Earlier this year, Dutch startup PRINTR announced the release of their 3D printer dongle, the Element. Meant to give the ability to print from the cloud to any desktop printer without wi-fi, the Element was also going to be managed by PRINTR’s FORMIDEOS. Despite an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign to launch the dongle, PRINTR has gone ahead and released its 3D printing OS to the public.
The partially open source FORMIDEOS is claimed to be easy to use and designed for full support for a variety of printers. Additionally, the OS offers a number of customization options through the included slicer, Katana, and settings for materials one might be printing with. According to the company, the entire operating system is not yet open source, but just the node.js client that connects the slicer, drivers, and the cloud and local interfaces, as well as the AngularJS front-end, and the developers kit, available on GitHub. With this kit, developers can create 3rd party modules to interface with the operating system. PRINTR CEO Douwe Mulder says of the application, “We take care of the whole process that is involved in 3D printing bringing it back to the single print button. We believe it should be just as easy to print a 3D model as it is to print a Word document.”
And, though the Kickstarter was unsuccessful, the company has opened up their Element dongle for pre-order, with shipments expected in September. For now, FORMIDEOS beta is meant for use on a Raspberry Pi. Of the shift from Kickstarter, Mulder adds, “We initially wanted to raise funds through a crowdfunding campaign, but we weren’t able to raise the set goal. However, when we opened the pre-order system and saw the overwhelming response, we knew we wanted to be able to get the best possible product to our supporters. This industry is volatile, so we took a look at what was already available, reviewed other ecosystems, and decided to raise the bar. We wanted to hold back our release until we knew our product was ready.”
The whole nature of cloud and network control of 3D printers, as you will note from the comments on our previous articles or from my interview with OctoPrint’s Gina Häußge, is a complicated one. There have been many endeavors seeking to create cloud and network control software and hardware for 3D printers, including open source solutions such as OctoPrint and closed solutions that are directly rooted in those open source projects. Here, it is interesting to see that FORMIDEOS is only partially open source, though I’m not sure which portion of the project is closed.
Also, as FORMIDEOS develops, it’ll be worth looking at how it might compete with other cloud-based software, such as 3DPrinterOS and 3DIAX, which both offer in-software apps developed by 3rd parties. Meanwhile, it seems as though MyMiniFactory is working on its own open source software to handle every aspect of the 3D printing workflow. And the big players, united by the 3MF Consortium, will have their own very substantial part in the 3D printer management ecosystem.
To keep up with the development of FORMIDEOS, you can follow along on their blog. To download the beta software, head to the developers site here.
