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Nice-Looking, Less-Expensive Cube 3D Printer Leaves Me Cold

By Rain Noe - January 13, 2012

in Digital Fabrication

A new and affordable 3D printer has hit the market: 3D Systems' Cube. It's infinitely more elegant-looking than MakerBot Industries' Replicator, and nearly 500 bucks cheaper at $1,299 (though with a smaller 5.5" x 5.5" x 5.5" build area). But my excitement at first hearing about it quickly subsided upon seeing the attendant Cubify website, which gives you the impression the company behind it isn't quite sure what they're doing.

First off the video presentation, which is so banal I will not embed it here, is like one of those uninformative Powerpoint slideshows you're forced to sit through at work meetings and bad press presentations.

Secondly, MakerBot Industries' machines have a strong community component that greatly increases the utility of and support for their products; go to their Thingiverse website and you'll find tons of free projects you can make, with descriptions and files. In contrast, when I click on the Cubify "Community" page, I'm met with a pointless wall of headshots of different users, and many of them stock silhouettes to boot. Am I meant to click on people's faces that I like in order to see what they've made? The same page also features a map so you can search for fellow users geographically. Isn't the point of 3D printing that you can produce your own stuff independent of geography, and a guy in Seattle can share designs with a girl in New York?

Thirdly, like MakerBot Industries, the Cubify site sells the raw material that you'll need to feed into the printer. But whereas MakerBot sells the material in spools by weight, Cubify doesn't even quantify how much material you get for a particular amount. It simply says "1 Case - $49," followed by the option to buy three cases—at two different prices: $139.99 or $49.99. Huh?

Lastly, Cubify's page of projects you can make has thumbnails of different objects—with price tags underneath them. Where MakerBotters are sharing everything, keeping the emphasis on making, Cubify is keeping the emphasis on $.

None of these things mean the Cube is a bad product; but it illustrates a very different approach to 3D printing than MakerBot Industries is taking, and as a personal preference I'd rather get behind the latter.

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Jason Mailley

11 years ago

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I looked everywhere on the Cube's website, trying to plan how much creating objects with it would cost by getting an estimate.Still have no idea whatsoever.

It seems great, but the marketing is pretty bad.
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Karen Candler

12 years ago

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This comment sounds like a cubify staffer using alias?
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Chipp Walters

12 years ago

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Poor excuse for those of us looking for a serious review. I get it-- you're one of those Maker-Thing fanboys, who loves to tinker and build your own Thingbot, tweak all the settings, 3D print new parts for it and you believe everything in the world should be free while we also skip on down to mamby pamby land holding hands.

Have you considered there are others of us who don't need to constantly tinker under the hood of a '65 Camaro, but would rather just drive a Prius-- not knowing exactly how to make it better perform and just happy 'that it works.'

We're the ones this product is targeted at-- not you. Yes, the cost per plastic 'thingy' is a bit higher, but we're happy to pay that understanding the ease of use and QC which goes into the raw material. And nope, many of us don't care whether or not they have an 'app store' that costs money. We just want to print our OWN designs-- so we couldn't care less.

So basically, you've never even seen one of these things, but you're slamming it because it doesn't fit your social ideals. Great. Spare us.
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