(2006-11-27) Fab At Home

There's a Fab At Home project for a DIY 3-D printer for Desktop Fab. While several commerical systems are available, their price range - tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands of dollars - is typically well beyond what an average home user can afford. Furthermore, commercial systems do not usually allow or encourage experimentation with new materials and processes. But more importantly, most - if not all - commercial system are geared towards making passive parts out of a single material. Our goal is to explore the potential of universal fabrication: Machines that can use multiple materials to fabricate complete, active systems.

Jan'2012 update: still in operation, you can buy finished printers for ~$3k.