Thinkklip
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone (or stole the patent, whichever story you believe) he was famously quoted as saying “I can see the day when there will be a telephone in every town in America", Abe Reichental was recently quoted as saying that “3D printing will be as big as the internet” and therefore seeming to suggest there’d soon be a 3D printer in every home.
Thinkklip think for now the answer of how many 3D printers there’ll be lies somewhere in-between Abe and Alexander’s predictions. This startup believe that seeing as the price of a good quality 3D printer is relatively high and levels of user experience is fairly low, then if likewise minded and budgeted folk could be joined up, we could start 3D printing groups.
"We want to solve a simple and immediate problem: "good 3D printers are expensive” and let’s see what happens if we can weave a network of for example 500 3D printers shared. Do you join?"
As they point out on their website sharing is big business, they want to be the Airbnb of 3D printing. Their vision seems, to us, to be a good one, a problem shared is a problem solved. Until the cost of a good quality 3D printer starts hitting the £500 ($758, €577) mark we’ll see more of these DIY 3D printing groups. This could be great for the progress of the consumer market.