[crote]

It looks really cool, but in my opinion it tries to serve a market which does not really exist.

For 5-10 samples, doing it by hand is perfectly viable. For 100+ samples, the manual act of loading and unloading PCBs already takes so much time that you are probably better off outsourcing it to China. Companies like JLCPCB do it for prices which are so low it is basically free, order to delivery is four to six days - including the PCB which you already have to order, and quality control is going to be way better than you can do on your own.

It is cheap enough that buying one is very tempting, but I have a feeling it'll just be another toy that will end up sitting on a shelf unused.

[Retric]

The market for cheap 3D printers is mostly as a toy that sits on a shelf, it can still be quite profitable.

[crote]

Cheap 3D printers are actually really useful for prototyping. There isn't really an equivalent to hand-assembling a PCB in the 3D world. At best you're going to have a machinist spend a few dozen hours milling your object, that's going to set you back thousands.

With 3D printing, any company can just get one for a one-off $1000 and have a physical representation of their design in a few hours. That kind of innovation radically alters the entire industry.