February 5th to 11th 2011: This week in 3D printing

Tuesday 8th of February. This press release tells us a tale of an engineer using a Bits From Bytes RapMan to 3D print a scale model. This is interesting because a lot of people now consider “kit 3D printers” such as the RepRap, RapMan and Makerbot to be consumer 3D printers. Desktop 3D printers such as the Objet24 & UPrint on the other hand are considered to be for businesses. Where will the two markets meet?

Wednesday 9th of February. Public Knowledge and Michael Weinberg continue their victory lap around the internet with their Catan Story.

Friday 11th of February. Fabbaloo informs us that the Mcor paper 3D printer is spreading out its wings over Europe

Friday 11th of February. This week 1.6 million readers of The Economist are confronted with a cover story about 3D printing. The articles inside mention Stratasys and EOS and the subtitle on the homepage is a rather positive, “The manufacturing technology that will change the world.” This is a huge step forward. And this is one of those things that makes me go, “yippee this is happening, Now.”Â

But, we must remember that currently our entire industry generates less Google search queries than the term Justin Beber. Not Justin Bieber the child singing star but rather the misspelling: Justin Beber. So we have quite a bit to go.

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