The 3MF Consortium, the organisation dedicated to advancing a universal specification for 3D printing, has announced it is becoming a Linux Foundation member
The 3MF Consortium is among the original members of the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), which became part of the Linux Foundation in recent years to enable smooth collaboration among open source software projects and open standards.
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware.
Linux Foundation’s projects are key to the world’s digital infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.
3MF will take advantage of the combined strengths of the Linux Foundation/JDF alliance to advance 3D printing specifications and formats.
With the majority of the world’s largest players in the 3D printing industry, 3MF Consortium represents the core of the industry’s innovation in this area.
Additionally, HP’s Luis Baldez has been announced as the 3MF Consortium’s new executive director, replacing Microsoft’s Adrian Lannin who had served in the role since the the foundation of the Consortium in 2015.
Among the original creators of the 3MF Consortium, Lannin will remain a strategic advisor to the group.
“The 3MF Consortium has done the important work to create an open standard for 3D printing. The time is now to drive the evolution of 3MF from development to implementation,” said Baldez.
A 3D printing veteran, Baldez has experience across new research, market and business development.
“Luis is a longtime champion of open standards and is an expert in the 3D printing space,” said Alex Oster, chairman of the 3MF technical working group and director of additive manufacturing at Autodesk. “Luis’ leadership and our collaboration with Linux Foundation will accelerate our work on 3D printing and help us build an even more vibrant network of contributions.”
The 3MF Consortium has grown rapidly since its formation in 2015, garnering new member investments and adoption across the industry’s leaders in 3D printing.
It is supported by 3D Systems, Autodesk, GE, HP, Materialise, Microsoft, nTopology and Siemens among nearly 20 other companies and has been implemented in nearly 40 products across 22 companies.
The 3MF specification is robust and includes six extensions that range from core and production to slice, material and property (including colour), beam lattice and security.
The ‘Secure Content’ specification was recently released and establishes an underlying mechanism for payload encryption of sensitive 3D printed data based on modern web standards.
