Our friends at the revolutionary manufacturing service Ponoko recently interviewed Cathy Lewis, CEO of Desktop Factory, the company attempting to market a quality 3D printer for less than US$5,000. We’ve interviewed Ms. Lewis here, but Ponoko covered different areas. Some highlights we noticed:
- Desktop Factory believes their big opportunity lies in providing 3D technology to the education segment, which as a side effect will assist in the generation of new engineers.
- They also were surprised by the interest in printing avatars from virtual worlds. We’ve seen several different services emerge that can perform this feat.
- They forsee a future reduction in transportation-generated carbon footprint, as some items can be printed directly at home instead of being shipped half-way across the planet.
- They expect to see the initial users of 3D printing tech to be early adopters, capable of handling the associated technology issues, but later expect to see development of more mainstream services built on top of the home printing infrastructure.
- They anticipate a gradual transition from 3D print services to a more distributed approach, including home 3D printers and “Over time I can see Kinko’s having 3D printers available to their customers”.
Via Ponoko Blog and again
