
3D Printing Store - edpichler
http://www.amazon.com/3dp
======
Istof
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?

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

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

~~~
dmd
Because that would be completely wrong. It's not custom, and it's not
injection molding.

What they're doing isn't custom, and they're not claiming it is. It _is_ 3D
printing, and they are (correctly) claiming it is.

~~~
Istof
I was not talking about their 3D printed products... I was talking about their
other products.... Fisherprice toys for example... Why don't they tell you how
they where molded?

~~~
dmd
Ah, ok. That's a fair point.

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chromaton
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.

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

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9VOwqtOglg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9VOwqtOglg)

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

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TeMPOraL
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118660757/](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.

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

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Istof
although it does not make sense, I believe it is illegal to remove DRM...

~~~
Zancarius
That's under the DMCA's no circumvention clause (in the US at least). It may
not be illegal in other jurisdictions.

Interesting that the DMCA essentially slapped fair use squarely across the
face.

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johnvschmitt
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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marcosscriven
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/](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.

~~~
e12e
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?

~~~
hiddencost
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.

~~~
e12e
Amazon does print-on-demand for books? Eg printing copies in Germany rather
than shipping from the US?

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hiddencost
The print-on-demand is only available if the author enrolls in the program, I
assume for legal reasons.

[https://www.createspace.com/](https://www.createspace.com/)

~~~
e12e
Oh, I had entirely forgotten about that service... Thanks for pointing it out.

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diggan
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
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/](http://www.sculpteo.com/)

[2][http://www.shapeways.com/](http://www.shapeways.com/)

[3][http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1b1701/is_shapew...](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1b1701/is_shapeways_overpriced/)

[4][http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Spain](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Spain)

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

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

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

~~~
pgrote
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](https://pinshape.com/index) there is no error.

~~~
duiker101
Same

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Pxtl
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.

~~~
regularfry
You can get stencil cutters for not-very-much-money:
[http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-
Prin...](http://www.amazon.com/Silhouette-Cameo-Material-Cutting-
Printer/dp/B0060D1LFO)

~~~
VLM
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.

~~~
regularfry
> 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.

Both the product FAQ and the customer comments on that page disagree with you:

    
    
        Q: Can you create your own illustrations / decal designs (vectors) and print them with 
           this - or is it only clip-art images?
        A: Yes, I create my own vector designs and import them from adobe illustrator.
    

Seems like either you or they are wrong.

~~~
VLM
I am surprised, and they are technically correct.

My only alibi is no one in my wife's scrapbooking clique could handle creating
their own dxfs or pirating any kind of files off the internet, making me
correct in practice. There surely do exist at least some scrappers who have
CAD skills. Just not many of them.

When circut was new the carts I bought my wife for gifts were all like $60 and
have steadily dropped in price over the years. Now they're mostly like $20.
When diecuts at the local scrapbook store are only $1 or even 50 cents a
cartridge is a luxury but not really economic, but at $20 its hard to justify
buying diecuts instead of a cartridge.

Is a ripoff a good deal if the alternative is technologically impossible for
most and the ripoff is really cheap? A good analogy is a buck for a two minute
.mp3 top 40 song, I don't think its worth a buck, but its more convenient than
filesharing or ripping, especially for people technologically incapable of it,
and its not a lot of money so, ok fine whatever, even if I'm not smiling while
I pay my $1.

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

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

------
Zikes
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.

~~~
duiker101
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
I do.

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birkbork
So, clone-a-willy?

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regularfry
Someone needs to hide my credit card.

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alexyes
It has been around for a while

~~~
fudged71
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.

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

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robert_tweed
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.

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TheCraiggers
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
[http://www.shapeways.com/](http://www.shapeways.com/)

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

~~~
TheCraiggers
I'm aware of shapeways, and I think they're awesome. But you'll notice they
still require you to design the part in some sort of CAD program. Most of the
people visiting Amazon looking to replace a broken part or make a new toy for
their kid aren't going to know how to use Blender.

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edpichler
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 =]

