3D Control Systems is one of those interesting companies that most people don’t know much about.
We had a chat with the company’s founder, John Dogru to find out the latest.
Most people have heard of 3DPrinterOS, one of the first cloud-based services for managing fleets of desktop 3D printers, but the company has much more to offer.
3D Control Systems produces 3D printing workflow solutions that enable secure and reliable operation of devices in ways that aren’t possible from the product manufacturers. You can buy all the 3D printers you want, but can you manage them properly? Can they even exist in your particular situation, considering security concerns, LAN complexities and distributed operations? These are all things that the company can easily handle.
They describe their work as:
“3D Control Systems is an end-to-end, fully automated software solution provider driving operational efficiencies for customers.”
They have three current products: 3DPrinterOS, ZAP and 3DOS.
3DPrinterOS
3DPrinterOS has been around for quite a long time, and I’ve used it myself. It was the original “set top box controls dumb 3D printers via cloud” service, and was used by many. Over the years it’s been significantly improved, and is now used mainly by universities, according to Dogru. Apparently 3DPrinterOS has over 300,000 participants, and has helped print more than 4M parts.
ZAP
Dogru describes ZAP as an “industrialized version of 3DPrinterOS”. While it can dispatch jobs and monitor 3D printers, it can also do most of the “other” part of the work: quoting, customer tracking, job ROI calculations, digital inventory, workflow definition, centralized data storage, printability analysis, version control, part tagging, order management, part pricing, material management, post processing scheduling, quality assurance, and a whole lot more. In other words, it’s a CRM, ERP, PLM, MES and QA system all rolled into one platform.
There are other 3D printer software companies that provide some of this, but I don’t think any of them bundle it all together in the way that 3D Control Systems does with ZAP.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that ZAP makes considerable use of AI technology to power several of the advanced functions. The goal is to reduce the latency in the manufacturing workflow to zero, as shown in their chart above.
3DOS
3DOS is the latest entry from the company, and it’s both familiar and unique. At the core, it’s a manufacturing network platform, much like we’ve seen from 3DHubs/Protolabs, Xometry, etc. In these platforms participants join and accept customer print jobs from the network.
However, 3DOS is very different in how it’s implemented: it’s much like 3DPrinterOS, but implemented with blockchain technology to provide significant security. Designers can upload 3D models to the platform, where they are minted as permanent NFTs. This allows the designer to continually receive royalties whenever the design is manufactured.
The company is looking to become one of the largest networks of this type by 2025.
3D Print Security
During our discussion with Dogru we learned of the notable work the company has done regarding 3D print security. Virtually all 3D printers are built today as standalone devices that have limited — or no — security features.
This is perhaps acceptable to consumers, but not to many types of businesses. Insecure machines and processes can allow exposure of proprietary 3D designs, for example. Dogru also described situations where 3D printers hook up to the Internet for firmware updates and cloud management, but then acquire malware from bad actors on the network.
Dogru explained that they’ve solved these issues with their products to such an extent that they can now be used on government cloud networks where there are significant restrictions. For example, their network uses secure VPNs to tunnel into the connected devices, preventing malware exposure. They have FedRAMP and TX-RAMP certifications because of their network design. Dogru told us it’s even possible to use some of the products in high security air-gapped scenarios.
While not for everyone, there are going to be many 3D print operations that could make very good use of services from 3D Control Systems.
