Better idea for bigger shops (or printer owners who have someone always at home): allow "remote usage" of the printers.
Assume I have either an object constructed out of lots of parts or I want a relatively cheap object produced in mass. Instead of me having to wait ages until the whole job is finished, I can distribute individual parts/jobs to printers in my neighborhood, pay the owner for the material and power usage, and have my objects.
Never mind a bot farm, this is incredibly useful to anyone who has just one 3d printer.
Normally I have to sit with my laptop plugged into my printer by USB for the full duration of a print, which can be hours long. This lets you print from wherever you want in the house, and cuts out the crappy slicing and print hosting software you currently have to use.
If you can really print in 3 clicks like they say they can, I'll be sold.
We use Octoprint as well, but it didn't meet our needs. We needed makerbot support and connecting multiple printers to one Pi. Cloud slicing was an obvious answer to us, and allowed us to provide a common API for these printers.
I can send you a pre-release demo if you are interested.
Assume I have either an object constructed out of lots of parts or I want a relatively cheap object produced in mass. Instead of me having to wait ages until the whole job is finished, I can distribute individual parts/jobs to printers in my neighborhood, pay the owner for the material and power usage, and have my objects.
Printing As A Distributed Service.