As you may have noticed, I have a few products in the store that are 3D printed. Not exactly sure what 3D printing is? Here is a little exert from Wikipedia. (source) "3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), refers to processes used to create a three-dimensional object^[1] in which layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object.^[2] Objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and are produced using digital model data from a 3D model or another electronic data source such as an Additive Manufacturing File (AMF) file."

Serisously, I love all things 3D. Thats pretty much all I do. And 3D printing is probably the coolest thing in 3D I have ever done. Up until now, I have outsourced all of my 3D printing from Shapeways. 3D printers were not within my price range. But recently, printers have gone down significantly in price. You can now own your very own 3D printer for around $200, and I'm sure they will keep going down from there. Obviously you need to take into account the detail and quality of prints, but if you just plan on making little plastic boats all the time, the cheap ones will probably do you just fine. So ya, I finally got myself a 3D printer. Not too cheap, and not too expensive, but something worth playing around with. I have already printed around 20 items and it seems to still be going strong.

So what does this mean for you? Well...I might be able to start making some of my 3D printed products right here from home. And guess what? It's a fraction of the cost of getting my prints done at Shapeways. My biggest seller is the cookie cutter, and it also seems to cost the most relative to it's size. I can print it on my printer no problem! I will still have to work out the details and test out my other products. Printing them won't be quite as easy as the printing process is much different on home machines than the industrial sized machines, But damn it, I'll figure it out.

More on this later. I hope you are excited as I am to get cheaper 3D prints!