The ink in those cartridges costs about a buck. The reason the cartridges are so expensive is because they are a propriatary item for which the printer maker can; and does, charge whatever the market can be forced to bear, usually to make up for the fact that they sold the printer at about cost.

This fabber is a DIY; open "source" device. You get parts lists and plans, then it's up to you. "Refills" will cost only whatever the raw materials are going for on the open market.

KFG

RTFA? It can run on chocolate or Play-Doh.

ok. fab@home video [youtube.com]

Fab@Home Video [youtube.com] on YouTube, as requested.

Unless I misread the URL you posted, those are precompiled 32bit codecs from Microsoft. To use it with a 64bit player would not be possible.

Patents are the copyright for physical objects. DRM is a technologically enforced copy limitation. Patents and copyright are legally enforced. A technological DRM for physical objects might be some kind of shape that 3D printers are legally required to recognize and not print without a cryptographically signed token of some sort.

Hod Lipson is a professor at Cornell University, not Carnegie Mellon, and the Cornell shield is completely visible in the photo, as are the words "Cornell University."

Sure, sure.

Hudsucker Proxy

...and they dock ya!

Idiot, of course it didn't work!

The command is "Tea, Earl Grey, hot". Duh.

Can it spin anything more complex than a circle as it builds? What good is a printer that can only make balls, cylinders, and bulbs?

It didn't spin anything.

Here's a hi-res pic showing off the complete chassis [fabathome.org]

Like most rapid prototyping machines, it has an X, Y, & Z axis.
The picture makes this very clear.
From the rest of your post, it seems kinda obvious that you didn't RTFA

Really useful auto manufacturing will require serious breakthroughs in AI and robotics to assembling a variety of fabricated parts into something useful, only then will manufacturing prices plummet.

And it also seems you know little about industrial robotics with respect to auto manufacturing. 'Dumb' robotics have already caused mfg prices to plummet.

Probably the biggest reason, in the U.S. at least, that there aren't more robotics involved in auto manufacturing (and a variety of other areas) are the unions. It's been an ongoing battle since at least the 1980's.

Corrected link [fabathome.org]