Anywho.
I received the printer a few weeks ago and have been working furiously at assembling the thing, learning how it works, and making some test objects. Here's a video of the Printer cranking out some custom enclosures.
When I say "Cranking out", I really mean "piddling along at a snail's pace," because that's what these 3D printers do. Fortunately, however, there's a conveyor belt on the printer, so you can just set it to print 50 units and then walk away for a couple of hours. When you come back, you'll have a neat little pile of them sitting in front of the printer.
The tech is similar to stereolithography, which is an incredibly expensive process involving a vat of photoactive chemicals and lasers and stuff. The Thing-O-Matic is only about $1300, though, plus there's this really cool community called Thingiverse where you can download designs for all kinds of stuff you might want to make, like the Gothic Cathedral Playset.
Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks of printing, one of the stepper drivers blew out. This appears to be a very un-common problem, but Makerbot was kind enough to replace the device for me, and I should be back up and running any time now.
Here's my Thingiverse page:
You can see the auger I designed and printed for pushing cat food through a pipe.