Trimensional

A 3D scanner iPhone App from Trimensional could kick demand for 3D printing in to high gear.

Given technologies like this, people with little to no 3D model making ability will be able to create copies of any distinct object or part.

RepRap sucks?

After many time building my RepStrap, printing parts for Mendel and finally build my Mendel, I asked on dev mailing list about "RepRap roadmap" -- seems there is no defined roadmap.

Because there is no roadmap, I can't know what will be RepRap in next 1, 3, 5 years. Will RepRap improve and be userfriendly, being useful for people? --- I don't think so, because none developers expressed that intention. It's clear not and objective and nor a priority.

via forums.reprap.org

This reminds me of the criticism Linux got when it still had really bad usability issues.

As user jbayless says:
"RepRap is difficult to build and tune, that's for sure, but it takes perseverance. I would have much more pride -- and faith -- in a printer that I'd built and helped to design, than in a closed-source competitor. But this approach is not for everybody. "

The core of a complex machine or piece of software will always be complicated and hard to configure. Once the ubergeeks get that core working, others can layer on interfaces that do the hard configuration automatically. If the core is open source.