What does it mean to “Polar Cloud Enable” a 3D printer? Why is it different than what we already do inside of our slicer? Isn’t that what OctoPrint is for..?
These are all good questions. Many 3D printer manufacturers have gotten feedback from their users that they want cloud features - whether it is being able to see the printer’s camera feed from their phone, or get richer status updates and the like, it is tough to deny that these high tech machines should be accompanied by great cloud software that unleashes their full potential.
Many 3D printers do not have the computing power or networking components necessary to run Polar Cloud Software. Those that do - see far greater adoption, more repeat purchases, fleet expansion, better printer uptime, and happier customers.
Sure, you can connect your old 3D printer to the Polar Cloud just fine via the OctoPrint Plugin. However, each printer you’d like to connect will require its own Raspberry Pi, power supply, USB Webcam, WiFi dongle, setup and maintenance routine! Open source software is a beautiful thing but just one updated library can break many others that depend on it. Keeping this going for months or years can be quite a lot of work.
Polar Cloud Enabling your printer is easy. It’s likely that your printer has a motherboard with motor drivers, heater controls, etc. - and then another board that runs a flavor of Linux and drives a touchscreen, network protocols, and more.
Getting your printer to work on the Polar Cloud is as simple as adding a websockets library to your Linux board and getting your printer ready to send and receive simple JSON commands from the cloud!
Cloud Benefits For Users
Camera feed viewable from any device and no matter your location
Queue jobs to be printed later, requeue jobs from printer’s history
Share your print job status with other interested users whom you trust
Choose different slicing engines all from one interface
Receive text message updates on your print jobs (started, cancelled, completed)
Start, stop, pause jobs from the Cloud, even if away from the printer
Keep track of usage statistics
Cloud Benefits For Printer Manufacturers
Share tuned and updated print config profiles with your users
Offer users real time coupons and deals based on usage
Highlight customer success stories - hear from your customer more than just for support calls!
