Custom fabrication can be fun. Especially when it gets three-dimensional. Enter, Shapeways, a new startup molded by Philips Incubator Project and currently tagged as a private beta service. (We have lots of invites to share. Click the link at the bottom.)
Shapeways is made to perform much the same role as those outfits, albeit with 3D designs. The promise of Shapeways is to enable consumers to make stuff, virtually anything of reasonable size and detail, and have it in hand in 10 days or less for an average cost of $50-150.
Mind you, Shapeways requires its users to submit a little more effort in the design of products than, say, t-shirt graphics. Compressed JPEG photos won’t do. Users are asked to import files from 3D modeling software in STL, Collada, or X3D formats. At that point, one is able to specify material and size. Shapeways describes current options as “White Strong & Flexible (SLS), Cream Robust (FDM), White Detail and Transparent Detail (Object). Additional choices will come soon.
If you’re to consider only the intriguing and largely inexpensive inventiveness that might be realized through Shapeways, it seems quite worthwhile. But perhaps its designation as a “consumer co-creation community” is a bit far-fetched. Consumers, for one, have little interest or even reasonable aptitude when it comes to 3D modeling software. It’s simply too complex for the casual user to effectively grapple with. Also, some designer utilities tend to carry with them considerable cost. The very good ones, anyhow. So I don’t imagine Shapeways becoming something akin to Minted, Threadless, or Spreadshirt.
Besides, the tasks commissioned of Shapeways by its users would typically have too many design variables in play to enable a kind of streamlined efficiency as far as a production schedule is concerned.
This leads me to think that the primary role for Shapeways will be one of serving experimentalists, artists, and various organizational or corporate doodad manufacturing. Which is fine enough, really. It need not be hugely popular. Regular output for a portion of its membership will likely suffice.