Personal fabber for US$15k plus materials
Following on from yesterday’s post about fabbing your own military hardware, you may be wondering exactly how much of a dent the cutting edge of consumer level 3D-printing technology would put in your pocketbook.
The answer? A personal fabber will cost you just a shade under US$15,000, though the actual printing materials are extra.
Ain’t a lot of money when you think about what it can do, is it? Certainly cheap enough that a reasonably organised criminal syndicate or terror organisation would consider it small change… [via Bruce Sterling; image courtesy Dimension Printing]
July 7th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Incorrect! Reprap will cost you less than 1K, possibly less than €200 if all the parts are donated by another owner!
http://www.reprap.org/
July 7th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Hi Cathal;
Yeah, I’ve posted about RepRap here a few times; the difference is that your average consumer or business doesn’t want the rough-and-ready open source solution, they want a bespoke gadget with a warranty and customer support. When those are sub-$1k, things are going to get very weird very fast.