3D Printing is beginning to take off and Nokia wants in. Whether or not you have a professional 3D printer, or a $1,500 do-it-yourself hackjob made of spare printer parts, Nokia is jumping onto the fabrication bandwagon and has offered up special 3D schematics that allow you to make cases for your Nokia Lumia 820.
In an online blog post, Nokia has says “[we] have become the first major phone company to begin embracing the 3D printing community and its incredible potential, and continue to be the leading phone company in this exciting field,” and gives hints that this is just the beginning for the merging between the Finnish phone manufacturer and the community of printers. This is great news for those who wish more companies would interact with their communities. While offering a 3D schematic for a case is nothing compared to more in-depth developer relations, it certainly is a good start for Nokia.
In reality, anyone can already make a case for their phone if they really wanted, but the process would be extremely difficult as you’d need to (probably through trial and error) make a case based on your own measurements, and not those from the manufacturer. While Nokia has only released a schematic for a basic (and perhaps not even cost efficient) phone case, it won’t be long until communities play with the design to make their very own cases with crazy things like E Ink displays built into them, crazy new colors and designs, or something even more amazing. Though we don’t yet have our own 3D printer, we hope this becomes a trend.
