trinckle Releases Additive App Suite

trinckle has now released its Additive App Suite to the public. After an open beta, the software can now be trialed and bought worldwide. The Suite brings together a bunch of easy-to-use 3D printing modules that let anyone design things like shadow boards or inserts. I’ve personally tested the Suite and found it very easy to use. For organizations that want a broad segment of employees to use additive manufacturing, this is a great tool. It lets many people on the shop floor design the tools that they will need every day. It’s a real democratization and very useful. The App Suite was previously available inside Stratasys GrabCAD.

The Suite lets you make shadow boards, clamping jaws, logistics trays, drill guides, robot fingers, and masking outlines to cover surfaces during spraying and the like. There’s also a Photo-to-Outline tool that lets you photograph a tool or part to easily create a custom outline. Over time, the company aims to grow its app library.

trinckle CEO Florian Reichle said,

“3D printing has enormous potential to support manufacturing processes and teams, but design is still too often the step that prevents people from acting on an opportunity. With the Additive App Suite, we want to empower everyone in the manufacturing environment to turn a process hurdle into a printable solution. Moving beyond beta means we can now inspire users worldwide, drive additive adoption, and continue expanding the Additive App Suite around real manufacturing needs.”

Victor Gerdes, Vice President, Global Software Product Strategy at Stratasys, stated,

“Manufacturers don’t need more ideas for where to use additive manufacturing. They need faster and easier ways to implement them. The exceptional market response to fixturemate in GrabCAD Print validated that demand, helping Stratasys customers reduce fixture design time by up to 92%, cut tooling lead times from weeks to hours, and lower part costs by as much as 80%. Those results challenged Stratasys and trinckle to think much bigger than a single application. Together, we set out to create the Additive App Suite, a growing portfolio of design automation applications focused on the most common tooling needs found across virtually every factory floor. Combined with Stratasys 3D printers, high-performance materials, and GrabCAD Print, the Additive App Suite enables manufacturers to dramatically scale additive manufacturing, reduce tooling costs and lead times, improve quality, reduce scrap, and ultimately increase throughput while producing better products at lower cost.”

Of course, you can also use the tool with other printers, such as desktop systems. You can download the files that you create directly from the online tool whenever you wish. The kinds of things you can make with the Suite are quotidian, everyday items. You can solve a real, part-sized problem quickly and inexpensively by combining the Suite with the nearest 3D printer. For in-house teams that run print labs, the Suite can save you time. You could quickly make many parts for many internal customers. The tool can also empower individual users to solve their own problems.

Rather interestingly, the Suite could also be used to offer value-added services. Imagine you’re a print farm printing dragons. You could offer to make end-effector tools online with a dedicated website. The work would be quickly made with Trickle, and you would print and ship the parts right after. I really believe in such direct-to-customer, web-based, and print-farm-enabled propositions in the future. Much broader than this, I really hope that more companies make tools that democratize the creation of 3D printed parts.