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]
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/
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. 🙂
Yea exactly, and strangely enough in he last 2 years or so it seems to be perhaps going in the other direction. I don’t know what it’s gonna take to beat that $14,900 price point, but I don’t see it happening as soon as everyone thought.