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3D Hubs
3D Hubs maps of their printers
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3D Hubs
More staggering stats from 3D Hubs
When we visited 3D Hubs’ Amsterdam HQ last month you could taste the ambition in the air. There was no sense of modesty, no sense of ifs only whens, they were very literally reaching for the stars.
For their latest announcement 3D Hubs have enlisted the help of one of few organisations on earth that have reached outer space, NASA. Bram, Brian and co. didn’t want to simply announce that there are now 5,000 3D printers on their platform they wanted to see the bigger picture so they went to the space agency to get a grasp on what those 5,000 printers meant.
The most staggering fact from the report shows that, thanks to 3D Hubs, there are over 750 million people with access to a 3D printer within ten miles from their home!
That’s a good 10% of the world’s population who can get any idea that may pop into their head 3D printed quickly and cheaply. 3D Hubs have barely been out of BETA for a year and they now host 10% of the world’s 3D printers on their platform, which connects those with and those without a 3d printer.
“We are excited to alter the way people make and distribute products, and are proud to offer a service that is increasingly being used for end-products that have a direct, positive impact on people, companies, and the environment,” states Bram de Zwart, CEO and co-founder, 3D Hubs. “Our goal is to turn the manufacturing industry on its head, and enhance our market position through increased speed and direct communication with a local 3D printer operator,” adds Brian Garret, CTO and co-founder, 3D Hubs.
3D Hubs and its community of makers are disrupting the manufacturing supply chain, making production local, on-demand, and personalised by providing broad and local access to 3D printers. This is in sharp contrast to the typical supply chain method in which masses of identical items are produced and shipped long distances only to have a large number of those items discarded. Many designers and artists who have used traditional 3D printing turn to 3D Hubs due to locality and speed, with print jobs requiring less than two days in comparison to the industry standard of two weeks. The multitude of locations offers choice and the distributed model of 3D Hubs enables everyone to start 3D printing. Examples of products recently produced on the 3D Hubs printer network include Go Pro camera housings, designer decorative 3D printable housewares by Francis Bitonti Studio, drones, and medical prostheses.
The extensive 3D Hubs community and its ongoing 3D printing events, allows makers and 3D printing enthusiasts to come together and exchange knowledge about 3D printing. Demonstrating the power of the combined capacity of its network, the 3D Hubs printer network could collaboratively 3D print a life-size, 305 foot (93 meter) replica of the Statue of Liberty in less than one week, as shown here.
Building from strength-to-strength, 3D Hubs was recently named in the report Cool Vendors in 3D Printing, 2014, by leading industry research firm, Gartner. The company also recently announced the introduction of an enterprise-grade API that connects creators and users of 3D content to its global network of 3D printers, and welcomed design software leader, Autodesk, Inc. as the first company to integrate the 3D Hubs network API for the Autodesk 123D family of apps.
