3D Printing for the Masses

This first caught my eye in the summer of last year, Shapeways is a spin out from the Lifestyle Incubator of Royal Philips Electronics, yes that Philips. Its aimed at budding 3D artists, architects, product designers and consumers and enables anyone with any skill level to order a reasonably priced model of their 3D design.

The whole transaction is carried out online and enables users to create and to modify their designs, or import them from popular 3D modeling software. Then In a few clicks, Shapeways checks whether the object can be made and provides a real-time cost estimate.

10 days later, wherever you are in the world your model arrives to your home or office....simple as that.

Looks like the system is starting to take off, if the forum traffic and examples on the site (www.shapeways.com) are anything to go by. I still can't see the day when everyone has a 3d printer in their house, but this kind of thing does open the technology up to everyone and that is a rather cool thing indeed.