((("Bespoke manufacturing" is yet another synonym for fabbing.
This scene is coming to slow boil.)))
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10202893
Link: Bespoke manufacturing | I made it my way | Economist.com.
Bespoke manufacturing
I made it my way
Nov 27th 2007
From Economist.com
The first steps towards creating tailor-made items from electronic blueprints
ARTS and crafts are finding a new form. Hobbyists can now use computers to devise designs for items from furniture to jewellery, and then transform them into real objects at the touch of a button. Such one-off pieces are today ordered though a system that acts as a matchmaker between customers and specialist manufacturing equipment. Yet it may eventually be possible for amateur designers to realise their creations by simply printing them out as three-dimensional objects at home.
Technologists such as Neil Gershenfeld of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have long championed the concept of personal manufacturing. The idea is to turn computerised information into a three-dimensional object, or bits into atoms, as Dr Gershenfeld puts it. The process he envisages is a technical procession similar to that which happened to desktop publishing and printing. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, manipulating text and images was the domain of experts working in large print shops full of expensive machinery. It then moved quickly to the desktop. Today designing and printing are ubiquitous in homes and offices.
Now it appears that personal manufacturing is moving in the same direction. A few weeks ago a company called Ponoko, based in New Zealand, became one of the first firms to realise the designs of its customers....
