Companies like 3D Systems and MakerBot may currently dominate the lower-end three-dimensional printing market, but they need to watch out for a 32-year-old firm that is making a splash in 3D printing with a new piece of open-source 3D modeling software and an accompanying 3D printer.
Autodesk, which has long been known as a major player in the 3D printing field with its suite of software that allows designers to create 3D models of places and things, announced Wednesday that it is making available Spark, a freely licensable 3D printing platform that can work with any material, including plastic, metal and biological materials.
"There's been a disconnect between designing objects and being able to print them. I saw there were 40 different types of printer software, and that is what is holding this back," says Carl Bass, chief executive of Autodesk, in an interview.
Lower-end printers typically use extrusion, a technique that involves squeezing melted plastic through a narrow mouth to build the layers of an object. The Autodesk printer, however, uses ultraviolet light projected on a photosensitive polymer. The company has already used this technique to create 3D building models, medical equipment components and jewelry. Like Spark, the 3D printer will be available for development and experimentation.
Autodesk has not yet revealed a price, but Bass estimates the printer will cost somewhere around $5,000. However, Bass describes the printer as similar to "a mid-market industrial machine" and says the company is not targeting the home market, where most printers are typically pegged at a $1,000 price tag.
"[The printer] will demonstrate the power of the Spark platform and set a new benchmark for the 3D printing user experience," says Bass in a blog post. "Together, these will provide the building blocks that product designers, hardware manufacturers, software developers and materials scientists can use to continue to explore the limits of 3D printing technology."
Although the company will give away Spark and its 3D printer for free, Bass says Autodesk will still profit from Spark in the same way that Google profited from making Android available to mobile device makers instead of using it to market its Nexus smartphone. Bass believes open-sourcing Spark will drive up demand for other software products developed by Autodesk.
"If 3D printing succeeds, we succeed because the only way you can print is if you have a 3D model, and our customers are the largest makers of 3D models in the world," says Bass. "My feeling is that 3D printing has been over-hyped for home use but under-appreciated for its industrial possibilities. I think we're really at the beginning of a new way of making stuff and we're just trying to kickstart it."
