Spark 3D Printer and platform - "Where's the beef?"

[JamesMaeding]

Has anyone seen anything openly available on Autodesk highly advertised Spark project effort.

I know you can buy a Spark for like $3000, with a tiny build volume, but 10x thinner layers than average reprap FDM style printer.

How long has it been now? This is starting to look like marketing ahead of reality, which really annoys me because Autodesk says athey cannot do this or that due to public stock trading issues.

Well, are they now allowed to announce whatever they want with a big web page, blog, requests for donations to some charity fund.

Show us something Autodesk. Show us an outline, anything since its open source.

Or are you considering not making it open?

[JDMather]

I could have mis-understood, but -

from what I gathered at AU - Spark and Ember is intended for researchers who want to use and develop this technology in their own products.  I got the impression that this was not a commercialization effort by Autodesk to enter the 3D printer market.  I suspect they will be more involved in Spark than Ember.

I'm not even sure you can purchase an Ember if you have the 6k, unless you are selected by application.

[pendean]

Website, blog and "contact" can be found here if you want to know more: http://spark.autodesk.com/

info on the printer that ships "early 2015" is here: http://spark.autodesk.com/ember#about-explorer
and the caveat statement about it here:
http://spark.autodesk.com/ember#important-notice

[JamesMaeding]

Cool, another JDM!

I guess that is what annoys me is that its not anything the "hobby reprap" 3d printer people would care about.

Autodesk does this media campaign (at least I got emails on it) and sets up a blog with this big logo that says open:

"Spark is the first open 3D printing software platform" and "Coonected, Open Free..." in huge letters.

Then major newspapers at the bottom in more huge letters.

Who are they trying to fool?

The reprap crowd is very anti-big business, because things are never open source, yet they pull from the crowd for ideas in the first place.

So here we have Autodesk doing that, so far.

They are marketing like they discovered an alternative to FDM and are making it free, but they are not doing that.

Just one more way to undermine the Autodesk name to its real customers.

I'm sure the internal teams love their own marketing, and who cares if stock is going up? (for now)

[JDMather]

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@Anonymous wrote:

.....They are marketing like they discovered an alternative to FDM and are making it free, but they are not doing that..... 

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I don't think they every said they were giving away free printers. (Ember)

On the other hand, the Spark portion of the project... 

[JamesMaeding]

right, the "it" being the design, not a physical printer.

So what is a "3d printer platform" anyway?

The modeler, stl exporter, host, slicer, firmware for some hardware, g-code flavor.....????

There is nothing first about what they have done until they do it.

Not only that, its pretty bold to say you are the first, when there is a huge reprap.org wiki out there.

Did they have to invent a new term to say they are the first?