www.3ders.org

July 9, 2015 | By Alec

While we see so many signs that the 3D printing community is healthy, international and expanding, it’s always good to see that expressed in exact numbers as well. And the explosive growth of the 3DprinterOS cloud-based user platform is an excellent indicator. As 3DPrinterOS tells 3ders.org, their network has now consists of more than 2000 connected online 3D printers (having grown twice as fast as 3D Hubs), involving 4700 users spread out over 920 cities and 83 countries. Now that’s impressive.

To explain, 3DprinterOS (known for their excellent operating system) only launched their user platform three months ago, something which wasn’t universally expected to do very well. After all, didn’t the community already have 3D Hubs? Nonetheless, the network launched, with the express goal of accelerating 3D printing adoption by providing users with a vast network of 3D printing hubs. Through the 3DprinterOS platform, users can easily share, manage and 3D print files in just about any format. It also provides customizing and repairing options on a single platform.

While thus enough to offer, few people will have expected such an explosive growth. Combined, the 2000 3D printers have already completed more than 8100 prints over the past weeks, thanks to a combined running time of over a whole year. The network also runs an impressive average 90 hours of non-stop printing every day.

As CEO John Dogru explains, this impressive growth is partly thanks to a drive led by schools, technical colleges and universities into networked 3D printing. ‘“When Facebook was introduced, the first adopters for their social network were universities. By networking 3d printers and sharing access campus wide, schools are leading the growth of desktop 3d printing,’ he says.

And the numbers back that up. Currently, half of all users in the 3DPrinterOS network are schools or people closely related to educational institutes. They have especially been profiting from new software options that work across multiple 3D printers and multiple computers. This enables relatively easy development of innovation centers and fablabs. After all, who doesn’t prefer easy operated clouds over excel sheets to track printing data?

‘The holdup is now the hardware…which used to be so far down the learning curve it was almost a non-problem. Most people give up at the software never getting to the hardware hurdles. Thanks to 3dprinteros, students have been able to leap past all that right into STEAM learning,” said Justin Kelly, an after school program coordinator and top 10 user on 3DPrinterOS.

The average share rate for the 2000+ printers, the company tells us, is almost 2 to 1. This means that every 3D printer that joins the network enables another two users to gain access to the a 3D printer nearby. This trend, they believe, is one of the reasons why 3DPrinterOS’s network is the fastest growing 3D printing platform in the world. As you can see in the chart below, the by far most often used machine is the Makerbot Replicator 2, folloed by the Ultimaker 2 and Prusa i3 Hephestos.

If these impressive numbers have convinced you to become a part of a great initiative, go to the 3DPrinterOS website here for more information.

 

Posted in 3D Printing Services

 

 

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