One of the things that appealed to me early on about 3D printing was the idea of hyperlocal production, or making things very close to where they are needed and used. Instead of making things in a centralized factory and shipping them around the world, 3D printing makes it possible to ship the idea of a thing instead, which is simpler, faster, less harmful and more robust than the infrastructure used to move physical goods around the world.
This is why it's borderline offensive to me to see people shipping many 3D printed objects when we could be shipping one instead: the printer itself!
Of course the counterargument is that the printer is too expense, or too delicate, or too hard to use to simply ship one to every place that needs the things that we are designing. That may have been true (and maybe is still true) but if so, it sounds like a problem that can be solved if it means offsetting or eliminating all of the downsides to shipping physical things around the planet.
There is another counterargument that says "Well you can't 3D print everything", which is true (although becoming less true every day), but that argument doesn't apply to the shipping of 3D printed things which is the topic of this post.
So what would be the minimum threshold in terms of cost, durability and ease-of-use to overcome this argument?
Cost
This is probably the easiest of the three problems to solve. I can tell you from personal experience that the cost of 3D printers themselves drops rapidly as the number of printers rises. My first "printer" cost over $700.00 only a decade ago, and it was far from a turnkey machine. It took at least a year of learning, hacking and modifications before it could reliably turn out parts, so the total investment is probably closer to $7000.00.
A couple months ago I bought a printer that has over ten times the capacity and speed as my original printer, took about an hour to assemble and cost $2500.00. This is not a hobby machine that requires constant fiddling but a serious piece of production equipment that has ran nonstop since it arrived churning-out high-quality parts with less than 1% loss (which tbh can probably be blamed on operator error).
Of course machines with similar performance characteristics but smaller capacity can be had for far less.
So how low does the price have to go? Let's consider another device that most people consider to be worth the cost: the smartphone.
The average price of a smartphone in 2025 is something like $750.00 USD*. To me that sounds like a lot of money, but most people don't simply plunk-down $750.00 in cash at the counter of the Verizon store. Most smartphones are financed, typically as part of a regular bill from a service provider so that the cost of the hardware isn't the hurdle to adoption that it might be otherwise.
So I think it's safe to say that even on a per-household level $700.00 USD is a reasonable target, and for something that can be used on a neighborhood or community-scale you could comfortably increase that tenfold to $7000.00.
As I mentioned above I was able to purchase a reliable, off-the-shelf production-grade machine for less than half that amount, and it is definitely something that could serve a neighborhood or small community.
I definitely believe that there are ways to make the up-front cost lower and/or more consistent, and I think the proliferation of printers designed specifically for distributed manufacturing will cause this organically, but even so I don't think up-front cost is really the barrier it might first appear to be.
Durability
If weighted by the number of printers sold, durability (in terms of mean time between failure) of the average off-the-shelf 3D printer is probably pretty low. But if we only consider the higher-end machines (machines closer to the $700.00 - $7000.00 price range) durability increases substantially. Once you get beyond hobby-grade machines, most 3D printers made today can churn out parts fairly reliably without major breakdowns and the need for overhauls. Even regular maintenance is minimal for these machines, and with minimal training this maintenance can be performed by non-professionals.
I would argue that it is harder to keep a 2D printer working than it is to keep a $1000.00 USD 3D printer working.
Of course, there is lots of room for improvement. Few of these machines are designed with durability as their highest priority, and I think a printer designed specifically to function reliably for long periods without service or breakdowns could dramatically improve over the average performance of existing 3D printers in this area.
Ease of use
This may be the worst aspect of contemporary 3D printers, but I also think it's the easiest one to solve, again if doing so is a key design criteria. Printers designed specifically for the type of distributed manufacturing being discussed here could use a very different "workflow" compared to contemporary designs. Today, if you want to print a part, you have to find it or design it yourself in a CAD program, then prepare the part for your specific printer (slicing) and finally load that into another piece of software that controls the printer itself.
Some printers have automated or integrated some or all of these steps, but there is no consistent experience across vendors and even within printers from one particular company. Additionally, this integration often comes at a severe cost in terms of limiting the models, the materials and other aspects of how the machine can be used.
A printer designed specifically for the mode we are talking about here (the electronic delivery of physical goods) could function much more like an appliance. The process of operating the machine could be much more like that of shopping for goods (just like you would if you were buying a part made elsewhere and shipped to you). Printing could be as easy as shipping, specifying where you want the part to go and allowing the system to select the nearest printer available to process the job.
A well designed system would provide access to existing designs, the ability to customize/combine existing designs and a way to request or provide custom design work in a streamlined, comfortable way that is as accessible as any other retail experience.
On the "output" side, the printer should need nothing more than to be configured to attach to the network. Once attached, it's availability (public/private, the physical region served, etc.) can be selected by the operator. From that point on the operator's only responsibility is to replenish consumables and facilitate physical access to the finished parts.
What's Next?
The basic technology needed to implement the system described above exists today. What is needed is the resources to design and implement the specific hardware and software, but to be honest that is the easier part. The hard part is finding a way to communicate the value and importance of changing the way we make and distribute things to the people who want and need them. This education is undermined by the desire of the existing system to persist, as a change to this mode of distribution could undermine the fortunes of many powerful people.
There may be an incremental path toward this mode that doesn't (at least immediately) trigger an aggressive response, and I believe that in the long run there's enough advantage to such a system that it doesn't permanently disrupt the ability for people to make a living. I would argue that in the long run, it not only addresses the problems the current system creates but opens the door to a wide range of pro-social work that people actually enjoy and goods with a breadth, depth and diversity to provide plenty of bread and roses.
Like most big changes I discuss here I don't know all the steps between here and there yet, but I'm hoping we can find them together before it's too late.
* this is totally a guess, but I think it's close.