I’m a fan of trinckle, the German startup that offers super easy-to-use tools for creating customized jigs, fixtures, and other 3D printed products. With trinckle, it’s not just designers who create, but regular people too. Years ago, there was a lot of buzz about democratizing design for everyone. What trinckle does is democratize design for people in the workflow and in the enterprise. I’ve trialed it for weeks and urge you to do the same. It’s super easy to use and fun to play with. I’ve made tool inserts and jigs myself in minutes, and I think that it can really help spread 3D printing across companies.
Now trinckle is embedding its Additive App Suite inside Stratasys‘ GrabCAD Print and GrabCAD Print Pro tools. This will make it easier for existing Stratasys users to use the app. The companies are set to showcase the integration at RAPID + TCT this week, where Stratasys will feature the App Suite in its booth. The App Suite now makes it easy to create end effectors, jaws, trays, and shadow boards for robots. You can also toy a bit with the apps to make slightly different things, such as inserts for carrying cases, general desk organization, or stands. The Photo-to-Outline feature lets you take pictures and transform them into a cutout of a pair of pliers, for example, or of a specific 3D printed tool. I’ve tested it, and it works. If you were trying to set up a workstation or working in production, I’d try this out now for sure. The company hopes to expand on the current functionality, including break-off labels, masking tools, and drill guides.
Victor Gerdes, Vice President, Software, Stratasys, said,
“By transforming GrabCAD Print into a platform that guides engineers through automated, production-ready workflows, we’re making additive manufacturing faster and more accessible across the factory floor. The Additive App Suite allows teams to go from a production problem to a print-ready solution in minutes, not days, expanding the impact of AM beyond the lab.”
trinckle CEO Florian Reichle mentioned that,
“This agreement builds on our ongoing partnership with Stratasys and continues the collaboration that began with the exclusive integration of fixturemate into GrabCAD Print Pro last year. Together, we are addressing one of the practical barriers to wider adoption of additive manufacturing – the reliance on specialized CAD skills and the time-consuming nature of manual design work. By extending the Additive App Suite into the Stratasys ecosystem, we are expanding access to a wider group of users while also benefiting from feedback that helps guide the product roadmap through real-world use cases.”
I really love this product and love what trinckle is doing. By making it easier for the other ten thousand people in the company to use additive, it can act as an accelerator for the adoption of 3D printing. By moving the user closer to the solution, the product is empowering people to solve their own issues. It’s also super cost-effective to use this quickly using the app and then print it out locally. That feedback loop is quick and would therefore solve the problem faster than alternatives. A lot of times, just the perfect solution for additive doesn’t get made because the user or person with the problem can’t do CAD. So this could get a manufacturing team to solve a problem that would otherwise never be solved, and just go on to cost a company in time or bother. More users, more solutions being made, and more money being saved mean that 3D printing will have more value. Your in-house Stratasys printer is now more useful, and its utilization will be higher, too, reducing moving costs.
That kind of flywheel effect can lead to broader adoption of 3D printing. 3D printing is becoming much more accessible and useful. But one recurring bottleneck is in design. A simple, straightforward path to acquiring geometry and building a solution is what we need to make our market much bigger, and trickle is aiming to offer this to all.
Images courtesy of trinckle
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