Sophisticated manufacturing technologies are becoming available to regular people. In their 2009 annual report Innovations That Could Change the Way You Manufacture, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) selected personal-scale manufacturing machines as a technology that “could change the way we do manufacturing.” Last year, the Economist said “home-scale, or personalized manufacturing technologies offer a new approach to designing and making objects that will change the way we design, transport, and consume physical products, unleashing new product ideas, new educational methods and new business models. 1 Recently the New York Times ran an article describing the explosive.
