Actually, I think a good idea would be a 99designs kind of service. Maybe not today, but as 3D printing matures, there's going to be more people who just want to print somehthing custom or some broken part, than there are people willing to learn 3D modeling.
Re:Show HN: iTunes for 3D printing
by marcosscriven on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @02:56PM
(#5979982)
Hmm yes that's a good idea too.
The more I got into it though, the more I realised that really it's nothing about 3D printing as such - most people don't care any more about 3D printers than they care about injection moulding.
Right now it's much more about getting something either customized or unique in some way, and printed on a professional SLS (or similar) printer. It's also more about useful materials such as metals and ceramic - that's where Shapeways have got it right I think.
Your right, Shapeways has got it right. I think this idea is more like Bill Gates trying to sell his BASIC to the homebrew computer club.
It would be nice if people listed the settings/materials that worked best for printing their uploaded models. I know each machine will always have a different calibration but sometimes hard numbers give me a good starting point.
Re:Show HN: iTunes for 3D printing
by marcosscriven on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @02:45PM
(#5979911)
That's a good idea :)
But having done it, I'm not sure it's really the way to go. There's a proliferation of them now, and people are still preferring Thingiverse, because it still has that inertia.
I think perhaps the next step is really more tools to make it easier to design things in 3D - as I think that's really the hard part for most people.