Personal Manufacturing

Manufacturing things usually involves using computers and large machinery. Due to the large expense of owning and operating this machinery, it is currently only practical to create products that lots of people kind of want (meaning want enough to buy). But many people have products that only they want (and they usually really want these), but no one else does, so they don't come into existence. This has led to a fairly homogeneous society where the things you buy in a store don't vary that much, because you can only buy popular things.

My idea is for a company to set up a milling/manufacturing machine that is open to the public to manufacture their own custom things. People could pay a fee to submit their "program" (which they would draw in a CAD program, which are constantly becoming easier to use) and have the object made.

I envision a society where, instead of buying already-made things in stores, you download CAD specifications from the internet (some of which would cost money, other of which people would release into the public domain), then send it to get the thing made. You could download customizable objects (e.g. shoes which you can adjust to your size), or download parts of objects ("libraries" in software terms) which you could combine into more complex products.

There may already be companies who would do this, but I doubt it would be at all practical for members of the public, as they would probably be targetting other businesses.