Makers unite - the revolution will be home-made

I love that on so many levels! Especially as they're microfinancing the machines to provide local employment. As for the revolution, it's like they say - the future belongs to the creators, the innovators, and the entrepreneurs.

It also "misses" the fact that the magazine Dale Dougherty is the editor of, and which is associated with the Maker Faire, is called "Make Magazine", not "Maker Magazine" as the article repeatedly states. Fail.

The history of the Printrbot kickstarter project[1] and business[2] provides an interesting anecdote. The original idea was to make available affordable 3d printers, compatible with repraps (that is, mostly reproducible by other 3d printers, except for electronics, motors, power supplies and a handful of standard metal parts that can be bought cheaply anywhere) -- but as the popularity exploded, they realized it would be easier and cheaper to provide a version that was mostly laser cut -- they had exploded past the level where large scale manufacturing became cheaper.

It is also interesting to note that the laser cut version is capable of producing the parts needed for the other, self-reproducible design.

There are two parts to this revolution so far: Designs prototyped on a reprap can be printed/cut in any material, at any scale -- from wood to aluminium.

Designs that work in abs plastic: cups, glasses, lamps, sockets, casings for certain electronics, dolls, toys, action figures, clips, replacement parts for various items around the house -- they can all be printed at home, right now.

See for example the updates for the Hex Bright[3] kickstarter project -- the first prototype parts are 3d printed in plastic, the final design is in aluminium.

This is indeed a revolution, and it will change industry. Maybe not all of industry, but a large part of it.

Think about it: if you can prototype it, you can order 500.000 copies of it. That by itself is significant.

Then consider the fact that the price of milling and printing equipment is moving into the range where individuals can bootstrap themselves, also for producing industrial strength parts -- and significantly building the parts needed for production equipment -- and we are closer to a democratization of the means of production than we have ever been.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot-your...

[2] http://printrbot.com/

[3] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright-an-o...

[edit: formatting]

Quite. You can build all sorts of things with an RPi... Once global megacorporation Sony has made the RPi for you.