3D printing is really coming to our homes. I reported just two months ago of an affordable 3D printer I saw at the CEBIT Expo in Hannover, and that one was over 1,000€. Now, on Kickstarter there is the M3D – Micro-, the first 3D printer designed for every home, at a cost of 299$ (close to 200€).
You should take a look at the video and you’ll probably get the same eagerness I got to get one.
What hooked me in the Kickstarter video (go to the provided link to see it) is the way you can use a 3D printer at home: to make those little things that can break down ad that are so difficult to find in store, like a replica of a fastener for a curtain.
The M3D team took care in making a product that can really sit on a desk in your home and an application that makes it easy to work with it.
We already have apps that can create a 3D scan by using your smartphone. I can see me taking a 3D scan of a broken part and uploading it to the app controlling the Micro to see it printed in minutes.
I guess this can really open up the consumer market for 3D printers.
Also, I found it amazing that M3D has been able to get over 3 Million $ through Kickstarter in just one month and I found interesting to see how they rewarded the pledgers by grading the rewards. You pledge 299$, you’ll get the Micro in Spring 2015, you pledge 899$, you’ll get in August 2014…
Overall they got over 11,000 people pledging. They were targeting 50,000$ and ended up with 3 million! Not bad…
Don’t think that evolution in 3D printing is just focusing on attacking the mass market. In a news published in the middle of April 2014 I have read of very interesting projects to use AM (addictive Manufacturing, which is a different name for professional 3D printing based production) sponsored by ESA: the European Space Agency for manufacturing objects that would be impossibile to manufacture in other ways and to manufacture objects in space or on space bases on Mars and beyond.