Could 3dlt.com be a way for Designers to help accelerate innovation of 3D printing

Could http://3dlt.com be a way for Designers to help accelerate innovation of 3D printing buy making it a direct consumer play?

No. Because 3D printing sucks for mass production and there will always exist mass production options which have way better speed and throughput than 3d printing can give. Why would you buy “3d printing templates” when the thing you likely want can be created by a 3D modeler on hire for the same amount of money?

And selling 3D models? Well…the file type that is required to send them to the printer is 100% free and open. It’s trivial to just pass those files around.

I don’t know @ThantiK My sump pump check valve went out this weekend. There is nothing I would have liked more than to quickly find the file, download it and print it…and I live 5 minutes from Home Depot. I can imagine people in more remote areas would be even more enthusiastic.

Selling designs is not the way to go.
People would want an assembly. Assemblies require non-printed parts, require assembly, require post-printing cleanup, require to stay within tollerances in printing and in material, require QA testing and a manual.
I may be willing to pay for a parametric CAD project of a complex mechanism but you can’t offer such things in all file formats, can’t convert them between file formats and can’t copy protect them.

Would these types of files need to be copy protected? Isn’t copyprotection / DRM a huge waste of $$ for everyone involved? I think that all of the big music sites that haven’t moved completely to a subscription based model aren’t copy protecting their files that they’re selling to people.