Three-dimensional printers - with their up-to-$100,000 price tags - have been a part of industrial design shops for more than a decade. Now Pasadena-based Desktop Factory is trying to bring these printers to the desktop.

The $5,000 desktop device, handy not only in design but also for those of us with a propensity for losing and/or breaking remote control battery covers and the like, is expected to be available sometime this year.

"We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model," Bill Gross, chairman of IdeaLab - which launched Desktop Factory - told the New York Times. "The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials."

Desktop Factory isn't the only horse in the 3D desktop printer race, and the competition could drive prices to less than $2,000 in as little as three years.