3D Printing

Today Terry Wohlers started a interesting discussion on the RPML. Terry has been an active advocate of the term "Additive Fabrication" as an all encompassing term for what we in the Rapid Prototyping industry do for a living. He admits that "3D Printing" is the most popular term now and will remain so in the near future. Adrian Bowyer agrees with him and credits journalists for that since they don't seem to use any other term.

I believe that’s because journalists know that the Rapid Prototyping industry (or whatever you want to now call it) has convoluted itself with technical terms flying left, right and center, and keeps adding more terms every now and then. The journalists do not want confuse their readers with these terms, that’s assuming that they understand the terms in the first place. All they want to do is give their readers some information that will help them get a 3D physical part from his 3D virtual CAD model.

And I believe we can learn something from these journalists. They know what their target audience wants to hear and tell them stuff in a manner that they can comprehend. Any idiot will understand "3D printing" if you give him 2 seconds to think about it.

Take a look at this video from Autodesk. I know people in the RP industry will laugh at the video. I did too. But it gives you an idea of the nature of our target audience. We in the industry should be educating our target audience and talking to them in a language that they understand, not confusing them with more technically accurate terms and acronyms. We seem like a bunch of neuro-surgeons discussing the biological composition of the human brain when the person whom we have to treat is simply asking for an aspirin to clear his headache.

So to answer Terry's question, in my opinion, whether we like it or not, "3D Printing" is the term that will be most popular, not just in the near future, but for a long time to come.

Little wonder that we chose "Print3D" as the name of our company.

Print3D supports DWG and DXF files

We have added support for DWG and DXF files in all our free plug-ins and standalone software. Now Print3D customers can obtain physical parts described in DWG and DXF files even if their CAD software is unable to display the 3D model to them.

Take Solid Edge for example. Solid Edge is unable to read 3D data from the DWG file. But a Solid Edge user can use our free Print3D Solid Edge add-in to read the DWG file and create an instant offline quote without transmitting the DWG data across the internet. If he proceeds to save the quote and place an order, the DWG data will be transmitted in encrypted form securely to a Print3D facility and he will get a physical part in the mail the next day.

So if someone sends you a DWG file containing 3D objects Print3D will build a physical part for you even if you cannot see it in your CAD software. However, if you want to see the contents of the DWG file or edit the 3D objects in it you can simply open it in our free Print3D standalone application and use its editing tools. The Print3D standalone shows you the build lines exactly how they will appear on your physical part. You may want to reorient your part to prevent the build lines from interfering with a particular feature. Or since DWG files are unitless you may want to scale it to a different unit.

All this wonderful software for free. Enjoy!!

Print3D for IRONCAD

We just released a Print3D plug-in for IRONCAD, which coincided with IronCAD's release of V11 of their IRONCAD product. It is interesting to note the case of the alphabets used here. "IronCAD" is the name of the company, and "IRONCAD" is the name of their product.

Print3D is now an IronCAD Gold Partner. This means that our free plug-in will be included on the partner CD that is shipped with every license of IRONCAD.

A lot more is coming. We have just got started.

Print3D and OpenRP Featured in CADCAMNet

Print3D and OpenRP have beed featured in this weeks edition of CADCAMNet, a weekly publication published by Ash Bridge Media that covers new, evolving and established technologies in the MCAD, CAM and RP industries.

CADCAMNet isn't like other CAD Web sites. In their own words, they "review new technologies critically, summarize only significant developments, and verify (or debunk) vendor claims with independent investigation".

Click here to subscribe.

V-Flash May Ship in 2009

3D Systems has announced that it plans to "resume its managed phased rollout of its V-Flash® FTI 230 Desktop Modeler". Full press release here. In an earlier press release, six months ago, 3D Systems had announced that they had "commenced commercial shipment" of V-Flash.

Lets hope for their sake, this time around, they actually end up doing it. Because Object seems to firing on all cylinders these days.

Wohlers Report 2008

I just read this off ConnectPress.

While conducting his annual survey on the state of the industry Terry Wohlers asked the question, "If you were going to add new AF technology, which would you most likely acquire?" Terry prefers to use the phrase AF (Additive Fabrication) and he has his reasons, which I will not get into here. Anyways, the results of that survey question can be seen here. Objet won hands down with 27.8%. Good old Stereolithography came in third.

I guess Terry asked the question "why?" as well. To find out you need to shell out $475 to get the 240-page report.

New Print3D Video

Today we put up a new video at our web site showing just how easy it is to get a price quote - literally at the click of a button. Watch the video here.