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Stanley Black & Decker is Using AstroPrint to Optimize and Control Its 3D Printer Fleets

Cloud-based 3D printing management software AstroPrint, officially launched on Kickstarter in 2014, is a venture-backed company that’s both a service and a device, with features such as file management, live video streaming, and a mobile app. The company recently made a pretty great deal for itself – it’s partnering with Stanley Black & Decker in order to create a distributed network of 3D printers.

“Thanks to this partnership, we will gain visibility into ROI, uptime, value, resource optimization, and competence development in regards to 3D printer usage at Stanley Black and Decker. These are critical drivers for Additive Manufacturing success for every enterprise. We are confident that the AstroPrint software solution has a great deal of promise for us and for the industry,” said Martin Guay, VP of Business Development at Stanley Black and Decker.

Using AstroPrint’s Enterprise Cloud, Stanley Black & Decker will work to connect, control, and optimize its fleet of 3D printers across multiple facilities, automating its AM workflows and systems on one platform to ensure that resources are being shared as they should. At the same time, the partnership with AstroPrint will allow Stanley Black & Decker to acquire new intelligence when it comes to opportunities in growth and productivity.

The software will make it possible for Stanley Black & Decker engineers to collect data on their 3D printers, in addition to checking productivity, usage, and any potential issues on every 3D printer in its fleet. This will help the company make smart decisions on how to scale their 3D printing up and out, and continue optimizing its workflows. As Stanley Black & Decker uses its 3D printers for everything from small run manufacturing of existing product parts to new design prototyping, this is very important.

AstroPrint founder-CEO Drew Taylor. [Image: Steve Laschever, Hartford Business Journal]

“We’ve been in the 3D Printing industry for a long time now and we are proud to have pioneered one of the first (and best) software systems to manage 3D Printers through the cloud,” said Drew Taylor, the CEO of AstroPrint. “It’s now time for us to anticipate the needs and bottlenecks that large, multi-location companies, such as Stanley Black & Decker, will face as they invest significantly to grow their Additive Manufacturing programs.”

As Stanley Black & Decker continues to invest in, and contribute to, 3D printing, the first thing the company will do with AstroPrint is connect its 3D printers and teams in different worldwide offices. Then, company engineers will be able to use a single dashboard to, as AstroPrint put it, “gain a commanding view of all the 3D printers in the fleet.” This connection will allow them to control 3D printer fleets for larger scale projects from one system, as well as share resources from any of its 3D printers around the world. Additionally, managers can set various permissions for team members, and even external consultants and contractors, based what responsibilities they have.

The data collected by AstroPrint’s Enterprise Cloud will be used by the company’s senior managers, along with its business development teams, to plan budgets, make more accurate projections, create business cases for new areas of growth, and review Returns on Investment (ROI) for projects.

This partnership with Stanley Black & Decker is a pretty significant one for AstroPrint. Now, it can focus on scaling out its Enterprise Cloud in order to make it more accessible to large manufacturers who need to better connect, control, and optimize their own fleets of 3D printers. It is clear that networked desktop 3D printers will be the future for universities and enterprise customers but who will win in the space? Will it be Astroprint, Ultimaker’s Cura, a Materialise app or something from Dassault or Autodesk? It is early days yet but this is a good move for Astroprint’s sake.

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

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Swiss Hospital Will Use axial3D’s Software Platform to Improve Patient Care with 3D Printed Medical Models

[Image: axial3D]

The award-winning, Belfast-based medical 3D printing and healthcare technology firm axial3D is focused on helping the global healthcare industry adopt 3D printing by using its patient-specific medical models to improve surgical outcomes, assist patients and doctors in better understanding ailments and treatments, and facilitate pre-operative planning.

Now, on the heels of a new partnership with Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, the company has announced that it is collaborating with top Swiss medical center University Hospital Basel (USB) in order to improve process management and patient care and outcomes at the hospital’s interdisciplinary 3D Print Lab.

“3D printed models have been shown to help surgeons complete complex life-saving surgeries that would be otherwise impossible,” axial3D’s Ryan Kyle told 3DPrint.com. “University Hospital Basel’s new collaboration with axial3D will help to deliver high-quality 3D printed models much quicker than before.”

The hospital, which has about 7,000 people on staff, is northwest Switzerland’s biggest healthcare facility. Its 3D Print Lab uses patient image data to fabricate realistic anatomical models, and other objects, using a variety of different materials and 3D printing methods. Now it will be using axial3D’s new cloud-based platform, axial3Dassure, to support its 3D printing program.

[Image: University Hospital Basel]

By using axial3Dassure, USB will optimize its 3D Print Lab in order to provide a greater level of performance and patient care. The software, which has an end to end workflow, provides features like processing and quality management, so that hospitals and medical centers can meet their expanding business needs through its powerful analytics. The new axial3Dassure platform will also help support collaboration within the hospital’s 3D Print Lab with such features as email notifications and task-driven workflows.

Daniel Crawford, axial3D

“We are very excited to be working with the team at University Hospital Basel. They are a leading force in medical 3D printing, not just in Europe, but globally, and this alliance will ensure the expertise they have developed can support our company’s growth by informing the ongoing development of axial3D’s software solutions,” said axial3D’s CEO and Founder Daniel Crawford. “With a growing requirement for 3D printing within healthcare, a centralized management platform is necessary for any 3D print lab, which plans to scale and grow in the coming years. University Hospital Basel has taken strides in its commitment to improving outcomes for patients through technology advances in the form of this collaboration.

“Our software will help the hospital gain insight into the statistics and figures usually hidden within data, ultimately allowing them to measure clinical impact and value 3D printing is having for patients. The workflow management capability will allow the hospital to speed up the creation, processing, and delivery of 3D printed models, while ensuring auditability, reliability and standardization.”

By using axial3Dassure software, USB will be able to increase efficiency and improve compliance and productivity. The hospital’s 3D Print Lab, which includes over 20 desktop and industrial 3D printers, will now be better equipped to manage communication, quality control, tracking, and workflow management.

In addition, USB will benefit from the company’s orthopaedic auto-segmentation software module, which is embedded within the axial3Dassure platform. This module will help lower the amount of time that is typically required during pre-production of 3D printing orthopaedic models.

Finally, by partnering with axial3D, USB will be able to speed up the creation, processing, and delivery of its 3D printed surgical guides.

“Our initial focus for the use of 3D printed surgical guides was within the Department of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery where 3D printing has now become routine,” explained Philipp Brantner, Senior Physician of Radiology and the Co-Director of the 3D Print Lab at University Hospital Basel. “Having access to onsite printing has revolutionized how we treat those patients, some who arrive with life-threatening injuries that require immediate action. The functionality that we now get provided will allow us to speed up production and treat patients more effectively and efficiently.”

What do you think about this news? Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

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Fabpilot by Sculpteo Demonstrating New FDM 3D Printing Integration at TCT Show

Last year, French 3D printing company Sculpteo first introduced its standalone Fabpilot software in October, before officially launching the fully cloud-based solution at formnext the month after. Now this week, at the 2018 TCT Show in Birmingham, Fabpilot by Sculpteo will be presenting its new Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) integration – the software solution now directly connects to FDM 3D printers in order to optimize their production and handle industrial production.

Fabpilot is a Software as a Service (SaaS) and this update helps it serve professionals who own several FDM 3D printers and are looking for a better way to manage them. Especially in businesses where multiple users control the machines and need file security and traceability.

“Fabpilot aims to eliminate the insecure and error prone practices of physically moving data around,” explained Alex Gryson, Product Owner. “Machine integration such as with FDMs makes this a reality for any scale of lab or production facility.”

It took Sculpteo eight years of in-house development to create Fabpilot, which provides third parties with a way to better manage and optimize their 3D printers. The software provides traceability, auto-routing for machine scheduling, streamlined file analysis and repair, file management and versioning, and a historical record of settings and configurations. The company claims that by using Fabpilot companies can increase overall production efficiency by 35%, and improve part quality.

Now, with its new direct FDM machine integration, Fabpilot is on a mission to support 3D printing for makerspaces, FabLabs, educational programs, universities, manufacturers and other businesses that provide 3D printing services. These can all use Fabpilot for direct integration with most FDM 3D printers, in order to combine file analysis and repair, quotation, part and order management, and performance analytics, as well as controlling end-to-end FDM production from the same cloud-based platform.

“FDM is by far the most common 3D printing technology: it’s cost-effective, highly adaptable, and the applications, from a microscopic scale to 3D printing houses, are endless. When thinking about the next progression, it made perfect sense to integrate directly with FDM,” said Clément Moreau, CEO and Co-Founder of Sculpteo and Fabpilot. “I am very proud of releasing this new functionality, which will bring a huge increase in the return-over investment ratio for users.”

With the new integration, Fabpilot users will be able to connect directly to FDM 3D printers and print from the cloud. It only takes a simple set-up and instance of Fabpilot to upload files, analyze and repair STLs, slice, and send G-code right to the FDM 3D printer. Some of the features the integration offers include:

  • Multi-machine control: automatically assign jobs to available printers.
  • 2D Nesting: arrange the maximum number of parts on the build plate while avoiding a collision to reduce the number of required jobs to print parts.
  • Cloud slicing: upload over 30 file types, which are sliced and have their toolpaths defined so that G-code is ready to be sent to the printer.
  • Optimize orientation: use Fabpilot’s current automatic orientation algorithm to find the best orientation and minimize the need for support structures.
  • Print from the cloud: no need to download G-code and manually upload it, because slicing is completed in the cloud and sent directly to the printer.

This new development by Sculpteo’s Fabpilot protects files in a single platform from upload all the way to printing, completes the end-to-end workflow, and streamlines FDM 3D printing for several kinds of 3D printing labs.

The company’s new direct FDM integration was announced today at the TCT Show. At booth #P48 at the show this week, Fabpilot by Sculpteo will be proving it to visitors. There will be several demos of the integration, and a fun 3D Tetris Challenge with an interactive display will also be held.

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the comments below.