Culture: Website: Commercial
distributed reprap factory   (+7)  [vote for, against]

It is a website where people with spare time and a reprap machine can sign up for.

The idea is that other people who requires a item can order an item from that website. It will then look for the nearest reprap user, and request that they create the item and ship it off.

They then create the object, and could either print out a prepaid stamp+address (or get it over by mail), before sending it off to the customer.

When the customer receives the item, they can then rate how well it was printed, and the reprapper will get paid for the job (and the website gets a cut of the profits).

The benifit of this is that it will help provide a side income for people who finally built the reprap, and also ensures that the reprap will be used to its full potential (instead of printing occasionally when the owner wants it to).
-- mofosyne, Aug 01 2012

Reprap http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap
[normzone, Aug 01 2012]

100k Garages http://100kgarages.com
Network of home garages including those with reprap machines [MisterQED, Sep 30 2012]

plus imagine if this was in africa! People with mobile phones can already pay using 'M-PESA' in africa, so ordinary enterprising peeps could help print (or if they are smart enough, do molds of the most popular item) useful items for other africans. (Heck I'm sure there is plenty of useful tools that can be printed that are just simply not viable in mass manufacturing capacity)
-- mofosyne, Aug 01 2012


Almost anything you can buy for a dollar you can print in reprap. Little else. I don't think plastic trinkets are in great demand in Africa. Utensils, cups, ashtrays, and small toys are still the extent of their utility.

That said they're getting better all the time and I think this website would be very useful.
-- Voice, Aug 02 2012



random, halfbakery