14 DAY TRIAL // You need a new tooth brush, or a battery cover for the cell phone, or your kid just broke a plastic component of his new toy and you don't have the time to go to a store. Soon, you will be able to create these items by yourself, at home.
3-D printers will be the answer. You just get the blueprint of the objects that need replacing, enter the data in your PC and order the printer to create them in a few minutes. These printers have been used in industrial design shops for about a decade, used to test part designs for cars, airplanes and other products before they are sent to manufacturing.
Until now, their price was usually around US $100,000, but in recent years they've come down to $ 15,000. Still, not cheap enough for most people. That's why a company has been thinking about producing 3-D printers at much lower prices, in a year or two.
Idea Lab will produce the Desktop Factory, a $4,995 3-D printer scheduled to enter the market later this year. They also say the prices could be reduced even further, to around $1,000 in four years.
"The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials," said Bill Gross, the chairman of IdeaLab.
The working principle of these printers is not too complicated. They assemble objects out of an array of specks of material, just as traditional printers create images out of dots of ink or toner.
Using a halogen light bulb to melt nylon powder, they build models in a stack of very thin layers, each created by a liquid or powdered plastic that can be hardened in small spots by precisely applied heat, light or chemicals.
"In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home," said Hod Lipson, a professor at Cornell University, who has led a project that published a design for a 3-D printer that can be made with about $2,000 in parts. "You can imagine printing a toothbrush, a fork, a shoe. Who knows where it will go from here?"