I'm glad that you posted this. As someone who has a 3D printing startup (CloudFab), we can see that the space is very over hyped right now. 3D printing is an aw

I'm glad that you posted this. As someone who has a 3D printing startup (CloudFab), we can see that the space is very over hyped right now. 3D printing is an awesome thing, but it's not the panacea that some are making it. The ink jet printer democratized printing yes, but we still use massive equipment to produce books and newspapers efficiently. Few things are as commodity as computer chips / servers - and really even those aren't really. Engineering is about optimizing for a problem - one-offs are one problem, and mass production is another. There are companies like SinterMask trying to make production grade 3D printing, and the machines are huge in order to do this. Also, no one is mentioning that there are significant materials science issues that come up in making actually consumer products. Apple has set the bar so far that regular mass production hasn't caught up - let alone these new technologies.