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Royal Mail Pilots 3D Printing Service
New submitter MRothenberg writes: Just in time for the holidays, the UK's postal service is testing out a 3D printing service at its central London delivery center. Customers can order "ready-to-print" objects (including shoes, soap dishes and phone cases) or bring in their own originals to duplicate and send via Royal Mail. The postal company's COO predicts consumer demand for 3D printing will grow 95 percent by 2017.
The makers won't use this service. 3 years ago every hackerspace had a 3D printer, and it was a cool reason to join up. Now, the makers just buy their own printer. The cost has gone down, and designing a 3D object is an iterative interactive process.
There was, and is, and will continue to be, a huge difference in what you can do with a 3d printer that costs a few hundred (currency units) and one that costs a few thousand or tens of thousands of (currency units). A Maker who is not interested in mass producing things but instead wants to create a few interesting objects at a time will probably see a huge benefit to being able to just order up the object (instead of outlaying a huge amount for a printer) from a service that has both a very high quality printer, and a delivery chain to get it to them very fast. How many Makers like that are there? Who knows.