cost to build physical prototypes has effectively fallen to 0
ignoring the initial outlay of 3d printing and materials
Previously you'd need to find a factory and contract with them to manufacture a minimum number of items
That's never how initial product prototypes have been made.
His first versions may be less janky than historic prototyping, but I think we're risking rewriting history to make 3d printing more grandiose than it actually is.
10 years ago I was at a company prototyping a new widget. We had 3 day turnaround from the local 3d printer for something the size of a cellphone, it cost over $1000, and the quality was garbage.
Once we did basic usability testing with this, we went to a low-volume manufacturing run using silicone molds in Shenzhen and FedExed back, turnaround time about 10 days. Price $15k+. Once we were happy with this we did alu molds in Shenzhen for a batch of 500, and you don't want to know the price.
Today I can get 3 hour turnaround for items the same quality as the silicone molds, just by getting our own liquid printer for about $1k. This really does change things for prototyping.
ignoring the initial outlay of 3d printing and materials
Previously you'd need to find a factory and contract with them to manufacture a minimum number of items
That's never how initial product prototypes have been made. His first versions may be less janky than historic prototyping, but I think we're risking rewriting history to make 3d printing more grandiose than it actually is.