An image from one of Amazon’s patent applications for 3D printing delivery.
 
USPTO
When 30-minute drone delivery isn’t fast enough, Amazon.com will send in its 3D-printing trucks.
That’s the ambitious vision laid out in several patent applications from the e-commerce giant. Amazon wrote that it hopes to create a system for printing three-dimensional goods on-demand, even from inside delivery trucks, to get them to customers faster.
As sketched out by the patent applications, customers could order, say, replacement parts for their car through the Amazon website and have them delivered in time for a road trip that day. Another plus: Amazon could guarantee to have the products available, without having to stock the inventory.
“Time delays between receiving an order and shipping the item to the customer may reduce customer satisfaction and affect revenues generated,” Amazon wrote in the applications. “Accordingly, an electronic marketplace may find it desirable to decrease the amount of warehouse or inventory storage space needed, to reduce the amount of time consumed between receiving an order and delivering the item to the customer, or both.”
3D printing works by feeding schematics into a machine that squeezes out heated plastic in intricate patterns, something like a precision glue gun.
Amazon has put an ever-greater premium on shipping speed in recent years. It is building a huge network of warehouses close to urban centers, is developing its own shipping network and has bike messengers bringing New Yorkers goods in as little as an hour. A spokeswoman declined to comment on the patent applications.
In late 2013, Amazon was granted a patent for “anticipatory delivery,” a system to start delivering merchandise before customers even click “buy.” Amazon thinks it knows customers so well it can guess what they’ll need before the customers themselves do. Amazon said it could to this by keeping stockpiles of popular items in nearby warehouses, and sometimes, on trucks.
To date, Amazon has not demonstrated publicly its “anticipatory shipping” concept. Likewise, it may never deploy a fleet of 3D-printing trucks, and may not receive a patent.
It is also still working through regulatory challenges related to its idea of delivering goods by drone in 30 minutes or less.
The news was reported earlier by 3DPrint.com.