It will start at home first. Break a knob off of something, download the file and print out a new one. No need to go get or ship anything... if you have a compatible machine in your home.
Even assuming you have that printer at home, it's usually the ink that's the problem, not the printer. So, unless you've got some means of piping the powder and the binder into your house, there'll still be some deliveries to your house.
Note also that the segment cheated, as indicated by one of the comments; they couldn't possibly separate the screw drive and the moving part of the jaw from the point cloud. That bit on the computer was just for show; there are missing details in the finished part that should have been in the point cloud, so it's obvious that they must have created the 3-D CAD file from scratch, and still messed up the details.
"Break a knob off of something, download the file and print out a new one."
Meh. That knob will break even faster, and it will have cost you 3x what you would have paid for the right part in the first place. I like 3d printers, you can do interesting things with them, but the sci-fi types would have you believe you could build rocket engines with them. Ain't gonna happen, at least not until they can do it at nano scales.
In fairness, the technology has come a long way in the last 10 years or so.
We now get a few small very low volume plastic covers made in ABS by rapid prototyping. With a little post processing to get rid of the lines on the outside they're good enough for our lab instruments.
Here is slight variation the process where the plastic scaffold is built with the 3-D printer and infused with stem cells, and presto you have a new organ or in this case a Trachea. this process is progressing quite rapidly.
I have a friend who's son will soon graduate with a MD and a Doctorate in one of the Bioscience Fields and his goal is to work in this field. He is the type of individual needed as his grade point average is 99+ for his entire schooling.
You grabbed the physical with both hands and totally ignored the esoteric...Everyone zoomed off on the replicator and ignored the 'first contact'. I can't help it if y'all if ya can't see far enough into the future. ;-(
