MOD-t may make 3D printing commonplace

[curious aardvark]

drm for 3d printer files is inevitable. It's the only way a big corporation can make money in the long term on the whole 3d printer mass market setup.
It's why they can offer the machine at a loss. If you have to pay for the models then the company has a guarenteed revenue stream. And that's where home 3d printing is heading for the masses.

It's similiar to inkjet printers - they can be bought for really silly prices - but the own brand ink is ridiculously expensive. At one point I calculated hp printer ink was selling for over £20,000 a litre. And that's when i stopped using and recommending hp printers.

The model-t setup is very slick.
The customer pays for the material to make the models, they pay for the models themselves and the actual printer is given away at cost.
Generates a long term revenue stream for the company and kicks open the door for every other big corporation to head the same way.

Just think of the sheer number of little plastic widgets that break in a household on a daily basis (I've made 4 in the last 2 days - if I could have bought the parts as a file - I might have done, as it was they were all pretty easy to design, but if the lure of a quick buy was there instead of sitting in front of the pc designing it myself, for the more complicated widgets I might be tempted) . Once a locked down drm file system is established, the big manufacturers will be clamouring to get on the bandwagon.

Customers print their own spares, pay for the machine and material to do it and you get money without having to do a damn thing apart from release the file for the part - which you already have from when you designed the relevant machine.

No more postage, no more stock rooms full of parts for older models, no more customer service lines.
Just a virtual warehouse of spare part files and a website/service you can buy the file from.
Seriously would anyone here take a bet that there won't be a google 3d store selling all these files in the next 10 years ? I'll offer pretty much any odds you like. It's going to happen, there's too much money at stake for it NOT to happen.

Now if you were to pitch that to any major manufacturer - they'd snatch your arm off to get the pen to sign the contract with.

And it looks like the people behind the mod-t are trying to get in on the groundfloor with a machine that can tap into an online store with locked down files.

If they float on the stock market - buy shares.

Remember bill gates ? A second year business student who came up with the idea that you rent software not sell it. That scumbag went onn to become the richest man in the world - and one of the most hated, but when you've got 60 billion dollars, who cares if everyone hates you :-)

Well this is the same business model. Rent files for one or two or three uses. never actually sell a digital model file. And you're set up to start printing your own money.

We can't stop it, at some point - I've no doubt - we will all,to one degree or another - buy into it.
Someone offers you money for designs you'd been releasing for free. And you're not independently wealthy - who could blame you for taking the money ?
Not me, I'll be right there with you grabbing as much money as I can.

I like the idealism of opensource, always supported it, but at the end of the day the home 3d printer market is just going to prove too valuable for it to remain the way it is at the moment.