Are New Ultra-Cheap 3D Printers Revolutionary Or Just Toys?

Meet the Replicator 2. She’s top of the line, for home 3D printers, and she’ll cost you $2,200, not including shipping:

That’s about what a good PC cost in the 1980′s. And the parallels between the personal computing revolution and the one in 3D printing are irresistible (they’ve been made countless times in all the usual places). Ok, so these things don’t do much more than print out easily-breakable, rough-hewn plastic tchotchkes, but watch out! Some day we’ll use them to solve the really big problems.

Now meet the Pirate3D printer, care of a startup in Singapore. It claims that once it launches, it will be the “world’s cheapest” 3D printer, at around $350 apiece: