The assembly line-style 3-D printing platform will reside both in Stratasys' own facilities as well as on the premises of business partners who can use the new Continuous Build 3-D Demonstrator system to build their own parts or allow customers to use it for their own manufacturing needs.
Each 3-D "print cell" (an individual 3-D printer) in the array can produce a different print job to enable mass customization in volume production environments. Additional print cells can be added at any time to the scalable platform, and there is no theoretical limit to the number of cells, according to Tim Bohling, chief marketing officer at Stratasys.
"Any customer can decide how they'd like to implement this," Bohling said.
The Continuous Build 3-D Demonstrator system is under development with Stratasys development partners, who are currently piloting the technology. Those partners include the Savannah College of Art and Design and production parts manufacturers Fathom and In'Tech. Both In'Tech and Fathom already offer 3-D printed parts as a service.
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