Is this the killer app for home 3D printing? Printing plastic spoons? The same spoons you can buy mass-produced in packs of fifty for eighty cents or something?
Step past thinking that it is a spoon that you can buy a pack of 50 for (which you have to in order to keep the costs down) to thinking that in the space where you would store a pack of 50 spoons, knives, forks, plates, and napkins you can have an nearly inexhaustible supply of spoons with a birthday theme, serving, color matched to a table setting. Every time you set the table you can print it all out, from place mats to drink cups. And then throw it back to be recycled again with just the organics left over.
And to return to my previous theme, having been the first person in my family to build their own computer in 1978 and listened to everyone about how stupid and inane it was to own a useless computer, only to live my life and find them become the 'smartphones' of today. When I walked through Makerfair this year and saw all of the 3D printing stuff there and heard the same sort of dimissive comments which I had heard at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1980, it really struck me. The same feeling you get when you are halfway through a book and realize you've read the same story but set with different characters and in a different place, but fundamentally the same story.
Its going to be interesting.
The cool thing about this, especially if you can recycle, is that you can say "Well, I don't need x, y, and z -- I'll just toss them in the melter" the same way someone says "man, I have a lot of plastic spoons and old hangers, I'll toss them in the trash."
But then you can turn around and say "Oh yeah, the doohickey on my closet door is broken, I'll just print another one."
I'd say the most relevant word there is "plastic". I don't want replacements for my cheap plastic objects. I'd love to "print" with other materials.
The killer app for 3D printers would be to supply whatever it is you want whenever you want it - even if you live in Arrowtown NZ (lucky me!).
I see a massive battle coming between Amazon's logistics on one hand, and the effectiveness of 3D printers on the other. 3D printers' limitations (plastic-only, no colour, slow) mean Amazon is safe for now, but once I can print my measuring spoons faster and cheaper than Amazon can ship them, that's a killer app.
So, Walmart is the only world provider of 80c plastic spoons ?
Let´s be serious, unless you live in the middle of a jungle or a desert (in which case you´ll probably value more a reusable metal spoon over a 3D-printed one), you´ll rarely be less that 30min drive from a supermarket or convenience store (to which you´ll need to go anyway to buy some definitely non-3d-printable-yet food) that will probably have what you are looking for.
Even if your reasoning is sound, I believe your situation it's kind of an exception, most people live "next to Walmart", so it´s hard to think about it as a killer application.
In the medium term I can see "high-tech hippie" communes of young educated hipsters moving to the outskirts of cities, living in plastic domes, telecommuting, composting their waste and 3D printing parts for their maker-culture activities. If this catches on, this could be the basis for less dense cities.
Sunday afternoon: I am tidying up the house. I could use six or so small boxes to store neatly some loose parts. I would have printed those boxes if I had a 3D printer.
Sunday afternoon: I need to print my flight ticket. I could wait tomorrow morning, go in a copy shop and print it. 4 cents. I will print it right now with my inkjet printer and forget about it.
My nephews are visiting me and one of them likes my keychain. I would print a copy for him if I had a 3D printer.
My nephews are visiting me and one of them likes one of my photos that hang in the dining room. I could wait until tomorrow, go to the photo shop and print one for him. 1 euro. I will print it right now with my inkjet printer and git it to him right away.
I think "I can print it right away" is a killer app on its own.
Not exactly repair, more adapting to change.
This is also a fabulous use of tech and a wonderful story.
The real money will be made, just like with minicomputers, in the software. Desktop publishing had themes, future software will make it easy to make stuff that looks like, lego or erector set or trees or whatever. High detail procedurally generated themes to surface whatever objects people are producing.
If I could recycle old plastic waste to print interesting spirograph stencils, I would be very very happy.