Bill Decker, chairman of the Association of 3D Printing, observed that 3D printing will “democratize manufacturing,” but wondered whether “people really want these machines in their home for one-off projects.” Decker said consumers may balk at the “smell, mess, and fuss” of 3D printing at home, when they could send a 3D design to a local Staples or UPS store to be printed, and then pick up the finished product “just like we currently use print shops for business cards, brochures, and flyers,” a process Decker calls “3D printing on demand.” Organizations like New York-based Shapeways already provide such a service.
To Decker, “a mistake everyone is making is to think the consumer is the market to target.” Do-it-yourself 3D printing, cutting, and milling “makes sense on a boat, oil rig, or in the Third World where there is no delivery, product, or stores, ” he says, but what “is sexy to the consumer is the ability to scan or design a product to manufacture, use the power of the Internet to get it made, and then store the design in the cloud to use later from anywhere.”
[…] Bill Decker, chairman of the Association of 3D Printing, observed that 3D printing will “democratize manufacturing,” but wondered whether “people really want these machines in their home for one-off projects.” Decker said consumers may balk at the “smell, mess, and… Read more › […]