3D Printing Marketplace Threeding Launches Their Android App

When it comes to 3D printing marketplaces where people can buy and sell designs that are printable on at-home 3D printers, there have been a lot of new sites popping up recently. While the free 3D design repositories like Thingiverse, and the 3D printing service marketplaces like Shapeways have really gained a lot of steam in the past couple of years, websites where you can simply buy and sell 3D designs have not quite taken off as of yet.

The reason? Perhaps people don’t feel as though they should have to pay for a design that they must print out themselves. Perhaps, there are so many free designs out there, more specifically on Thingiverse, that people feel they can find a similar design for free elsewhere. Nevertheless, it is certain that in the future, there will be markplaces for 3D designs. It’s just how capitalism works. People want to make money off of designs that take them hours or even days to create. The question isn’t, if 3D design marketplaces will flourish, it is “when will it occur?”, and “by whom?”.

Timing is key for the companies who wish to enter this type of market. For one company, Threeding, they hope the time to enter the market is now.

While Threeding has yet to catch on among the masses, it does everything right when it comes to creating a 3D printing design marketplace. It allows for the exchange of free designs, as well as for the sale of designs. They charge a measly 8.5% commission on all sales, and recently reached deals with several museums to scan and sell 3D printable replicas of their artifacts.

Today Threeding announced the release of their Android App. The app is now available in the Google Play store, and can be downloaded for free.

“Threeding is one of the first 3D printing marketplaces that introduce an application for mobile devices,” the company tells 3DPrint.com. “The Android app comes to meet the rapidly growing demand form mobile users. Despite the current lack of integration between smartphones and tablets with 3D printers, we believe that the market will develop in this direction and we would like to be one step ahead.”

The app will fully synchronized with the web version of the Threeding marketplace, and all models are available simultaneously. Using the app, mobile users can easily search and explore all the unique 3D printable models available on Threeding. The company tells us that all of the web functionality is not yet available on the app, such as uploading of models. They do, however, plan to gradually upgrade the app to add more web functionalities.

“Threeding Android App has been a goal of ours since we launched Threeding in 2013, but we started developing it after we got an additional seed funding in February this year. We hope a lot of people with Android devices to get the app and enjoy the world of 3D printing models”, said Stan Partalev, Co-founder of Threeding.com.

For those of you that have iPhones or other iOS devices, don’t worry. The company plans to launch their iOS version “very soon”.

What do you think about Threeding’s Android App? Discuss in the Threeding app thread on 3DPB.com.