ponoko.com

I learned about this site via my Make magazine. By the way Make is an awesome magazine for the tinkerer in all of us. Ponoko is a bunch of things, but at its most basic, it is a way to have your own personal manufacturing plant! This is from their about page:

Create, make and trade your product ideas

The post-industrial revolution is changing the way products are created, traded and distributed. Now everyone can engage in the manufacturing process through their PCs - bringing personal manufacturing of individualized products to the masses. the big idea. Ponoko is the world's first personal manufacturing platform. It's the online space for a community of creators and consumers to use a global network of digital manufacturing hardware to co-create, make and trade individualized product ideas on demand. The ponoko.com marketplace connects creators, consumers, digital manufacturing hardware and service providers to promote, make and trade products on Ponoko and social networking websites.

That is cool