Edge and 3D Printing

Cloud-based 3D printing services are already available. There are several 3D printer manufacturers in the world, (viz. MakerBot) for organisations that often need prototypes for their products, like car manufacturers. ‘Shapeways’ has an online 3D printing service with a network of people that own 3D printers in different parts of the world.  The result is faster turn-around time and lower cost for delivery and insurance.

Additive manufacturing (3D) in combination with cloud computing technologies allows decentralized and geographically independent distributed production. Cloud-based additive manufacturing(3D) refers to a service-oriented networked manufacturing model in which service consumers are able to build parts through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Edge computing will keep most of the data within the firewall of the enterprise and then what is sent to the cloud and servers is a much lower subset, one that cannot be hacked, and the amount of data that comes out of it is meaningless for cyber-attacks. So that is why edge computing has a very positive impact.