Ponoko and the Fabrication Network

To me this is pretty huge news (Fabbaloo found it for me): Ponoko is creating a fabber network. This to me is an absolute thrill.  This will monetize fabricator ownership.  This will decentralize manufacturing.  To me at least, this is tectonic.  And Thingiverse has a big role to play here.

Back in my earlier posts I wondered aloud what the monetized side of the digital fabrication market would look like, when it was being done by individual, local owners of fabrication systems.  This is what it looks like.  It doesn’t look like Kinkos.  It looks like– well– like nothing we’ve seen before.

This is the near future: networks of fabricators covering local areas so that designers and consumers commission objects, perhaps piecemeal from several local owners of fabrication services, and some will be owned designs, with a designer who might be anywhere in the world earning a royalty per unit.  But a lot of them will come from Thingiverse.

Thingiverse and Ponoko’s design-buy system will be complimentary, I’m convinced, with Thingiverse designs earning fabricators money by giving them things to offer to the Pokono network royalty free, and Ponoko designs earning designers royalties with every made object.  Very exciting!