Author: Daniel Arroyo

We join forces with BCN3D Technologies

Daniel Arroyo

We’ve been acquired by BCN3D, one of the leading manufacturers of 3D printers, to propel cloud software solutions forward, and merge our two software teams together to bring never before seen products to the 3D printing industry. We will continue to provide our independent AstroPrint platform and develop new functionalities for our current user base. 

At AstroPrint, we’ve got a dedicated team behind us working to produce the best 3D printing cloud solutions, so when BCN3D came forward with their desire to create the best possible ecosystem across both hardware and software systems, we couldn’t help but get onboard. This collaboration will result in a brand new BCN3D Cloud platform and build an experienced team dedicated to software developments for the coming future. 

This new chapter in our journey comes with the many benefits of joining a more established company with more resources which will undoubtedly allow our team to focus more in the technology and continually develop both the AstroPrint platform and the BCN3D Cloud to levels that we couldn’t have reached on our own.

“We see this as a new chapter in our quest for offering the absolute best possible solution to clients across both hardware and software. We are certain that this acquisition of a company with such expertise in this field will serve to boost our BCN3D printing profile to its full potential, and we know the joining of the team with BCN3D will entail countless benefits.” – Xavier Martínez Faneca, CEO of BCN3D.

What lies ahead?

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How STEAM Studio uses AstroPrint to Teach 3D Printing to Kids

Daniel Arroyo

In early 2016, we founded STEAM Studio in Wexford, PA, as a place to teach kids STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) concepts with hands on projects and experiments.

From the beginning, we wanted 3D Printing to be a big part of our curriculum and projects. 3D Printing gets kids excited about engineering because of the hands on nature of having to design, print and take home cool objects.

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3D Print Completed Notifications

Daniel Arroyo

It’s quite normal that a 3D Print job takes hours to complete, even days. But what’s really annoying is not knowing when the object is ready for you to take off the print bed the second it finishes. All that anticipation…

No more delays! AstroPrint has now added a “Print Job Completion” notification. You will get an email the moment your print is ready for you to marvel at. We even include the last photo taken if you had the time lapse feature enabled during printing.

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Share your 3D Printing time lapse videos

Daniel Arroyo

There’s nothing more mesmerizing (and time wasting) than watching a 3D Printed object come to life out of a 3D Printer. It is also a great way to show a person how additive manufacturing works.

AstroPrint has, for a long time, allowed our users to automatically capture photos of the object being printed. This was primarily for monitoring and print failure analysis. However, we thought this data can be used for something more fun.

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The rise of 3D Printing is inevitable

Daniel Arroyo

We’ve been talking to a lot of people about our vision for AstroPrint and 3D Printing as a whole lately. Some people are still adverse to the technology and place too many expectations on what it should do to be successful. These are some of the most commonly asked questions by this crowd:

– What can you make that’s useful with a 3D Printer?
– Why would I spend $1,000 to make things that you can buy much cheaper at the store?
– Is the quality of the printed objects ever going to improve?

Why do we insist in judging 3D Printing based on utility and force ourselves to calculate the ROI of buying these machines? I propose that we start looking at these amazing machines as entertainment devices instead.

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Cura vs. Slic3r Performance

Daniel Arroyo

This post originally appeared in Kevin Weirauch’s blog.

Hardware

Printrbot Simple Maker Edition – this actually started as the original Printrbot Simple and I used the Makers Upgrade kit to get it to this version. See some of my previous posts for that process.

Custom Heated Bed – I hacked this to mount under the aluminum print bed. About 1/4 inch had to be cut from either side and of course a separate power supply had to be used.

Software

Astroprint – fresh off their successful Kickstarter campaign, I decided to run their ‘cloud slicer’ through its paces. They offer both Cura and Slic3r configurations. I can’t attest to what their settings are, but for the purposes of this test, it’s best that they are constant.

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