HP Will Market 3-D Printers to the Masses

3-D printing is finally hitting the mainstream. Hewlett-Packard, maker of many of the ubiquitous inkjet and laser printers adorning office spaces everywhere, plans to broadly market a printer that can turn out three-dimensional models from computer aided design programs. It can be yours at the highly ambiguous price point of somewhere less than $15,000.
3-D printers have long been available to specialized design professionals like architects or industrial designers. NASA is even considering shipping a very special one to the international space station. But the high price of the machines as well as the software that drives them made them all but unobtainable to smaller firms and individual hobbyists. HP's device could bring a fairly good quality of three-dimensional printing to small- and mid-sized design firms, as well as a broad market of mechanical design professionals that need to model their designs precisely. [Detail]