We’re building the capability for anyone to connect to our Brokering Additive Manufacturing networks. All you need is a web-browser and a printer!
This video demonstrates how you can connect to a 3D printer using Web Serial. It shows how browser connects to the printer and starts sending g-code for a test print. You will see the printer heat up, home the axes and perform its bed levelling prior to printing.
This has been created as part of the EPSRC Brokering Additive Manufacturing project where we are building agent-based Additive Manufacturing systems.
Using a browser has advantages in being able to develop and deploy for a single project and updates can be pushed through a simple re-fresh of the browser. This is helping us significantly reduce the development time of our research platform and enable us to quickly iterate and compare different architectures of agent-based systems.
It also enables individuals to join our networks and join in the experiments as they do not have to install software on their computers.
Maybe we’ll go to an entirely web-based manufacturing platform for AM!
You can try it for yourself here: https://jamesgopsill.github.io/web-serial-printing-demonstrator/
And the source code can be found here: https://github.com/jamesgopsill/web-serial-printing-demonstrator
Please contact us if you would like to know more.