Pieces Unlimited -- 3D Block Community

He's charging money for it. 

on his indiegogo site, $50 contribution gets you a single printed part in one color.  I don't get it.

but it doesn't really take that much effort, and those that don't make their own models already down load files from a large variety of online sources, (thingyverse being the most popular)

I sort of get what you're saying, when people have parametric models that can be scaled provided you know how.

but a lot of the files (99%) on the Thingyverse already are optimised, already are ready to print, they are offered as STL files on the understanding that you use the slicing software yourself.

they could offer Gcode files, but, given that some printers only have limit switches at one side of the Axis, whilst others have limit switches at both sides, means that it's not always clear where a printer will home.

in addition to this, different plastic spools in different colours may need slight tweaks, (for example in general black ABS may need a higher temperature to print)
A person in a cooler climate may run their bed heater higher so that their build chamber is better heated.
my machine sits in an upstairs room, I generally print at night, therefore I print slower, as I want my machine to be as quiet as possible as a consideration to my family so that the printing won't keep them up all night.

slight differences in printer build may require different speeds, (for example some may find Z wobble reduced at slower speeds, others may not need to print at slower speeds.)

As I said in the "I want a printer for my school" thread, Fused filament printing is not a "home user" technology.

if you look around the google groups you'll see several threads where people have bought these printers but cannot figure them out, they expect them to be like regular paper printers, but they are not, they require maintenance and servicing, they will clog from time to time and require disassembly.

Yes, and you pretty much already can just download building blocks from the thingyverse?

This however is true. and that is exactly why maker bot spunk loads of money in hosting this service. it's a platform to show you what people can do with 3d printers. and makerbot happen to make 3d printers, and they put their name at the top of every page.
it's very clever.

but now makes me wonder, aside from sheer alturism, what's in it for you?

the thingyverse is surely a loss making venture when taken alone. it costs maker bot more to host than they could get from advertising, given the size of the files bandwidth costs alone must be huge. but given that it drives the market for their printers they consider this loss acceptable, it's probably less to host the thingyverse for a year than it would cost to have a prime time advert air on 1 national channel in one country. the thingyverse is cheap global advertising.

how are you going to keep the doors open once the initial indigogo donations are all used up?

what hosting do you think you'll be getting?

the last thing in the stl show off section at the moment is this sorceress:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:47472
74Mb download.
You can get unlimited hosting from 1&1 for £9.99 a month ~ $15
$15 * 24 months is $360. leaving you about $400 to have the site made. realistically that's going to get you about 4 days of 1 persons time at any professional place. that's probably about enough time to discus roughly what your database requirements are going to be,
on top of that, it's not clear that the cheaper hosting plans will actually have the bandwidth you'd need to actually host such a site.

Ahhhhhh, I see, not really alturism then, you want a high goal so you can get a load of new toys...

You clearly are not ready to approach companies to ask about licensing merchandise.
Disney don't just grant a licence to Tomy saying sure make as many mickey mouse ears as you like provided you give us $500,000.
They license production runs, in numbers, and take shares of profits.
The trouble is.
You can't sell the design, at least not without licensing, and even if you could sell the design, you then need to make it clear that the printed objects of those designs can't be made for sale etc.

What you're looking at is closer to producing licensed knitting or embroidery designs.
Generally those aren't made by Disney at all, they are made by the pattern company and sold under license for personal use/not hire/reward...

Whilst companies like the games workshop do try to issue takedowns of models, they do it on a very particular terms of trademark violation, not copyright infringement.
if my model is labelled as complete your warhammer 40000 set with this awesome bezerker, then I've infringed on several of their trademarks.
If I design a model, even an exact likeness of one of their existing range and upload it as table top game figure. they have no cause to take it down.

And that's exactly where your ideas on licensing fall apart.
I can design and upload black mouse ears, I just can't called them mickey mouse ears.
so whilst you are trying to sell your licensed mickey mouse ears under a restrictive personal use only license.
My exact replica design is being given away under a less restrictive license...

How many official mickey ears do you think you'll sell compared to my exact likeness mouse ears?

The "maker world" is supposedly crying out for a thingyverse replacement. (since they supposedly changed their T&C's and re branded and stopped their software being open source).
so it's not impossible, but it is probably going to take slightly more than an indigogo campaign to get things started.

Cubify and Thingiverse are on the right track with customization.  People might know what they want, but don't know how to create it.  They would like to be able to stand behind a designer and say "Make it like this, this and this".  You would need to make software that takes the place of the designer.  It could be applications aimed at customizing a particular kind of product.  The wider the range of customization while keeping an easy to use UI, the better.  Or, it could be a back end that makes it easy for others to create programs that generate products for a particular niche.  What Makerbot is doing with OpenSCAD is the beginning of this.

People won't need to print these at home.   Staples partnering with MCOR is the beginning of local, maybe cheap print services.  People who want to print things without learning CAD are the type who are less likely to be willing to deal with the challenges of printing at home.  They will want to send their newly created file to Staples and go pick it up later in the day.  Let the store figure out how to optimize the model to print on their particular machine.  It's the same with photos.  My attempts on my inkjet weren't satisfactory, and it's easier just to take a thumb drive to the drug store than figure out how to tweak my printer to get the colors right.

That will become the case even more when considering materials.  Paper isn't suitable for a lot of applications, sometimes you need the strength of FDM or smoothness of UV cured resin.  I'm not going to own every kind of printer.  Shapeways is the current solution for this, but it's really expensive and I don't want to wait 10 days.  We are years away from a Shapeways type service becoming local and cheap.

While it is probably too early for what you are trying to do, I think the best way you can prepare for the mainstream 3D printing future is to learn as much as you can about modeling so you can offer your services to people who figure out they can get things printed, but don't know how to make them, and want something software can't provide.   In addition to modeling skills, you would have knowledge of how to design a part for successful printing and what material/process is best suited to the job at hand.

For example, my daughter likes to draw praying mantises, and has a distinctive way of doing it that makes it look like one of her "Littlest Pet Shop" toys.  It would be really cool to make a 3D version of one of these drawings, but to do it right I would need to learn Z Brush.  If I could pay someone $50-$100 to do it instead, that would be a lot easier.  So rather than creating a system where everyone can easily make something themselves without learning to model, gain the skills to do it yourself and offer your services to the mainstream. 

Ideally you would find a niche, a particular kind of thing people would want printed.  There would be too much variation and custom possibilities for software to handle, but every job would be similar enough that you could knock them out quickly starting with some templates.  Perhaps the more you do, the more starting points you have to work with and the less manual tweaking you will need to do.  Or have your own parametric back end, maybe an openscad program that you can enter the values into to create something really fast and make yourself look like a rockstar.  Rather than create some automated process that anyone can use, create one that you can use to leverage your own ability.

Or, instead of learning to model or create your own templates, outsource the work.   Use some small jobs and your own money to try out some modelers through services like elance.com and come up with a stable of reliable, cheap providers.   Again, come up with a niche of custom things people might like to have printed.  Create a website to sell the idea of printing, tell people about the possibilities it provides for one of a kind items, especially of the particular type you are specializing in.  Since you are sending the jobs overseas, the design costs are low, and the printing would be done by services.  The more similar work you send to your designers, the more efficiently they will do it, and you aren't limited by your own time or skills.

The prints are still expensive however so you would need to focus on what are basically luxury items marketed to people with disposable income, probably as gifts.  I know one person who had a huge supply of retro fabric collected in the 60s.  One thing she did was make pillows, and found that they sold better at $70 than $25.   The people who were buying them were looking for a gift that was more special than $25, or something "designer", and $25 is not "designer" quality.