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The Dream Factory – From design to delivery, custom manufacturing is coming soon to a desktop near you.

If you could make anything you wanted, what would it be?

For me, that’s not a rhetorical question, because right now I’m staring at my own personal fabricator. It’s eMachineShop, an application that produces a physical 3-D copy of almost anything I draw. "You know the machine on Star Trek? The replicator? That’s what I was aiming for," says Jim Lewis, the guy who created this tool.

The concept is simple: Boot up your computer and design whatever object you can imagine, press a button to send the CAD file to Lewis’ headquarters in New Jersey, and two or three weeks later he’ll FedEx you the physical object. Lewis launched eMachineShop a year and a half ago, and customers are using his service to create engine-block parts for hot rods, gears for home-brew robots, telescope mounts – even special soles for tap dance shoes. "Designing stuff used to be just for experts," Lewis says. "We’re bringing it to the masses."

I’m going to test that claim. I have no experience in design and can barely draw a convincing stick figure. If I can manage to engineer a product, then he’s right: Any idiot can do it.

Clive Thompson

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/fablab.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

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