3D printer cloud management service 3DPrinterOS has launched a premium service targeted at educational institutions.
3DPrinterOS, if you’re not familiar, is a cloud service providing a means to not only operate your desktop 3D printer, but also provides a number of useful 3D applications to manage, modify and repair 3D models. They’ve been growing very strongly in the past year with their free version: as of this writing, more than 3,100 3D printers have joined their network and over 16,000 prints have been driven directly by 3DPrinterOS.
Now they’ve launched a premium version for institutions. The idea here is that while the free version works well for one or two machines, there is a management challenge when hooking up larger numbers of units. The new service addresses this need. They explain:
You can manage your printer from a web dashboard that also supports multiple printers. So if you’re a school or university with several 3D printers, you only have one place to go to monitor your print jobs.
It’s also possible for an individual to use the new premium license, which is priced at USD$149 per year.
The new service is more than just a unified dashboard. You’ll be able to see detailed usage reports, generate invoices for usage, queue print jobs to be automatically dispatched to the next available unit and examine a full audit trail of activities – with the ability to restart jobs, too! Here’s their video explaining a bit more:
Aside from a unified dashboard showing all printers in your network, the premium version also provides HD camera capability, an API for building your own “print on demand” applications or widgets and new applications.
One of the new applications is the “Virtual Factory”, which provides 3DPrinterOS manageability to some laser engravers and CNC equipment – which are also typically found at educational institutions.
There’s no word on institutional pricing yet, but you can definitely undertake a free trial, as have some early testers like Duke University. Pricing is based on the number and type of units participating in your 3D printer network.
We’re pretty pleased to see this announcement, because it is now clear how 3DPrinterOS intends on monetizing their platform. Previously, they only offered a free service, which as everyone knows, won’t keep a company going for very long. Now it seems that 3DPrinterOS has a big future.
Via 3DPrinterOS
