UltiMaker has a new 3D printer you probably haven’t heard about: the S8 Secure.
The company announced the S8 some weeks ago, and it looks like quite an amazing professional 3D printer. At last week’s Rapid+TCT conference, I visited with the company and asked if they had announced any other new equipment.
They admitted that there actually was a new machine, the S8 Secure.
This is a modified version of the standard S8 system designed to be far more secure.
How is it secured? The S8 Secure has no network: the WiFi and Ethernet ports and electronics have been removed. You can print ONLY by means of a USB stick.
In addition, the bolts in the machine use Locktite to seal them down: you cannot easily take apart the machine. The firmware, flashed in friendly countries and certified, is updated very infrequently and only then using secure procedures.
All of this adds up to a machine that is far more physically secure than any other 3D printer I’ve seen. Clearly, it’s designed for use in highly secure scenarios, such as those in the military.
I asked UltiMaker why they would build a machine of this type. They explained that they discovered their military customers were actually doing all these changes on their own after purchasing stock S8 units. They could not officially use them unless they had been physically secured.
UltiMaker saw an opportunity here and decided to make those changes themselves, directly at the factory. This meant that the military customers did not have to make all those changes themselves. It’s very likely that UltiMaker worked with their client to identify all the required changes.
This is good for UltiMaker in a number of ways.
The cost of the S8 Secure could be less than a stock S8 because of removed components, meaning they might be able to make a bit more profit on each unit.
This places UltiMaker equipment in a very favourable position with military buyers. Consider that before the S8 Secure, any 3D printer purchased would have to undergo the securing procedure, and that takes effort and therefore cost. With the S8 Secure, military customers simply buy and use the machine.
That puts UltiMaker at an advantage over their competitors because the purchase decision would have to add in the cost of securing the machine. That might help with budgets, but also with time because far less labor is required to get the machine functional in a secure state.
I’m now wondering if this is a missed opportunity by competing 3D printer manufacturers? It seems like such an obvious product variation that can easily be done by any 3D printer manufacturer.
Perhaps we’ll soon see secure versions of 3D printers appear from others.
Via UltiMaker
