Consumer-grade 3D printer manufacturers MakerBot Industries has raised $10 million in venture financing lead by Brad Feld’s Foundry Group, the fund announced today. The MakerBot project is exciting because it represents a democratization of physical manufacturing.
“I believe that we’ll look back in 20 years and 3D printers will be as ubiquitous as laser printers are today,” Feld wrote this morning. “We aren’t yet at the point that is equivalent to the first HP Laserjet in 1984, but I think we’ll see a comparable product from MakerBot within a year. In the mean time, I’m going to keep downloading 3D things from the Thingiverse and keeping my Thing-O-Matic busy.”
MakerBot is two and a half years old and is based in New York. Do you foresee yourself having a 3D printer/fabricator in your home in the future? It sure would be fun, that much is for sure.
Below, MakerBot customer John Biehler shows how it’s done in a fan video demonstrating his creation of a pencil holder.
As science fiction writer Bruce Sterling once said, “Plastic pirates, start your engines. Waiting now to see the first drop-out ‘intentional community’ created entirely with off-the-grid broken-open-source fabjects. If they can find a way to fuse gypsum dust, that might be Burning Man.”
3D Printing a Hyperboloid from John Biehler on Vimeo.
