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Comment by dmvaldman | Hacker News Reader

This is the future!!! I remember when I saw this website a year ago, and it seemed then that the majority of items would be purchased for only the price of the material used (could be mistaken about that). I can understand talented people who want to make a buck going away from that "business model".

But imagine if even a little of the "open source" culture rubs onto this community, prices could fall incredibly low for super interesting products. I can really see this taking off.

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While I certainly don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm, it takes more than open source culture to get those prices to drop. This industry is an absolute minefield for intellectual property. Just like 2D printing, 3D printing manufacturers make roughly 70% of their cash from the sale of materials, and this means there's no incentive for them to drop.

Of course, this isn't stopping people from knocking them off for cents on the dollar, but still.

Yes but there is more than one reason to charge a lot for a product, one is the material used (which I don't expect to change much), but there are many others, such as creativity of design, utility, etc.

When you look at Shapeway's store you can see so much intricacy in some products. With a $10 block of plastic I can make a product that would otherwise sell for $100, now sell for $10.

Trust me, I'm totally on your side. Theres a reason this tech has been around since the 80s, but things like the MakerBot has only happened recently, that's all I'm saying.

The reason is that the software was always very difficult (and expensive)

People that had, and could drive, Solidworks weren't interested in making one-off bits of jewelry and the artists that were couldn't drive the CAD system.

There are lots of industries riddled with IP and it is not stopping them to be huge and successful.

I think there are lots of opportunities in this market and prices will go down. But I think the whole ecosystem of 3D printing has to change to accomplish this. Maybe Shapeways can contribute to this.

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