Affordable 3D Printing Coming To YOUR Neighbourhood

[HeatSurge]

Staples Announces In-Store 3-D Printing Service | Wired Design | Wired.com

Inb4 Soulzz downloading printable male genitalia models.

But seriously, I'm sort of excited about this. DIY 3D printers are hard to make, prefabs are expensive as hell, and it looks like they really might get some economies of scale going with this thing.

Depending on the price and quality, action figure retailers and the like might take a dump.

It'd be so cool to get a gaming figure or two for decoration with this thing, assuming the price is sane :-D .

 

[2Tartu]

I'd print out australian dollars... (the plastic ones)

 

[Narcosis]

The thing with these printers is that, like ink, the plastic will be expensive enough to deter people from printing off all their favorite action figures and whatnot,. though I'm sure those companies are probably going to unhappy about this.

The best part about this that you can now do this:



Yes, I would download a car... and print it!

 

[cplmac]

This will be really cool, and you are going to see a staggering amount of new patents and inventions now that a major barrier has been broken for the low funding inventor. Pretty cool.

 

[HeatSurge]

IDK though. The plastic (some kind of paper-based material actually, from what the article says?) will probably not be cheap and the whole process is going to probably be expensive to begin with, but just the fact that a major store chain is going to do this will provide some awesome economies of scale which are definitely impossible with the kickstarter projects or DIY printers.

Printing something small might cost $20-30, but at least it will be available within ~20 min driving from your house, compared to buying your own printer, repairing it, and operating it at an initial cost of $1000+, with the printable material on top of that.