News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
3D Hubs, the world’s largest online marketplace for 3D printing services, today announces the acquisition of Printivate, a specialized service for optimizing and fixing 3D models. 3D Hubs will integrate Printivate in its platform to improve 3D file handling and printability prediction.
In the latest report, 3D Printing Software Markets – 2016: A Ten-Year Forecast and Opportunity Analysis, Scott Dunham from the leading AM market research firm SmarTech Publishing analyzes 3D printing software market trends and growth forecasts to 2026 and describes eight different tool types within four different major workflow patterns.
3DPrinterOS launches their game-changing ZAP Cloud Manufacturing Platform live on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco.
Jenny Chen of 3DHeals, on the Women in 3D Printing Blog, recently said that it is not the technology itself, as much as the people using it, that are driving innovation in 3D printing. That is absolutely true: the paradox is that while so many of us focus on the limits of desktop (and industrial) machines, the true limits are in our heads (and in materials). The Open Camera Project by YouTuber, blogger and 3D Printer Chat FB group administrator Anton Månsson shows exactly that we are just beginning to understand how we can fully exploit the capabilities of even a basic desktop 3D printer fed with PETG. “I’ve always loved filming and cameras,” Anton explains, “I love the idea of creating videos to educate and illustrate things going on. When combining this with a passion for gadgets i suddenly realized you have to cut corners to afford the “important” stuff. One of those things were to mount all the necessary parts around the camera. When moving from visual 3D-creation into more mechanical 3D-creation – he continues – I picked up on the fact that I have all these 3D printers at the Creative Tools office and wanted to create a 3D printable system that I could use instead of buying loads of expensive parts.” DSLR (and GoPro) camera accessories are extremely expensive. Even more so for rigs. And yet rigs are some of the products that can be 3D printed more efficiently. The biggest challenge – as is often the case -is designing them but through open source sharing, it may be enough for one person to begin and let everyone contribute to provide the community with several affordable designs. The most common systems use 15mm Diameter rods (aluminium or carbon fiber usually) that are offset by 60mm (center to center). The idea of a camera rig is to incorporate manually operated focus systems, as well as enabling one or more two persons to operate the camera easily. For low budget film and documentary use it’s common to use a shoulder rig that’s lets one operator rest the camera (and audio recording, light, batteries and more) on this shoulder and arms. This can be combined this with a “follow-focus system” (a knob that you twist to smoothly change focus, instead of turning the lens built-in focus ring). Given all the right tools, a camera operator is able to achieve a lot more with a smaller team (or even alone). “All of this gear is usually very expensive and my goal was to create a system that could be printed for under $100, to be open source, and to work with existing parts while being strong enough to handle a DSLR-camera.”, Anton says. The project is just beginning but it looks promising and there certainly are thousands of professionals out there – in the ever more competitive and low paying world of photography and videomaking – who can benefit a great deal from a significant cut to their accessories expenses list.
Scope of the Project: IAV and Achates Power required a scale model of their new engine to be used at tradeshows as a display piece. 3D printing was chosen by CIDEAS so that the model could be scaled to a size and weight that would be manageable for booth workers. It was also imperative for the final engine to look as real as possible.
3DPrinterOS simplifies manufacturing with Siemens, Dassault Systèmes, Autodesk, and Onshape integrations and partnerships
After spending a bulk of the last few years developing one of the most powerful and all-encompassing 3D printing cloud services on the entire market, 3DPrinterOS seems prepared to unleash their platform to the global 3D printing community. This week, the Silicon Valley-based company 3DPrinterOS announced that they would expanding their cloud operating platform on a global level by moving their service to Microsoft Azure, which is an open, flexible, professional-grade cloud computing platform. The recent move to Microsoft should certainly help 3DPrinterOS garner some much-deserved attention, as their cloud infrastructure is already utilized by the likes of Ford, Cisco, Duke University, CalTech, and many other businesses and educational institutions. Focused on integrating their platform into universities and enterprises around the globe, Microsoft Azure seems to be the optimal choice for the 3DPrinterOS platform. “We are extremely excited to collaborate with Microsoft Azure to serve our Enterprise Clients with its highly secure, hyper-scale global cloud,” said 3DPrinterOS CEO John Dogru. “It was a challenge to find the right company that had the cloud infrastructure, compliance, security, and reliability around the world including countries like China and Europe.” So, those who are unfamiliar with the cloud service may be asking, what exactly does the 3DPrinterOS platform do? Well, in all honesty, it’d be much easier to explain what it doesn’t do. Their virtual factory enhances the entire 3D printing process, all the way from the CAD file to the print bed. By offering a centralized workflow, anyone from IT managers to students can manage a wide-range of 3D printers and designs directly from a web-based browser or through the 3DPrinterOS smartphone app. On Azure’s secure and globally connected network, the 3DPrinterOS platform will be able to continue providing customers with an efficient way to manage up to 1000’s of networked 3D printers, users, and designs, essentially revolutionizing the fragmented world of 3D printing software, which oftentimes requires a handful of different programs and processes to complete one goal. But, with 3DPrinterOS, users are able to manage every part of the 3D printing process from where ever they happen to be, and are able to instantly change print settings, watch a live-stream of the many print jobs taking place from their smartphone, and even use the built-in slicer and instantaneously queue up a new print on the fly. “The cloud is transforming entire industries and creating new opportunities for even the most innovative new businesses,” said Senior Director of Microsoft Azure, Nicole Herskowitz. “The market leading scale and speed of Microsoft Azure helps spur global growth opportunities for companies like 3DPrinterOS who are utilizing cloud computing and IoT connected devices in a completely new model of decentralized manufacturing.” Over the last eight months, the 3DPrinterOS cloud platform has unleashed decentralized manufacturing, building over 62,000 parts in 100 different countries. With this latest move to Microsoft Azure, the future looks extremely promising for 3DPrinterOS, who are taking the limitless and relatively cloud platform and creating the powerful 3D printing management platform that the industry has been in desperate need for. As they continue to expand into universities and enterprises throughout the world, 3DPrinterOS is simplifying the time-consuming and currently fractured 3D printing process, cutting out the middle man and handling everything that happens in between the CAD file and print bed.
Embodying the next generation of intuitive and streamlined 3D printing software, 3DSPRINT by industry leader 3D Systems is bridging the gap between 3D designers and manufacturers, one optimized print job after another. After months of extensive beta testing, we’re taking a look at all that the new 3DSPRINT Connect has to offer for 3D printing businesses and individuals alike.
Altair and Airbus APWorks Team up to Make Additive Manufacturing a Reality for Customers
Starting today the Autodesk Spark additive manufacturing platform is merging into the Autodesk Forge Platform. After the transition is complete this fall, all Autodesk additive manufacturing APIs, services and sample applications will be available on the Forge Platform and the Spark developer portal will eventually be closed. 3D printing APIs are already available on the Forge Developer Portal.