[2468ben]

I've been researching and trying to plan out how this will all happen for about 5 years now, and it's amazing how far away we still are in many senses. Ponoko is a huge step forward, but I would love to work on making the "Napster of Forks".

[TrevorJ]

Yeah, we are a long ways away from these printers being cheap and robust enough to make their way into daily lives, but it does seem like the tech is there, it's more a matter of economies of scale, and incremental improvements that are needed for more mass adoption. I do think that the key will be more robust capabilities for purpose-built 'smart' devices. There's a limited amount of utility for the population at large for devices that can only spit out 'dumb' objects like rings and doorknobs.

I can really see the need for standardization of certain non-reproducible parts so that the end user can keep a few small parts on hand that can be used in a large number of possible smart devices.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like the strengths of 3D printing are such that it will bring about a revolution that doesn't intersect with traditional products (We won't be pirating iphones and printing them out). Instead I think 3D printing may supersede traditional devices in some cases. I might make my own utilitarian cell phone with few features to supplement my fancy expensive phone.