PrintToPeer networks your 3D printer so you can build your own bot farm

techcrunch.com

11 points·fudged71··7 comments

Better idea for bigger shops (or printer owners who have someone always at home): allow "remote usage" of the printers.

Assume I have either an object constructed out of lots of parts or I want a relatively cheap object produced in mass. Instead of me having to wait ages until the whole job is finished, I can distribute individual parts/jobs to printers in my neighborhood, pay the owner for the material and power usage, and have my objects.

Printing As A Distributed Service.

Never mind a bot farm, this is incredibly useful to anyone who has just one 3d printer.

Normally I have to sit with my laptop plugged into my printer by USB for the full duration of a print, which can be hours long. This lets you print from wherever you want in the house, and cuts out the crappy slicing and print hosting software you currently have to use.

If you can really print in 3 clicks like they say they can, I'll be sold.

I've seen it in action and it basically works as described. We have a makerbot sitting in the middle of our office and it's awesome.

Direct link: http://www.printtopeer.com

Free, open source alternative: http://octoprint.org/

Has most of the same features, and is working on slicing as well

We use Octoprint as well, but it didn't meet our needs. We needed makerbot support and connecting multiple printers to one Pi. Cloud slicing was an obvious answer to us, and allowed us to provide a common API for these printers.

I can send you a pre-release demo if you are interested.

No thanks, I prefer open source for my open source printer, and esp. dislike the idea of relying on the cloud to make the software work.

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