give it a try but I'll probably
have to abduct some young kid off the street and force him to find these "Eagle files" Why is it that these days
you have to use a sledge hammer just to crack a walnut? I used to fix radio's for a living back in the day
when a simple on and off switch used to do what the name implied. Then some genius came along and
decided that to save a little space, you could use a micro switch, several surface mount components and
even route it through a microprocessor just to do the same job! The fact that it was far more likely to fail
and it took a lot longer to fix didn't seem to enter the equation! Anyway thank you guys, sorry for the rant.
Cliff wrote:
Schematics and wiring diagrams can be the same thing but I differentiate them and it looks like they did too. Wiring is between boards, motors, switches and other bolt-on components. The schematics are for their circuit boards.
I would check all the caps Cliff. They are a classic fail item and will do the type of damage you see. On the other hand, most good 5V regulators will shutdown if in overcurrent.
HERE is the page I pulled schematics from.
Yes Robert, he will have to be Eagle-fluent to look at them. The red marks are the links to the download (zip files).
It appears the person that made those took the same shortcuts that are used with APM. Software has made development quicker but also developed lazy engineering graphics practices IMHO. Point in case is the crazy layout of the power section of the Mightyboard...
The item named PWR1 in the center is a brick supply for AC Mains to 24VDC (common industrial DC supply level). It does not show the AC Mains connection. The output goes through the bizzare switch icon and then down to the two caps C34 and C33. TP35 is the switched 24VDC that goes into space...which actually goes to where I put in the red line as input to U13, the 5Vregulator Cliff has found blown up....I think. After C31 and C30, the short could be anywhere +5V goes.
So yes Robert, Cliff would have to go digging for more information and hope that someone didn't mod or rev the board he has in hand.
-=Doug
It says in the news item that it is a stock-for-stock merger, and it probably takes a BSc in economics to understand exactly how that alI works, but I am pretty sure Bre cs are not actually handed a suitcase with half a billion US$.
Doug, does figuring out the wiring involve rummaging through the layers of the board file? At the very least, Cliff will have to download Eagle, and sort of figure out how to use it. All to figure out a pretty simple bit of info that could and should be presented in a more accessible manner.
Cliff, Eagle files are available. You will have to click on the 'Download this thing' button. There are a couple modules, the largest being the Mightyboard.
-=Doug
@Cliff, I feel your pain. How come you can't expand that "schematic" enough to actually read it?
This brings up painful memories of trying to figure out which pin on the APM2.0 was connected to which pin on the 2560 chip.
@Bill, Thanks for trying to help but I think I'm getting to old for this. To me a circuit diagram or schematic
used to show you how all the individual components were connected together, the website you mention
above [although contains the word schematic] bears no resemblance to any circuit diagram I've been
used to looking at over the years. I guess this is one Makerbot that's heading for the rubbish dump.
Thanks again Bill
Is it possible to get a circuit diagram of the Replicator since I have been asked to try and fix one. It has a
blown apart 5amp 5v voltage regulator. Not surprising when its cutting 24v down to 5v with a pathetic
little fan trying to keep it cool. Also after removing the regulator there is a 4ohm resistance between ground
and earth, so I suspect something else is blown. It would be a great help if someone has a diagram please!
@Monroe: Replicator 1 is still Open Hardware see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakerBot_Industries
I think making the project Closed Source reflects on the ability to make money with Open HW or Open Source. Lots of people contribute significant amounts of time, but only one goes in to space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth
Personally, why does 1 individual need 1/4Billion dollars, seriously... even with an order of magnitude less $25million he's not going to be eating beans! Even in a meritocracy it seems the rewards are out of whack.
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