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Cubify 3D Printers Aren't Just for Squares (Video)
There are other 3D printers out there, but Cubify claims theirs is easier to use, has easier cartridge changes, and is all-around nicer and cooler than their competition. And Timothy Lord found them at Google I/O 2012, which means Google thinks they're cool, too. Wow. At only $1300 for their basic model (plus $50 each for the plastic "print" cartridges), every home should have one of these. Or maybe two or three. Or maybe Hackerspaces will buy all of them, and that's where we'll go to satisfy our lust for 3D printing.
Something closed-source, with proprietary consumables, and based on how it looks likely difficult to repair.
No thanks, I'll stick with a Makerbot or RepRap 3D printer.
(plus $50 each for the plastic "print" cartridges)
Filament extruder plastic costs about $35 per kilo (talk about mixed measurements... but that's how its sold. Figure "fifteen bucks per pound")
So a loaded $50 cartridge should weigh at least 4 pounds total. I can't figure out on the website how much a cartridge weighs, but just looking at it it seems like you're paying a pretty high premium for your plastic.
Not quite as bad as "precious metal cost" printer ink, but I bet by the time HP sells a 3-d printer they'll find a way to make the plastic cost more than, say, silver, on a weight basis.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I know this will sound like shilling, but all I can give is my personal assurances that I have no connection to the site.
Shapeways.com is cool. I realized long ago that I won't personally 3d print very many items, and there are still economies of scale to 3d printing, even if a lot less than manufacturing. So shapeways has multiple varieties of 3d printer, and numerous materials of varying pricing, and open source models other users have printed you can use or modify and use. As a user, you only see the software(blender) and the finished product when it's shipped to you. Actually OWNING a 3d printer doesn't appeal to me much, but there are a couple things I'm working on to (eventually, some day) print.
I don't see people going to a hackerspace to print something out. This tech will take off when it gets adopted by home improvement stores. Then you can get your printed plastic at the same place you get your cut glass and timber.
Maybe the people that I know are unrepresentative(and I'm not just talking about my nerd friends, I include the family members and various other non-techies who end up informing me of their usage habits in the course of extracting tech support); but inkjets seem to have suffered pretty massively in popularity in the last 5-ish years.
Photo printing seems to be nearly dead, with people either sending them to facebook and never printing them at all, or uploading them to some print service, which small-scale home inkjets can't touch on price or performance, and $100 laser printers have been a real kick in the teeth for inkjets when it comes to printing text/homework/online bank statements for paper filing/etc/etc.
Back when laser printers were quite expensive, and 'online' was not a ubiquitous concept, inkjets were certainly all over the place; but the 'razor/blades' model that the vendors all chased seems to have earned them substantial enmity. Even complete technophobes have frequently have a sense of grievance about how much ink cartridges cost, and how often printers break.
In the case of 3d printing, I definitely don't think that the future is a reprap in every household: DIY/Kit/OSS/etc 3d printers are geek toys, no question. However, the non-geek(and, in many cases, also useful to geeks) solution appears to be one of the 'upload 3d model, receive physical model by fedex' services that will sell you time on 20k+ printing gear a few bucks at a time, in the same way that the online photo printers do for 2d prints.
That is why I have such doubts about an offering like this. It isn't a terribly good fit for the nerds and hackers demographic that is likely to actually want a 3D printer on site; but it is also too expensive(up front and in consumables) to compare favorably for nontechnical users with the online print-to-order outfits that are similarly simple and friendly but have much more sophisticated equipment, and it's attempt to hit a consumer price point makes it a bit too limited(in materials, model size, and toolchain) for the rapid-prototyping needs of business users.