To be filed into the “I wish I thought of that” category is a new extremely minimalist for of 3D printer – the 3Doodler. Every time I describe fused deposition modeling (the long-winded way of talking about the most common form of low-cost 3D printing), I describe the similarity with a glue gun. You can think of the spool of ABS (or PLA) plastic akin to the glue stick, the extruder motor akin to the glue gun trigger, and the 3D printer’s hot end akin to a glue gun’s nozzle. If you take those similarities and add in a way to control the temperature of the plastic filament heating, you’ve got the 3Doodler.
Although it’s begging for lots and lots of warnings and disclaimers from burn injuries, I expect this will be a crowd-pleaser as long as the Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t have a problem with it.