The beginning of the trend in democratized manufacturing began at the end of the 1990's as websites brought the ability to allow the end user to get involved in designing their own products. Some of the earliest sites that set the trend include one of my favoritesto use an example is Vista print. This trendsetting company brought do it yourself printing to mainstream. Around 2001, another innovative company set a new standard for products. customatix or C-Max began allowing consumers to perwonalize their shoes. The company has a short run. I still to this day do not know what happened to them. Their products were even on college campuses. The only thing I can surmise is that they were bought out by Nike because Nike ID showed up a year or two later with a radically better interface.
There are two types of customization and personalization. The first is a configurator. A configurator let's you select from pre-made designs and combine them. There is no free customization or very limited true customization. This is exactly what sites like Nike ID allow.
The second type of customization is free customization. Giving the client truly free control to make anything. This sort of customization is much more difficult to achieve. The biggest challenge is ensuring what can be customized is a quality product or that it can actually be made. These sort of variables put limits in place that are more subtle but are necessary to keep things smoothly running.
3D printing is one of the most fundamental things that is making an impact in the world of customization. It has gone by many names. Rapid prototyping, additive freeform fabrication, direct digital manufacturing and a half dozen other names. No matter what name you choose to use, its the biggest thing to come along in manufacturing since the invention of the assembly line by Henry Ford. Why is it so important? Because its become possible to print a product almost as easily as proming a report for school at Kinkos.
In 2004, Digital Reality, Inc a Texas startup began making a small buz about turning 3P p into the next big thing and making its amazing capabilities available to the public. In 2007, they published a demo website that caugt the eye of the press and garnered the company some press but then went quiet.
The company is back...digital reality has published some news about a product called Digital Factory that goes on sale next year. To showcase what the technology is, all about they have also launched www.kraftwurx.com. Kraftwurx is quickly becoming the new nexus of the 3D printing world. What makes Kraftwurx so special? Usually when a service launches, its hidden and mired in stealth....trying to control the technology. Kraftwurx is entirely different, opening the platform to sign up as many 3D printing bureaus (shops with the printers) around the globe to sign up. So far kraftwurx has over 600 facilities worldwide ready to make products for you and or your customers.
Kraftwurx is also serving you as a way to earn residual income. Simply upload your 3D models to the site and they become available to purchase, printed in 3D and shipped to the customer directly. Stop for a moment and realize that Kraftwurx is letting you turn an idea into a product available for sale ias fast as you can model it in CAD software. Uploading the model instantly makes it available to the world to buy. Even better is the fact that you earn money on every sale of your product. kraftwurx is essentially, paying you forever when your product sells.
The best part of the Kraftwurx business model is that all you have to do is design. kraftwurx does everything else. They ensure you get paid, the manage production, quality control and even cover shipping. kraftwurx also provides you a bonus. They entire website is a marketing engine, attracting customers to browse and buy what you design.
Kraftwurx also serves another purpose. 3D printers are all over the planet. They are in every place from high school classrooms to garages and businesses in virtually every country. Kraftwurx recognized that there is an enormous and under utilized capacity to make things at these shops and Kraftwurx is bringing them all together. The site is quickly becoming the worlds largest distributed manufacturing system on the planet, allowing their customers and designers access to the world markets to sell their designs.
Everyone wins on kraftwurx.com. bureaus produce, designers design and sell and customers shop and buy, all printed in 3D.
Learn more at www.kraftwurx.com and also check out www.digitalrealitycorp.com/digital-factory.
