Autodesk moves into hardware with its very own 3D printer

The aim, according to the company's president and CEO Carl Bass, is to encourage adoption of the technology and make Autodesk the industry equivalent to Android. In a blog post on the company's website, Bass said: "For years, I've been fascinated by the promise and frustrated by the reality of 3D printing. Today, Autodesk is announcing two contributions to help make things better. "The first is an open software platform for 3D printing called Spark, which will make it more reliable yet simpler to print 3D models, and easier to control how that model is actually printed. "Second, we will be introducing our own 3D printer that will serve as a reference implementation for Spark." Combined, Bass believes the two platforms will allow designers, hardware manufacturers, software developers and materials scientists to explore the limits of 3D printing and propel the technology into the mainstream. He told the BBC: "One of the limitations right now is on the material sciences side - the kind of chemistry. We're making a printer that, rather than just being able to load in proprietary materials, you can load in any material you want. You can formulate your own polymers and experiment with those. "That's an important next step because we think material science is a breakthrough that has to happen to make [the industry] go from low volume 3D-printed stuff to where it really starts changing manufacturing." He added that 3D printed had been 'over hyped' for home use until now but underappreciated for its industrial possibilities. "I think we're really at the beginning of a new way of making stuff and we're just trying to kickstart it," Bass continued. "3D printing will make it possible for us to create all sorts of things we create today, better, and to create all sorts of new things that we haven't even imagined yet. Both Spark and the 3D printer will be available later this year.