Printed Promotional Products – Ready for 3-D Printers?

Posted by Gallant  at March 19th, 2012

Custom Printed 3D Promotional Products

Custom Printed Promotional Products

Late last year, Printrbot, a 3-D printer manufacturing start-up in California, made an impressive showing on the open-source venture capital website Kickstarter.com. The company posted plans for a revolutionarily small and inexpensive 3-D printer. After asking for $25,000 to mass produce its product, Printrbot ended up raising $830,827.

Kickstarter.com allows entrepreneurs and artists to post business plans and invites everyday people to contribute money to projects. If projects reach funding goals, donors receive gifts based on the level of contribution. If projects don’t reach goals, no money changes hands.

Eerily, donors contributing smaller sums to Printrbot received homemade, 3-D printed gifts, such as bottle openers and key chains, as thank-you’s for their donations.

“This project will launch a business in pursuit of the dream of a printer in every home,” Printerbot’s listing on Kickstarter read. “We have reduced the complexity of these printers, but we will soon focus solely on pushing the price of these printers to the absolute lowest sustainable retail price for kits and fully assembled printers.”

Two years ago, Joe Titlow, vice president of products for Z Corporation, which sells 3-D printers said that using 3-D printers for short-run manufacturing can be the most cost-effective option.

“People take advantage of the fact that they don’t have to buy tooling,” Titlow says. “If they want 100 or 50 of something, or even just two or one of something, it actually becomes more cost effective to just 3-D print it than commit to a minimum run in China or something.

Custom Printed Promotional Products
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