3D Printing Store

http://www.amazon.com/3dp

by shark1 • 12 years ago

180 92 12 years ago

alexyes2• 12 years ago

It has been around for a while

fudged714• 12 years ago

You are being downvoted but it's very true. Amazon has had this partnership with 3DLT for a while but have only just now published the news.

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

alexyes2• 12 years ago

Thanks. I am actually very excited for Amazon efforts in 3D printing. My comment was more about the effect of press releases

Zikes• 12 years ago

3D printers, capable of creating anything you can imagine. Only phones supported for cases are iPhones. The future is now!

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

duiker1012• 12 years ago

you probably still need a model for all the other phones, I agree that a lot of other phone models could be supported but I don't expect anything to be instantly available.

jadeddrag• 12 years ago

I do.

jpindar• 12 years ago

There are some cases there for Samsung phones.

edpichler• 12 years ago

3D printing is not new, but once this become cheap and available to everyone, it will be a really unimaginable and unprecedented world.

What a great years to be living =]

robert_tweed• 12 years ago

Huh. I thought based on the title that this was 3D printing as a service, which would have been quite useful.

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.

cauterized• 12 years ago

I think there's a company that does 3d printing as a service. Try shapeways, maybe?

fooqux2• 12 years ago

I would have liked to see a "create your own" service for the general customer as well, but if you stop and think about it, that is still a ways off for a couple reasons off the top of my head:

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.

yincrash• 12 years ago

http://www.shapeways.com/

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

VLM3• 12 years ago

thingiverse.com, or something looking like it, with a "click here to order on the theoretical future Amazon print on demand service" right next to the existing "Download This Thing" button.

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

knicholes• 12 years ago

I have built a 3d printer (Prusa i2) and regularly get requests from people to print their models from www.makexyz.com.

jkestner• 12 years ago

Why? Foreshadowing. Amazon created an app store before it made tablets and phones.

bhouston• 12 years ago

I love that they have integrated partner 3D printing community sites like the beautiful Pinshape:

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

pgrote• 12 years ago

If you go to the url above you receive the error:

"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.

duiker1012• 12 years ago

Same

nickschwing2• 12 years ago

Hi guys, we were just doing a push at the time, everything is working as expected now. Thanks for checking us out!

diggan• 12 years ago

Kind of off topic but recently, I broke my washing machine by trying to open it while being locked. The little piece of plastic broke and I can't find a similar one anywhere... So I got the idea to make the thing myself, send the model to some company that provides single unit 3D printing in europe (I'm located in Spain) but haven't found any with reasonable pricing.

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

gerbal• 12 years ago

Sculpteo[1] and Shapeways[2] seem to be the two largest printers. According to what I have read[3], they are priced roughly in line with the costs of materials, plus some overhead.

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

bram_rongen• 12 years ago

Another option if you want to meet the person behind the printer is http://www.3dhubs.com. It's all about connecting people on a local level around 3D printing.

chromaton3• 12 years ago

Curious: how do you define "reasonable pricing"?

Zancarius4• 12 years ago

I don't know about the OP, but in my opinion, it'd be anything less than or equal to an equivalent replacement part (if it were available--in the OP's circumstance it's not). For example, some manufacturers of vacuum cleaners easily charge in upwards of $20 for a small plastic piece that you wouldn't expect to pay more than $8 for. So, if on-demand 3D printing services could compete with that niche, it's something I could see being of use for aftermarket repair or replacement. Poorly designed plastic switches no bigger than your thumb shouldn't be more expensive than hose attachments.

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?

jonemo• 12 years ago

Since you mention price specifically I will use this to shamelessly plug my site www.3dprintingpricecheck.com. It analyses your .stl file in-browser and gets you quotes and estimates for the major consumer facing 3d printing services.

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

baddox• 12 years ago

You might try to find someone online nearby who would print and ship it to you at cost. I would do it, but I suspect shipping from USA to Spain is cost prohibitive. Most hobbyists with printers would probably get a kick out of printing a functional part for someone.

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)

ja272• 12 years ago

Or a local makerspace / hackerspace.

http://makerspace.com/makerspace-directory

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

fudged714• 12 years ago

http://www.3dhubs.com/ is exactly the kind of service you're looking for. Individuals will compete locally for print jobs, and you can have it made by a hobbyist nearby in Spain.

chromaton3• 12 years ago

It's an interesting idea, but looks quite limited in the available options.

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.

dheera• 12 years ago

Durable, large, high resolution, and cheap have all be done, just not at the same time. As with any technology I think it will only be a matter of time, though.

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.

fragmede• 12 years ago

To get really good quality, you need an expensive machine, and that means expensive parts to pay for the capital costs.

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.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

I imagine they use a process similar to Shapeways for that:

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

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

Pxtl2• 12 years ago

As much as I love the 3D printing revolution, I feel like we all collectively skipped a step - most parents and teachers I know would just be ecstatic to have a 2D cutter plotter for the purposes of cutting out silhouettes of letters and the like.

regularfry3• 12 years ago

You can get stencil cutters for not-very-much-money: http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-Prin...

VLM3• 12 years ago

Both that and the somewhat cheaper cricut are into the whole walled garden thing where you get to buy the letter "H" for $1 or whatever.

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.

Pxtl2• 12 years ago

... ooh, yes. I'd been searching about for such a thing but coudln't find it.

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

fudged714• 12 years ago

I asked a teacher about this the other day: why are they cutting things out when there are tools like this?

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.

Htsthbjig2• 12 years ago

I can cut silluetes of letters and the like with my 3D printer. I just had to add a diode laser to it.

Timmmmbob• 12 years ago

You can get a vinyl cutter for a couple of hundred quid.

mholt• 12 years ago

Does anyone else think that the slogan "Shop the Future" is kind of corny?

njharman• 12 years ago

One person's marketing gold is another's marketing cheese.

regularfry3• 12 years ago

Someone needs to hide my credit card.

TeMPOraL3• 12 years ago

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118660757/

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.

Htsthbjig2• 12 years ago

There are lots of reasons. The fact that you don't have a use for this does not mean that other people don't too.

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.

lucian1900• 12 years ago

Why not just buy a digital version and remove the DRM? It's easy enough and almost always cheaper.

harshreality• 12 years ago

Stripping the DRM for most drm (adobe or amazon) is way easier than you seem to think. Digitizing a print copy...

- 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.

dinkumthinkum• 12 years ago

Would you rather have a treekiller or a mountain top destroyer (ebook)? I mean we can all play this game. I prefer reading paper myself.

rix0r• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity, what kind of scanner do you have?

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.

ja272• 12 years ago

Because people keep buying them. No idea why.

mrspeaker• 12 years ago

The problem is that the alternative is reading on your computer or reader - which sucks (for many) compared with a real book. For me I remember things more clearly when I read them in physical books because the information exists in a "space" - I remember reading something, pick up the book and flip there. I can recall things by remembering what was around them in the book. The tactile-ness works for my brain.

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.

Zancarius4• 12 years ago

You put into words something I've experienced throughout my life--a sort of "spatial topical memory"--and it's refreshing to see others often do the same.

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.)

fudged714• 12 years ago

Hey I'm in that book :)

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.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

It's not paper books that become obsolete, but paper tech books. Although I love paper books and will never stop preferring them, they're less good for timely technical material like 'how to' books, which do go out of date.

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.

TeMPOraL3• 12 years ago

It's not paper books that become obsolete, but paper tech books.

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.

thaumaturgy• 12 years ago

I just recently bought an O'Reilly book -- XMPP, the Definitive Guide.

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.

listic• 12 years ago

I'm with you on the general principle that printing paper books about fast-moving subjects looks like a futile endeavor, but - does 3D printing still move that fast?

TeMPOraL3• 12 years ago

The consumer-accessible (not industrial) 3D printing is, like, 3 years old field; a lot of things changed in hardware and software during that time and I'd expect many more to change in the following years.

Istof5• 12 years ago

The whole point of 3D printing is that you can create almost anything but they don't let you print your own files at Amazon?

delecti2• 12 years ago

That opens up potential copyright/patent issues, I fully understand why they wouldn't want to risk it.

Istof5• 12 years ago

Why don't they call their toys custom injection molding? it's a marketing ploy?

e12e5• 12 years ago

As far as I know physical goods cannot be copyrighted. You can (again AFAIK) legally copy an Ikea closet, by measuring the parts, and building similar parts. Now the actual design is copyrightable, but you'd not be violating copyright by taking an unauthorized copy and making a physical object. The person making the unauthorized copy of the design would be violating copyright.

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.

MarkMc• 12 years ago

Then they would need to regulate the printing of guns, presumably

guiambros• 12 years ago

They have an option to "personalize" [1] the objects you're printing.

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...

birkbork• 12 years ago

So, clone-a-willy?

marcosscriven• 12 years ago

If anyone has a chance of making it work, it's a company like Amazon.

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.

e12e5• 12 years ago

I don't know -- if it was one thing Amazon could do better than anyone else, it would be print-on-demand. But apparently they prefer to stick with traditional physical books.

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?

hiddencost2• 12 years ago

hrm? Amazon does do print-on-demand.

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.

johnvschmitt• 12 years ago

AutoCAD? Seriously?

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.

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