Known as the DreamVendor, it’s comprised of four 3-D printers and a system to read product designs from an SD card. Students simply create their designs — which can be done down the hall in the university’s CAD laboratory — and print them as needed. Perhaps the school will add the MakerBot Digitizer — a 3-D scanner announced at SXSW– when it arrives later this year. Here’s how VT describes the DreamVendor:

“Think of it as a vending machine with an infinite inventory – you simply insert an SD card that contains 3D printer code (generated from your CAD model) into the machine; the DreamVendor then prints your 3D part and dispenses it into a bin when it’s finished.

“In addition, the DreamVendor houses physical examples of the latest research by the members of the DREAMS Lab. We hope that the DreamVendor will provide students with an easy way to access the exciting field of additive manufacturing.”

In a video recorded last year, just a few weeks after the unveiling the DreamVendor, a university graduate student notes that the kiosk has been running nearly all the time. Any why not? You can always print your own designs, but if a peer creates something that interests you, it’s a snap to create a duplicate of the object.

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3D printer at MIT Media Lab could construct a building.

New Gartner research shows that the price for “enterprise-class” 3-D printers is falling enough that more businesses can (and should) start experimenting with them. It estimates that by 2016, these big-boy 3-D printers will cost as little as $2,000. Industrial-grade printers now typically cost five times that much but there’s no reason to wait. Companies should start experimenting with the technology now, even if it’s with lower-cost desktop models, since there is minimal risk of capital or time.

In a statement, Gartner Research Director Pete Basiliere said:

“Businesses must continuously monitor advances to identify where improvements can be leveraged … We see 3D printing as a tool for empowerment, already enabling life-changing parts and products to be built in struggling countries, helping rebuild crisis-hit areas and leading to the democratization of manufacturing.”

Companies that jump in early can get a more realistic grasp of material costs and the time it takes to build parts and components, Gartner said.

To be sure, some affordable technology is already available, at least, to churn out small items. The Makerbot Replicator 2 desktop 3-D printer, which made a splash at SXSW, lists for $2,199. Makerbot is also working on a 3-D scanner to ease the measurement and digitization of what needs to be manufactured. Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis told GigaOM that the Makerbot Digitizer, due this fall, will give creators another way to move designs between the physical and digital worlds. If you want to replicate a physical item, you scan it into the system which digitizes it and builds a 3-D blueprint which can be fed into the printer.

MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito is a huge fan of 3-D printing. At a recent event broadcast by the BBC, Ito reiterated his enthusiasm for the technology which he says can make high-quality manufacturing a key part of the U.S. economy again and boost the “maker movement” overall. As 3-D printing gains traction, more manufacturing may come back to the U.S. Ito is also investing in the sector. He, along with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, has invested in 3-D printing startup FormLabs.

In theory, the availability of inexpensive 3-D printers means that manufacturers can afford to make small lots of goods and then quickly change up their production lines to meet new demands. This technology has spawned a new class of hardware-oriented startups and efforts. With the time-and-cost savings 3-D printing can provide, “hardware really could be the new software.”

This story was updated at 7:30 a.m. PDT with additional information on the current price of industrial 3-D printers.

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DIYROCKETS, a global space company, and Sunglass, which offers a collaborative design service, are partnering for the event, which offers $10,000 in prize money. Shapeways, a company that prints out designs for people without 3-D printers will also provide $500 in printing costs to the top two entries. To get an idea of how 3-D printing works, here’s a short video from Shapeways to explain:

For the 3-D rocket engine contest, teams will work together in order to foster collaboration and to advance designs for private space efforts. Judges include inventor Dean Kamen, as well as individuals from MIT, NASA and TED. Per the announcement:

“Although several companies have recently made strides in showcasing the power of the private sector in space exploration, DIYROCKETS is taking this a step further by creating the first of many competitions that encourages the fusion of creativity, technology and collaboration by people across the globe. Utilizing Sunglass’s cloud-based platform to visualize, collaborate, manage versions and exchange feedback on each design with team members and the public from anywhere on the globe, the contest aims to dramatically drive down design costs, while creating innovative technology for all types of space hardware and parts, ranging from space propulsion to space medical sensors.”

While I don’t have the science chops to participate, I like the idea of this contest. As government funding for space projects has been cut over time, private efforts have thankfully expanded. Even better is that many have succeeded and picked up where government programs left off: Last week’s SpaceX Falcon launch and docking with the International Space Station is a great example.

The contest also brings more awareness to what I think is game-changing technology: We’re in the early stages of consumer-based 3D-printing, but the technology is getting cheaper so that more homes and businesses can eventually afford these devices. And as that happens, a design revolution should follow.

Think of the many products and design ideas that will come from millions of 3D-printer owners. Rocket engines aren’t one I’d normally envision, but why not if they can get us beyond our planet at lower design costs?

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For example, the trend report says that the rise of 3-D printing will bring about a new re-mixing culture that enables real customization at the individual level of any device or product. It also will lead to a rise in more small-time, on-demand manufacturing operations. On the device side, things like tablets replacing the printed word in magazines and books may draw some criticism while the idea of ubiquitous facial scanning and image recognition may creep others out. Smarter smartphones that can be biometrically secured by scanning a fingerprint might be welcome for making mobile payments actually happen, while the idea of driverless cars will begin fundamentally changing how our society is developed.

Some of the trends are a bit silly, such as the idea of our mobile devices “developing a patina,” which the author explains isn’t a physical patina like a worn cover of a book or the softening of leather over time, but a digital patina that is composed of a “layered interaction model of touch,voice and gesture.” Others, like putting a human face on computing beg for longer and more detailed write ups. But either way, the report is a fun read. If you printed these on cards and used them as conversation starters among the TED-set I bet it would lead to fascinating conversations — and probably a startup idea or two.

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I have little doubt the higher price MakerBot is worth the price — it can print smoother objects due to higher resolution support — but I can’t yet justify two grand to kick the tires of this technology that prints 3-D objects using precise multiple layers of plastic. But I might be convinced to buy the Portabee, even though it can only print smaller objects and comes unassembled.

By putting the printer together myself, I suspect I’d learn a little bit more about the moving parts and how they all work together. And for a first printer, I’m fine with the limitation of small objects; the Portabee can print something up to 135 mm x 135 mm by 120 mm. Here’s a look at it in action:

What might I design and print? I really haven’t thought that far ahead. Off the top of my head, I’d consider building a kickstand that fits on the back of my Galaxy Note 2 for watching videos in landscape mode. I was considering the purchase a case for just such a scenario. It would be more fun to design and print my own. Maybe I’d print a small object to help with all of the cable clutter on my desktop. At this point, the sky’s the limit — within reason due to size constraints — and I have a blank page in front of me to print whatever objects my mind can envision.

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And because I’ve been recently entranced by the possibilities of moldable plastic after a visit to Chaotic Moon Studios here in town (I’ll write more on that later) I went looking for a solution that went beyond duct tape. Here are three tools I’ve found. For sure one or more of these are going to make their way into my little toolbox where I keep my hammers, screwdrivers and other small household fixits.

InstaMorph: For $10 on Amazon you can take home 6 ounces of these plastic beads, dump what you need in hot water and mold them into whatever shape you desire. They also sell the beads by the pound for larger projects. The beads cool into lovely little white blobs of plastic after about 2 minutes. For more conspicuous repairs there are also dyes you can buy to color your InstaMorph projects.

ShapeLock: This is the same type of material as InstaMorph, but it’s not clear if it has a bulk option for large projects. These are also white plastic beads that you can put in boiling water, wait until they turn clear and then use to create whatever shape fits your fancy. They cost $15 for 250 grams (roughly 9 ounces). They are re-usable, pretty darn strong when cooled and you can saw or file them into more refined shapes if your original mold looks off.

Sugru: Instead of beads that turn into moldable plastic, Sugru is a putty-like substance that cools into a semi-flexible substance. It costs between $18 and $20 for eight packs containing 5 grams, depending on the color of the putty. It can be used to protect cords, add protective layers to clothes, replace a broken tine in a dishwasher or whatever else you have a mind to do.

For those readers who wonder if they’ve mistakenly landed on Lifehacker, there is a reason I’m sharing this. The idea of finding cheap and easy materials to fix a broken trashcan, or create a custom mold to build a homemade iPad stand may be as fundamental shift in our lives as broadband is. These materials and the experience using them are a gateway drug into doing more projects just like email was a gateway drug to blogging for some people.

Having the tools to fix my trashcan means I’m not throwing it away, which is at the very least, green. But like learning about or how to use any new tool it sparks ideas and creativity that permeate our lives and culture. Maybe I’ll never have a 3-D printer (probably because my neighbor does) but I’ve at least taken a step toward DIY, even if it’s just an opportunity to fix things around that house that I wouldn’t have tackled before.

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Pettis told me in an interview that Brooklyn-based MakerBot (see disclosure below) was hoping to double sales of the Thing-O-Matic, which was first introduced in Sept. 2010. But sales of Replicator have already quadrupled Thing-O-Matic in the last eight months and MakerBot has now almost doubled the total number of printers it has sold with Replicator. Prior to the latest model, MakerBot had sold about 7,500 units. Now, it’s up to more than 13,000 printers sold, Pettis said.

Much of the success boils down to Replicator’s price and ease of use. The tabletop device starts at $1,749 or $1,999 for a model that handles two colors of plastic. That’s for a bigger pre-assembled printer than the Thing-O-Matic, which required 20 to 30 hours to assemble.

With the fast take-off of Replicator, Pettis said his big mission for the next year is to encourage entrepreneurs to build businesses on top of the 3-D printer.

“I want to find ways for people to make money and turn their cutting edge ideas into cash,” Pettis told me. “When you take Americans, who are so innovative and will fail until something works, and put a machine in their hands that make anything, it’s volatile. We will have an explosion.”

Pettis said it’s still early and he’s not saying what kind of businesses can emerge. But he mentioned one user who created an aquarium filter for jellyfish using a MakerBot 3-D printer. I expressed my own interest in creating a modern day equivalent of green army men toys.

Pettis said the economics of home 3-D printing can work for entrepreneurs. A kilogram of plastic starts at $42 dollars and can create almost 400 chess pieces. Now with Replicator, the typical buyer profile is changing. While it used to be hackers and programmers that were interested in previous printers, Replicator now attracts all kinds of customers, from industrial engineers and designers to parents, teachers and hobbyists, he said.

Many are turning to MakerBot’s Thingaverse library of open source 3-D designs. The site now gets 60 to 100 new uploads a day, up from 15 daily submissions before Replicator launched.

Pettis said users are still learning how to utilize their 3-D printers and there will be an education process as consumers understand what’s possible. But he believes that 3-D printers will eventually play a key role in people’s lives and will change the way we think about shopping and manufacturing.

“We’re not used to having infinity at our fingertips, but when people start seeing what are others are doing, it’s going to inspire them,” Pettis said.

Disclosure: True Ventures is an investor in MakerBot and the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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The house of the future will be outfitted with hundreds of products created on 3-D printers, everything from jewelry and cups to home decor items and eventually more complex items like furniture or digital devices. It’s a future coming sooner than people think, said Peter Weijmarshausen, the CEO of 3-D printing start-up Shapeways.

Fresh off $6.2 million in new funding for Shapeways, Weijmarshausen spoke with GigaOM about where 3-D printing is going, how it parallels the software industry and how far the technology can take us into the future. The New York startup, a transplant from the Netherlands, operates both a 3-D printing service and an Etsy-like marketplace for creators. It has now produced more than 1 million products to date and is the leading 3-D printing service available.

Outfitting our lives with 3-D printed products

The 3-D printing revolution is just barely underway, Weijmarshausen said, but it holds the promise of huge disruption in the way products are made.

“Production will be completely changed by this technology. There’s a lot of things that will be mass produced because we need bulk and standards, but there are so many products you can make custom,” Weijmarshausen said. “If you can’t buy something, you can just make it.”

Shapeways offers printing in 30 materials and finishes such as plastics, ceramics and metals such as steel and silver. The printers, about the size of a table, work by laying down a layer of powder, which is melted by a laser that follows digital designs created through programs like CAD software. As each layer is laid down, the laser fuses it all together, creating all manner of shapes, from very simple products to more complex constructions with interweaving parts that are already in place.

Shapeways, which prints more than 100,000 products a month, has 150,000 users inside its community, most of them buying items on Shopways’ 6,000 marketplace shops. The company projects users will double over the next 6-8 months and expects it will need to double the printing capacity in the next 4-5 months. A big part of Shapeways’ expansion plans include an upcoming New York factory, which will occupy up to 30,000 feet in Long Island City. That will give the company much more capacity and will expand its U.S. production. Previously, most of the work was being done in Europe at its Eindhoven factory in the Netherlands and through partners.

Empowering creators

Just like software tools have simplified the process of creating websites, 3-D printing offers the chance for anyone to be a maker, Weijmarshausen said. The factory, in essence, is open to all. But unlike the manufacturing world, there are no barriers between consumer and creator, said Weijmarshausen. A product can go through any number of evolutions, based on the requests or feedback of users. There’s the potential for an iterative production process, similar to what happens in agile software development, in which a product can be shaped over time.

He said consumers are slowly coming around to understanding the alternatives to mass production. Markets like Etsy are helping build awareness about individually crafted goods, which speak to people’s desire for unique products that fit their exacts needs.

“Mass production has given us everything we want and then some but it’s all standardized and based on the lowest common denominator. But the trend you see on the web and everywhere is people are making things by hand and there are artisans again and where 3-D printing comes in is the need for people to get exactly what they want,” Weijmarshausen said.

Major challenges to mainstream adoption

However, there are three main challenges holding 3-D printing back from mainstream adoption. Right now, the creation tools are still hard for average users to use. Alhough there are more accessible software programs such as Tinkercad and Google’s Sketchup, it’s still too complex for most users. But Weijmarshausen said there will soon be 10 times as many people with 3-D design know-how as students take it up. Shapeways is also providing a number of simple products that users can easily customize without having to know 3-D design.

Another big challenge is that there’s still a limited number of materials. Weijmarshausen would like to work with wax, which can be good for traditional jewelry making, and higher-end metals such as titanium and gold. Wood would also be appealing, but with Shapeways’ manufacturing process, it would not resemble the natural finish people of think of with wood products. But he said more of these materials are becoming available. And researchers at Xerox PARC are working on printable electronics for things like RAM, sensors and transistors. That, he said, could lead to consumers creating their own phones or MP3 players housed in cases of their own design. 

The last challenge is pricing. In some cases, making a silver ring, for example, can end up costing a similar amount as one bought at retail because of the big mark-up on jewelry. But 3-D printing isn’t able to take advantage of economies of scale, so the price of most products don’t differ much whether one item or 100 are created. Weijmarshausen believes over time, as 3-D printing gets more efficient, the savings will get passed on to consumers as well.

Weijmarshausen often fields questions about what product will actually open people’s eyes to 3-D printing. But it’s not about any one product, he said: it’s about making it possible to print any number of products, whatever people can imagine.

“We need to let people create what they want so there’s a variety; millions of products,” said Weijmarshausen. “We haven’t seen anything yet.”

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There’s still some work to be done here by the creator, who goes by the name of “hairygael’ on his InMoov blog, but it’s impressive, nonetheless. The printed plastic arm is filled with servo motors at every joint and the action takes place via an Arduino platform and keyboard.

Geeks with access to a 3-D printer can replicate the robotic hand as the printer design file is freely available here, along with instructions to print the hand. Aside from the geek factor of a working robot hand, this project emphasizes that not only will we one day be able to print our own 3-D objects, but we can replicate those from others. There’s no need to design everything in the future; just print it!

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We’ve discussed 3-D printing in the past, but if the idea is new to you, here’s how it works at a high level. Using software, objects are designed on a computer which then generates instructions for a special printer. The machine prints the 3-D object design by building it one layer at a time, using special inks made with plastic materials. Each successive layer is built on top of the others and when the plastic hardens, a 3-D object is created. The key difference here is that Continuum is using Nylon-12; a wearable synthetic described by the company here:

“This solid nylon is created by the SLS 3D printing process. Shapeways calls this material “white, strong, and flexible”, because its strength allows it to bend without breaking when printed very thin. With a minimum wall thickness of .7 mm, it is possible to make working springs and almost thread-like connections. For a bikini, the nylon is beautifully functional because it is waterproof and remarkably comfortable when wet.”

I’m not sure if the world is ready for wearable, made-to-order clothing from a printer just yet, but I think Continuum is onto something here. With a 3-D printer, consumers and businesses alike could print or replicate small objects that they typically have to order and buy from a mass manufacturer.

Think of small tools, gears, wheels, knobs and such, although the possibilities are virtually endless. You could design and print your own smartphone case, for example. Once the idea catches on — and the technology comes down in price while new materials are supported — printed clothes aren’t out of the realm of possibilities.

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