This year, the 3D printing industry is undergoing a transformation from niche to mainstream technology, as large corporations enter the space through strategic investments, new products, and partnerships. Today, Siemens has made its own entry into the world of 3D printing through its Frontier Partner program, giving 3D printing and robotics start-ups access to Siemens’ own resources to drive their development.
At The Atlantic‘s Bold Bets: Tomorrow’s Industrial Entrepreneurship (And How Everything Will Change) event hosted at the University of California, Berkeley, Chenyang Xu, General Manager of Siemens Technology to Business, said of the program, “The Frontier Partner program joins a long line of Siemens Technology to Business programs that partner with startups to add value to our core and future businesses so we can better serve our customers. The startups accepted into this program demonstrate excellence in developing unique and innovative technologies and partnering with Siemens can bring the scale and scope necessary to help their business succeed.”
Run by Siemens Technology to Business (TTB) and Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software organization, the Frontier Partner program will provide a handful of 3D printing start-ups to use Siemens’ PLM software, its technology partner program, and other resources. With a year-long development license to Siemens’ PLM software suite, the start-ups in the program will have access to tools that relate to product development, manufacturing, product data management, and manufacturing operations management. On top of the software suite, the enterprises will also be able to take advantage of Siemens mentors and technology partners. The company believes that, by connecting with these innovative start-ups, their new products and technologies will get to the market sooner.
To begin with, the Frontier Partner had admitted start-ups with a focus on improving the 3D printing industry, specifically in relation to reliability, scalability, ease-of-use, and mass scale applications. With that in mind, the following start-ups have been entered into the program:
- Authentise, whose platform securely streams 3D files directly to 3D printers.
- Avante Technology, LLC, which is working on a software for automatically repairing 3D files for printing.
- Matterfab, a start-up that is designing a comparatively low-cost metal 3D printer.
- MatterMachine, a firm developing bespoke 3D printing services.
- nTopology, Inc., which is developing software capable of generating optimized 3D lattice structures.
Andre Wegner, Founder and CEO of Authentise, said of his company’s addition to the Frontier Partner program, “We’re delighted to be part of the Siemens Frontier Partner program to bring our secure delivery tools for additive manufacturing to a greater audience. This is just the start of a long partnership to learn and develop products for a distributed manufacturing future together.”
Next, the program will begin admitting start-ups with a focus on robotics. If your start-up is among them, you can apply to join the Frontier Partner program here.
