I agree it's kinda missing the point, but they're likely focusing on the larger, mainstream, Etsy-style users. People that don't want (or don't know how) to create their own objects, but would like to get something semi-personalized.

And, of course, they can avoid the entire discussion about copyright infringement, or printed guns. It's a safer first step.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Create-Your-Own-Printed-Mixee/dp/B00KD...

Patents are another issue. And trademarks. But you'd even be allowed to "reverse-engineer" eg: a cup (that is, measure it), and print a copy.

This legal "hole" is likely to be plugged through lobbying and new legislation -- to the point where if you have a nice Ikea (or other) closet at home, you won't (technically) be allowed to make one that looks just like it for your other bedroom etc... but so far it is legal.

I'm not sure that's correct. Patents restrict rights by granting exclusivity on making, using, or selling, so reverse engineering a patented cup and printing it is still in violation of the patent.

http://www.vulcanmold.com/uploads/image/plastic-injection-mo...

What they're doing isn't custom, and they're not claiming it is. It is 3D printing, and they are (correctly) claiming it is.

What most people miss is that current cheap 3D printing doesn't produce very durable, large, or high resolution parts. To get really good quality, you need an expensive machine, and that means expensive parts to pay for the capital costs.

Also, for the best results, you have to understand the limitations of the machine: resolution, minimum wall thickness, and so on.

This is part of the reason I've been focused on waterjet and laser cutting. You can design parts on the computer the same way, but the limitations are quite easy to understand, and you can end up with large, durable parts at the end of the process.

Personally I do wish there were more options for metal and ceramic, which would make it very useful for custom, wacky eating utensils that could not be done with traditional manufacturing easily. Ponoko does it but it's not cheap and they have a limited selection of colours.

It's maybe possible that Amazon has access to lots of capital if desired. Hell, they have "bronze-infused stainless steel" as a material option - I think it's obvious that Amazon isn't using hobby-grade 3d printers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9VOwqtOglg

I wouldn't be all that surprised if Shapeways or similar is actually doing the printing.

Ok, this really irks me. Why do people keep writing and printing paper books that will become obsolete before even the first batch is sold out? Topics like this, or the latest (at the time of writing) version of jQuery or other things that have lifespan of few months? Surely this is just a waste of money and paper for everyone. I can see the value of e-books, or even print-on-demand publications, but not this. Those books end up either cluttering the local libraries or pissing off second-hand bookshop employees because no-one will buy or read them in a year. It's almost a printer-to-recycler pipeline.

I buy text books, not as often as I did because of things like Lynda but I do from time to time. The first thing I do is to cut the book with an automatic saw and give the pages to my amazing Fujitsu automatic scanner.

Then I store the book on a box far away in a storage room.

This way I have a 100% DRM free book I can read whenever I want and weights 0 grams, and I can travel to other countries with it. Most of the time(when buying multiple books) the tree killer version is cheaper than the DRM ebook one, and it does not have your name in all the pages like some bastards do.

Some books never will have a DRM free ebook ever.

- usually costs more to buy

- takes much more time to dissect and scan the book than it takes to crack drm

- PDFs (from scan) have lower visual quality, and are bigger (PDFs have a place... it's difficult to convert something like an organic chem textbook with all the margin diagrams and complex layout into a nice epub, for instance, but even then good PDFs are generated by the publisher, not scanned)

- OCR errors, so text search may not always work even if you can read the original text (you kept is as a pdf, kept it as an image with OCR text as a separate layer only used for searching, or used cleartype-like tech which is similar but basically compresses similar looking glyphs)

- converting to a real ebook (epub) for reading on smaller devices, without extensive proofing (and reformatting if the book uses layout, as in it isn't a traditional fiction/nonfiction work that's all uniform prose), has mediocre-to-horrible results. Line wrapping, layout and OCR errors abound.

I've been wanting to scan all my important mail and documents for a while, but I need the process to be as frictionless as possible for me to actually go through with it and I'm unsure what kind of scanner to buy for that.

Interesting that the DMCA essentially slapped fair use squarely across the face.

I totally agree they aren't worth destroying trees for (I only buy paper books for topics that are more age-resistant) but I get why people still buy them.

I like digital reference material for the advantages they possess (ease of searching, bookmarking, etc.) but dislike them for the same reasons you illustrate and others, such as thumbing through. It's strange how tactile feedback can become so important. It's also one of the reasons I wish publishers would do something like what Pragmatic Press does more often: Offer both the physical and digital versions of books (although if you're buying both, I'd rather the digital copy be a bit less expensive).

Since there are advantages to both, I'm reluctant to say one format is better than the other, but each is good at something the other isn't. Whenever I've read reference materials in a digital format, I find I suffer from a similar problem to yours: Recalling things in proximity becomes jumbled with other reference materials and works. There's definitely something to be said for a physical medium even if it's not near-instantly searchable and required physical bookmarks.

Then again, I can't plug headphones into a dead tree and read it in complete darkness. (Setting it on fire doesn't count.)

That said, not everyone has a Kindle or a tablet, and if you're trying to do something difficult on the computer (true by definition, if you're using a 'x for dummies' book), then you don't want the tutorial material on the same screen as the software you're trying to wrap your head around. Also, I don't think they'll be obsolete in a year, more like 5+. Indeed, I've found that buying cheap books on complex software that go a few editions back is often an equally good way to get a grip on the fundamental skills even if the interface has changed in the meantime - you can easily figure out the newer features later, whereas learning the shiny new stuff first can often delay getting a good grasp on the fundamental skills.

Yes, exactly. Maybe I haven't articulated my point in a clear enough way, but I meant only paper tech books, and not all of them, but the ones about topics that change fast enough to make the book obsolete soon after being printed.

I have a paper copy of SICP, which is a quite old book, and yet it's probably not going to lose its value for next few decades. But books about, say, current most hip MVC JS framework get obsolete within a year from the date of publication. I'm hoping that the industry will move to print-on-demand tech books because as you said, there's a great value to having your documentation / tutorials somewhere else than on the screen (heck, I often print out RFCs when I need them for work), but dumping short-lived books on bookstores around the world just feels like a huge waste.

I double-dog-dare you to find an online resource that covers XMPP as well as the book.

When online guides stop sucking, I'll stop buying books.

You are only looking at this kind of book as a sort of reference manual, but there is also historical value there as well. There don't seem to be many web projects that put enough effort in to describe the current state of an industry, but an author will. And that has a lot of value.

Books are a slice in time, whereas websites and news articles tend to show an evolving state of an industry.

For consumers, who are the primary market here on Amazon, looking to get started, why would they buy very expensive software for the CAD part?

Blender is a free CAD tool that I use, as well as millions of others, and is just fine for 99% of consumers. If they get serious & professional, then they'd feed right into the expensive corporate CAD solutions: SolidWorks, AutoCAD, etc. But, it's odd that Amazon would start you with B2B tools like that.

Of course, that makes me suspect that AutoCAD is paying Amazon for this positioning. If not, then it's just a mistake IMO.

I spent a bit of time last year trying to work on a a 3D model sharing site: http://www.fabfabbers.com/ - as a personal project rather than a viable business. In the end I found the idea of providing 3D development tools online much more interesting, and spent a bit of time converting OpenSCAD. I got a bit fed up with it in the end though, so it's just bit rotted since.

Granted, unlike 3d printing a toy, or tool or what-not -- there are better (well potentially better) alternatives to print-on-demand: e-books.

I do find it kind of odd that they don't allow custom designs -- seems to defeat the purpose of 3d printing?

It seems fairly obvious that they don't allow custom designs. If you want to print your own stuff, go to a maker space. Quality control is important for a company like Amazon, and custom designs make that impossible. A small batch of items is the logical place to start a service like this. I'm sure over time they'll steadily incorporate proven designs onto the platform; probably they'll also let people submit designs and get a cut of the design, just like books. But, there will need to be a rigorous quality control process in place before the platform can be that open.

https://www.createspace.com/

Anyone here know of such company where I can send my 3D model and they will print it and send it home to me?

There's also www.supplybetter.com who cover a lot more services but take a little bit to get you the numbers.

You may just want to find a maker space somewhere near you[4] and go print it there. Plus then you get to play with their kit and meet some cool people.

[1]http://www.sculpteo.com/

[2]http://www.shapeways.com/

[3]http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1b1701/is_shapew...

[4]http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Spain

Give these two subreddits a try:

http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprintmything/ (small community, but dedicated to this)

http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ (pretty big community)

http://makerspace.com/makerspace-directory

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

The only thing to worry about is the manufacturers' response: I don't know how much money they make from replacement parts, but if it's anything other than a minor revenue stream, I'd imagine they might issue legal threats or takedown notices. I wonder if, in another 20 years, we'll see OEMs sending threats to 3D printing companies warning them not to sell replacement components even if customers sent them the schematic?

3D printing takes up a good amount of time on an expensive machine, plus operator time, electricity, shop space, etc.

Think about what your time is worth to an employer. The cost of a replacement part is probably relatively low compared to the cost of your time to fix the machine. Not to mention the opportunity cost of not having the appliance working.

You're talking about a situation where you'd like to get a price down to $8. It's very tough to make money selling physical products at $8 a pop, let alone things that must be custom made.

My example was for an item in private use, not commercial. I don't know of anyone who actively bills for their own personal chores at home (such as, say, vacuuming or mowing their yard).

> You're talking about a situation where you'd like to get a price down to $8. It's very tough to make money selling physical products at $8 a pop, let alone things that must be custom made.

Maybe so, but you have to admit charging > $20 for a part that probably costs less than 50¢ leaves at least some room for competition, no?

http://pinshape.com/index (Right now http://pinshape.com isn't working)

"The enemy gate is down! That's certainly some out of box thinking, launchy! The application has encountered an unexpected error and cannot display the page you requested. In case you want to contact us about this, be sure to include the error identification so we can get at your issue more easily:

anonymous-1406558433-440654a4421d29f6e36ae663eb2c1df3b30ada6c62698cfe49d7c04c2dd0ca17"

I haven't seen it before. If you go to https://pinshape.com/index there is no error.

Its not like owning a laserprinter where you can reasonably assume you can "just print" without having to purchase each letter in each font first.

Also my wife has a cricut and its slow. Fast enough for home craft use, but don't expect 15 ppm laser printer speeds, its more like 5 to maybe 10 minutes per page. This has scaling effect and labor cost issues for a school teacher. Theoretically you could build something as fast as a modern laser cutter, heck, you could use a modern laser cutter, but even those aren't as fast as a laser printer.

Giving the kids some fine motor practice in cutting out laserprinted outlines would be cheaper and more effective.

Both the product FAQ and the customer comments on that page disagree with you:

    Q: Can you create your own illustrations / decal designs (vectors) and print them with 
       this - or is it only clip-art images?
    A: Yes, I create my own vector designs and import them from adobe illustrator.

My only alibi is no one in my wife's scrapbooking clique could handle creating their own dxfs or pirating any kind of files off the internet, making me correct in practice. There surely do exist at least some scrappers who have CAD skills. Just not many of them.

When circut was new the carts I bought my wife for gifts were all like $60 and have steadily dropped in price over the years. Now they're mostly like $20. When diecuts at the local scrapbook store are only $1 or even 50 cents a cartridge is a luxury but not really economic, but at $20 its hard to justify buying diecuts instead of a cartridge.

Is a ripoff a good deal if the alternative is technologically impossible for most and the ripoff is really cheap? A good analogy is a buck for a two minute .mp3 top 40 song, I don't think its worth a buck, but its more convenient than filesharing or ripping, especially for people technologically incapable of it, and its not a lot of money so, ok fine whatever, even if I'm not smiling while I pay my $1.

Well you need to print something out first and then define the cutting patterns then run it. It's just easier overall to just cut things out by hand.

Don't have the money for such a luxury right now, but definitely on the to-do list.

Edit: Lots of iPhone owners on HN, I see.

I guess they were doing a pilot of the project to see if anyone would buy.

It actually seems like yet another uninteresting store for 3D printed tat. I don't see how it fills a niche that isn't already filled by, say, Etsy, or how it's really any different from the existing Amazon marketplace other than "Look! 3D printing: New! Trendy!"

What makes 3D printing interesting is the ability to create things that could not have been created before. If you are selling just those things (and not a design or custom production service), it's more appropriate to categorise them according to what they are, not how they were made.

1) Customers would need 3D design experience, or Amazon would need to come up with a truly novel CAD type program that the general populace could use. Even products like Google's SketchUp aren't exactly easy to use once you get past drawing cubes.

2) I think most people don't yet realize the limitations of this technology. They're going to be expecting super detailed minifigs and nice polished paint jobs, not rough plastic that doesn't have a great amount of detail in it. There's also the problem with designs that are impossible for current 3D printers to create. In both cases injection molding is still king, IMHO.

I think both of these will eventually get solved, but I don't think it will be this year. 3D printing is progressing at an awesome pace, but it still has to bake a bit before it gets as good as other creation methods. And most people are going to be expecting something better than what consumer grade 3D printing can currently offer. That means lots of returns for a site like Amazon.

You can get your own designs printed, or print other people's designs.

Or if you must insert friction for legal reasons, simply download from thingiverse and upload to Amazon. Two steps not too awful.

What a great years to be living =]