3D printing needs to be Apple’ized

Now imagine you had a good 3D printer, like a polished version of this: MakerBot.

Imagine a lost Lego piece… Now imagine that it could scan in 3D as well. If I have one, but need two, no problem. Scan the original I have, and churn out a new one. Or anyone in the world who has that piece could send me the data that would allow me to recreate it. Or Lego themselves could set this up with some nominal charge per replacement. Or sell whole kits. Or…

That would be cool.

Recently my parents broke a knob on their oven. You can only buy replacements as a set and the company wants an incredible $100 (Six plastic knobs. $100? Seriously). Or. They take a whole knob. They place it in their 3D printer. It scans it, and creates a replacement in an hour.

That would be cool.

3D Printing, Teleporters and Wishes:

And as just one parting example of why this stuff’s exciting, I loved this video from The Verge, showing how Microsoft’s hardware group (long one of the company’s undersung overperformers) makes smart use of 3D printing in their everyday work:

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Source: Anil Dash

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