Posted on 07/22/2013 10:03:04 AM PDT by null and void
Customize your 3D-printed online purchases thanks to the auction giant's new smartphone app eBay Exact.
Internet auction giant eBay has raised the 3D printing stakes with the beta release of eBay Exact - an app that allows you to customize 3D-printed products including iPhone cases, jewellery and figurines. Simply select one of the available trinkets, choose a design, and then you can add your own personal touch to create an one-of-a-kind item. The app's landing page states: "With our first foray into 3D printing technology, we have partnered with Sculpteo, MakerBot, and Hot Pop Factory who are leaders in 3D printing technology." A huge name like eBay joining the 3D printing bandwagon will have many sitting up and taking note - is this app release the defining moment where 3D printing has turned from expensive novelty to mainstream product? With the current line of products on eBay Exact, probably not - but the possibilities are endless. 
If you're in the US, you can download the app here
Political power grows out of the nozzle of a 3-D Printer.
No Teller-Ulam device parts I take it.
If you’re looking to invest in 3D printing DDD and SSYS are the only two options. Who knows it may be the next Apple, Microsoft, or Google stock.
I’m gonna print my own 3-D printer.
I am getting pretty sick and tired of gauzy, nonsense-filled stories (like this one: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/07/21/9-ways-3d-printing-is-going-to-change-the-tech-world/) about how 3-D printing will “revolutionize the world.”
The FACT is 3-D printing is many, many decades away from replacing ANYTHING we use today. The tech is just NOT ready for prime time and there are a million myths being built up about how wondrous it all is. 3-D printing is not a Star Trek replicator, people. It is rough, untested, slow, and produces items that lack precision and strength. In other words it is all flash and promise right now but NO payoff.
I’ve learned from my mistake when I found a magic lamp and neglected to wish for more wishes.
3-D printed parts are being used in production aircraft.
3-D printed parts can have internal features machined parts simply can't. You try machining an internal spiral staircase in a rook!
The same technique that puts a spiral staircase in a metal chess piece makes the internal passages to mix fuel and oxidizer for a rocket engine, a production application impossible to achieve by conventional machining.
3-D printing has a valid production niche right now not "many, many decades" in the future.
That niche is not high volume production of jellybean parts, it is not a replacement for injection molding, die cast production, or sand casting. That niche really is decades away. It is not a replacement for a feedlot or cornfield, that is decades, centuries or millennia away, if ever, at least on earth.
It competes very favorably with one-of CNC machining.
It competes very favorably with having an inventory of every part that could break on a ship or in the Antarctic.
It dominates where there are impossible to machine internal features. Imagine structural features modeled on bird bones. A load bearing thin (and therefore lightweight) skin internally braced against collapse or bending by sparse cross-members.
Machine or mold that!
No one will ever want or need a personal desktop computer, either. And, if they did, whatever would they use it for? No way the personal computer could have any impact on anything, apart from a few individuals who could play Pong or talk to each other via a BB.
I agree 3D printing isn’t a replicator. But, whatever it is, it is going to have impact.
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