{"id":346,"date":"2016-11-02T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/industry\/2016\/11\/02\/inside-the-distributed-factory-of-the-future\/"},"modified":"2018-12-13T09:09:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T09:09:00","slug":"inside-the-distributed-factory-of-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/manufacturing\/2016\/11\/02\/inside-the-distributed-factory-of-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the (distributed) factory of the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discover how 3DPrinterOS is using the IoT, Azure services, and 3D printers to revolutionise manufacturing<\/em><\/h3>\n

Touting itself as the \u2018factory of the future\u2019, 3DPrinterOS is a decentralised platform that enables you to connect directly to a 3D printer via the web. And for people managing 3D printers, they can connect multiple devices together in a \u2018print farm\u2019, and have jobs automatically allocated to an available printer via this web-based system.<\/p>\n

But why is this a big deal? Well, anyone that\u2019s ever used a 3D printer\u2014or had to manage more than one of them\u2014may be familiar with some of the common frustrations: software may be different for each printer model, and transferring a print from your computer can be a laborious process, often involving removable storage, and the requirement that you be in the same physical space as your device. But 3DPrinterOS enables you to create farms made up of multiple brands of 3D printer, and have them all accessed remotely online.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see what people are doing with the platform,\u201d explains 3DPrinterOS co-founder John Dogru, from the company\u2019s San Francisco HQ. \u201cWe cater to education, enterprise, and even have home users here and there. I mean, we\u2019ve got guys setting up their own factories. Take Justin Kelly: he\u2019s a prime example. This guy has around 50 printers set up, run by him and his wife, and when his wife went into labour a few months ago, he was still sat there kicking out jobs from the hospital via 3DPrinterOS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where it all began<\/h2>\n

From an early age Dogru was obsessed with scrutinising how things work, and was drawn to electronics in the nascent tech revolution of the late 70s and early 80s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got into electronics and computers, and I was writing a lot of software from an early age. I had a Commodore 64, and I was programming games, and then I got into hacking\u2014that was pre-internet,\u201d Dogru tells us. \u201cI started off getting into phone phreaking\u2014which is pretty much what all the guys into tech were doing at the time\u2014so computers and hacking were my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dogru then went to the University of Texas, where he studied computer science, but since he\u2019d been programming from the age of five or six, the course started to lose some of its appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a bit bored with it,\u201d says Dogru. \u201cAnd before I graduated I was recruited to Dell. So I dropped out, and began working on motherboard testing. I\u2019d always had an interest in engineering. My parents both did engineering PhDs, and I was building things and playing with electronics from as early as I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John Dogru presenting his new product on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco<\/p><\/div>\n

Following his career at Dell, where he worked on multiple projects\u2014from board testing to developing point-of-sale (POS) systems for retail\u2014Dogru launched his own company.
\n\u201cI had wanted to do my own thing for a while, so I started my own voice recognition company in the medical field, called NuScribe,\u201d Dogru explains. \u201cI met my current business partner Anton after selling that business, whilst I was in Estonia, and we decided to launch 3DPrinterOS in 2012. We both knew that a time was coming when the physical world and the digital world would collide, and we thought this was an area where we could really make a name for ourselves.\u201d
\nThe pair saw a huge amount of potential in 3D printers, which Dogru likes to call \u201crobots in a box\u201d, and over the next couple of years they worked to develop a centralised, cloud-based platform, that would enable you to go from design to manufacturing to distribution, with as close to zero latency as possible.<\/p>\n

The story so far<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe set up in Estonia, and sell-funded the company with $200k,\u201d Dogru tells us. \u201cWe immediately got validation from the industry, because people could see that decentralised manufacturing was the future. There was no reason why you should have all this different software for every machine. It made no sense.\u201d
\n3DPrinterOS has already developed a number of key relationships, including the likes of Duke University, which has set up a farm on more than 35 printers [set up a farm on more than 35 printers ] (3DPrinterOS charges $5500 for schools such as Duke, with enterprise customer paying $200k per site licence). Dogru claims that the platform gives you greater overall efficiency in your 3D printing. Efficiency that has been greatly improved by a move to Microsoft Azure.
\n\u201cWhen we moved to Azure we finally had an architecture in place that was truly scalable. My co-founder Anton\u2019s background is in cloud computing, and he saw that Azure would give us a truly elastic platform,\u201d says Dogru. \u201cAnd to date we\u2019ve had zero downtime. And I mean zero. It\u2019s one thing to manage servers, where some downtime can be accommodated, but with 3D printers if you have one missing data point that\u2019s a whole print ruined.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OIT<\/a>

Chip Bobbert, head of the Office of Information Technology (OIT) at Duke University<\/p><\/div>\n

Running in the cloud<\/h2>\n

Another important area was computing in the cloud. The 3DPrinterOS team wasn\u2019t just sending files, as a lot of its processes are very CPU intensive, so they required an extra level of support from their platform provider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a challenge to find the right company\u2014 providing cloud infrastructure, compliance, security, and reliability around the world\u2014but Microsoft ticked all the boxes, and really helped us move to Azure,\u201d says Dogru. \u201cThe cloud team worked with us almost every other week to build queries that they didn\u2019t have, and to get things to production grade. We were also really happy with how Microsoft could help us scale into places like China, where other providers didn\u2019t have very good coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move to Azure gave 3DPrinterOS customers access to the benefits of local data residency and redundancy, providing them with peace of mind. And database systems and other large data repositories also benefited from the same backup processes. And, off the back of this stability, 3DPrinterOS has been able to take advantage of developing areas of the Azure product offering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very much into big data and machine learning, and we collect information from the print jobs we run across 3DPrinterOS,\u201d Dogru tells us. \u201cEven in a great printer like an Ultimaker, there are just so many settings you can choose from. Using 3DPrinterOS, when you send a print via 3DPrinterOS we\u2019re feeding all the information that we\u2019ve collected into the system, and applying settings that have the best chance of producing a successful print. Our platform gives small business the opportunity to take advantage of 3D printing like never before.\u201d<\/p>\n