Duke University offers their students access to 3D printers through their program, that started out with a single Printrbot Simple Metal and has grown to over 35 devices. Currently, over 250 students have access to 3D printing, however, the goal for 2016 is to distribute access to the entire student body and faculty.
In order to manage the access to all the 3D printers on campus, Duke University teamed up with 3DPrinterOS, a cloud platform to manage their growing network of devices.
“We went out and looked at other colleges and toured labs trying to really understand what was working for them and what wasn’t,” said Chip Bobbert, Digital Media Engineer and Emerging Media Technologist at Duke. “Where schools struggled was in providing an easy way to make machines available and manage that process.”
The 3DPrinterOS cloud infrastructure enables student to upload a file to the cloud and print on any of 35 3D printers located in various locations on campus. Installed cameras even enable them to watch their models get build in real-time.
Duke University also worked closely with the team of 3DPrinterOS to create custom reports to track 3D printing data and get reasons for print job cancellations to improve success rates.
“Students are leaving and forming their own businesses and products. They are working through rapid prototyping process and starting their own companies right out of school, just recently we’ve had students create biometric wearable’s based on 3D printed prototypes. The sky is the limit when students have access to 3D printing, at Duke we feel like anybody should be able to send a job for 3D printing over our network,” said Bobbert.
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