A new eBay app for iOS offers users a chance to grab customizable 3D-printed items.
E-commerce giant eBay announced Friday a new app for iOS called eBay Exact, which offers customizable 3D-printed merchandise for sale. With the new app, buyers can choose from around 20 different items and customize it according to their choice of color, size, and print their name on it. It is often a difficult task to find exactly what you are looking for in the market. Be it an iPhone case, figurine or a piece of jewelry, eBay now offers a chance to customize it however you want.
The pricing of the listed items from three major 3D printing companies-Brooklyn-based MakerBot, France's Sculpteo, and Toronto's Hot Pop Factory, start anywhere from $9 for a plastic iPhone case up to $350 for a polished metal ring. Customers can select the color and the type of material including plastic, metal, or wood pulp, for their merchandise.
3D-printing is a technique of adding layers of materials on top of each other in an organized way giving it a desired shape.
"Shoppers today not only want to buy items anytime, anywhere through mobile devices, but they also want to be able to personalize their purchases. eBay Exact brings these two desires into one shopping experience," Steve Yankovich, Vice President of Innovation and New Ventures for eBay, wrote in a blog post Friday.
The items can be paid for via Pay Pal. The shipment of their order will take from 7 to 14 business days, which is done directly from the 3D-printing facility.
The app allows a 360 degree view of desired items from Sculpteo, where buyers can see their selected item in different angles before making the purchase. This feature is not seen in items made by MakerBot or Hot Pop Factory.
3D-printing has found a crucial place in the world of technology, science and medicine with its ability to print desired items at a lesser cost and faster. Earlier this week, NASA successfully tested its 3D-printed rocket engine injector. The injector normally takes more than one year to build , and with 3D it took just four months and saved 70 percent in building costs.
