[Philip Lelyveld comment; this units a bottom-up amateur solution with a high end multi-material system.]
The Brooklyn-based 3-D printer startup MakerBot Industries just got a little less hip, sinceannouncing yesterday that it had sold for $403 million in stock to Stratasys. The public company, founded in 1989 and based in Minnesota and Israel, is one of the two large manufacturers of expensive, industrial machines. It competes with 3D Systems, which already has a consumer 3D printer line.
What’s important to note, either way, is that consumer models have a ways to go before they can be broadly useful to most people (see “What Yoda Taught me About 3-D Printing”), and now the two companies together may be in the best position to make that happen.
See the full story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/516341/why-a-3-d-printer-giant-just-bought-makerbot/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130621