3D printing beckoning to mainstream

[Badger52]

This movement (and progress) is cool, imo (for a variety of reasons) and is something that is an imagination-enabler.

From the article at Deutsche Welle:

Kathrin Winter carefully hangs a Christmas decoration on a fir tree standing in a pot in the corner of her store.

But the plastic stars and Christmas balls hanging on the tree are somewhat special. Instead of being made in a factory, Winter printed the ornaments herself on a 3-D printer in the 3-D store she owns together with her partner, Daniel Zimmermann.

The store, called Mr Make, opened recently smack-dab in the middle of the high street of Karlsruhe, a city in Germany's southwest.
Christmas tree with 3D-printed ornaments (Photo: DW/Kate Hairsine)

"Most people have heard of 3-D printing," says Zimmermann, a computer scientist by trade. "But the average consumer still doesn't have a concept of what that actually means. So our idea is to make 3-D printing more accessible."

The display room is filled with diverse objects in brightly colored plastic. There is a cookie cutter in the shape of a guitar, an architectural model where each story is printed separately so it's possible to see the interior room layouts, a grinning Halloween pumpkin, replacement handles for a pair of pliers, and strangely shaped spare parts.

Each object has been created on a 3-D printer, which works by rapidly fusing together layer after layer of plastic or another material to make a solid object. But many items, such as the Christmas decorations, are still cheaper to produce in a factory production line rather than to print out.

The big advantage of 3-D printing, explains Zimmerman, is that it's possible to get one-off, personalized items on the spot.