MakerBot Industries

I’ve seen a lot of drool-worthy products in the last few days at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show: Smart tablet computers, high-def 3D televisions, cutting-edge phones and superpowered gadgets of all stripes.

But the thing I want the most out of all of them is the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic. It’s an affordable, open source, easy to operate 3D printer, a desktop-sized engine for making whatever you want out of sculpted plastic.

Put a MakerBot on your desk and connect it to your PC with a USB cable. It’s compatible with Mac, Linux or Windows, and thanks to the MakerBot Automated Build Platform, you can queue up object after object in your print queue and simply churn them out like a little factory.

Here’s the MakerBot in action:

And here’s a few examples of what you can make with it:

The MakerBot comes in an easy-to-assemble kit for $1,225, which is cheap for a 3D printer. And once it’s set up, it’s cheap to operate: ABS plastic costs only about $10-15 per pound, so each of your creations will cost just a few pennies.