Home Depot Starts Selling 3-D Printers in Stores

Home Depot has announced that it will start selling 3-D printers today in stores for the first time.

Home Depot is selling devices from MakerBot in 12 locations as part of a pilot project, the company said. The effort will include stores in California, Illinois and New York.

“It’s a pilot for us to test a potential disruptive technology, and to make sure we are on the forefront of a new innovative product,” Joe Downey, an online merchant at Atlanta-based Home Depot, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

The consumer market for 3-D printing will reach $600 million in 2017, up from $70 million to $80 million last year, according to Kenneth Wong, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in San Francisco.

But, in the short-term, the 3-D printing technology isn’t as far along as consumers may think, according to Tim Shepherd, an analyst at research firm Canalys in the U.K.. It takes about an hour to print one chess piece, he said.