One Million 3D Printed Parts: Aleph Objects Celebrates Cluster, Puts Large Herringbone Gear on Display

If there’s a story about Aleph Objects, Inc. and LulzBot 3D printers in the works, I’m usually clamoring like an eager fourth grader with hand raised, bouncing in my seat offering to write the story. Why? I just dig everything about Colorado—but as a matter of fact, it certainly seems as if Colorado digs everything about Aleph Objects, Inc.

Not just experiencing mere pleasantries and state pride or industry fanfare either, this company has handfuls of awards to prove their merit and recognition by others around the world. And you can bet if there is a ‘best of’ listicle popping up online, they are going to be on it; in fact, we see their name on a constant basis from the 3D Hubs Monthly Worldwide Trends Reports to a very well thought out report recently from Aniwaa on the best 3D printers, which had the LulzBot Taz 5 at the number one spot for this year’s best.

Working inside The Cluster at Aleph Objects headquarters

It must be a pretty great feeling to have everybody celebrating what you—and your users around the world—have created, demonstrating the rewards of hard work and being an authentic company offering true value to their customers. The celebrating is not over by any means however, and especially not today as they announce the 3D printing of their one millionth part.

This momentous 3D printed part rolled out of the company’s Cluster, which is made up of 140 LulzBot 3D printers and is a process they’ve had going for a while now, as we reported on last year. And sending them over the one million mark indeed was a large herringbone gear licensed under the GNU GPLv3. With the amount of power the company has going in their Cluster, inspired by RepRap pioneering practices, it’s not surprising to hear about such a volume being produced, with the printers operating at more than 100 hours per week. Each LulzBot printer itself is made up of 30 3D printed parts.

“LulzBot desktop 3D printers are workhorse machines that we, and our customers in over 85 countries around the world, rely on every day,” Aleph Objects, Inc. Vice President of Marketing Harris Kenny said. “We are proud to see the growing number of universities, laboratories, facilities, and businesses investing in clusters of LulzBot 3D printers to scale up educating, training, prototyping, and manufacturing.”

With over two and a half years involved in just producing the first 500,000 parts, the company is now able to print that volume in just one year. They’ve accelerated production exponentially by using new models of their LulzBot 3D printers in the Cluster, adding more machines, and increasing the number of operating hours. With new technology constantly evolving, as it is added to their process, efficiency just keeps improving, with better operating and monitoring.

Aleph Objects has also published a Cluster case study in conjunction with highlighting production of their millionth part. The study highlights how the Cluster works, with the herringbone part not only being put on display there at their Loveland, CO headquarters, but also offered as a free download, both in BLEND format and as an .stl file for fans of the company and the part.

All of this celebration now marks five years of history for LulzBot desktop 3D printers, and if you’d like to find out more, you can check out the PDF here. The millionth part can be viewed in Loveland during company tours offered to the public every Friday at 2 PM Mountain Time, with holidays excluded. Are you surprised they have printed so many parts already? Discuss in the LulzBot Millionth 3D Printed Part forum over at 3DPB.com.

The Cluster