More design hobbyists, entrepreneurs use 3-D printing
[Philip Lelyveld comment: The bolded comment is reminiscent of what the record industry said about MP3s.]
Thanks to the Internet and declining hardware costs, 3-D printing — once a specialized process used sparingly by industrial companies for prototyping — is becoming more common among design hobbyists and entrepreneurs such as Summit.
The consumer market's embrace of the technology has been swift. Sales for all 3-D printing products and services worldwide grew 24% to $1.33 billion in 2010, fueled in part by a fast-growing market of do-it-yourselfers, says industry research firm Wohlers Associates.
Want to make a toy robot for your third-grader? MyRobotNation.com, which specializes in 3-D-printed toy robots, has design software and a product ordering page on its website.
Despite its potential, 3-D-printing technology does not yet pose a serious threat to traditional manufacturing.
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