Motorola has teamed up with 3D Systems to produce a high-speed 3D printing platform that will support Motorola's Project Ara.
Under the multi-year deal, 3D Systems will expand its printing capabilities to support modular smartphone components. If all goes well during a development phase, 3D Systems will become the exclusive fulfillment provider of 3D-printed Ara smartphone enclosures and modules.
Project Ara, announced last month, is an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones.
'We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines,' Paul Eremenko with Motorola's Project Ara Team said in October.
Ideally, Project Ara - which has been in the works for more than a year - will 'drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones.'
'With Project Ara, we asked the question, 'How do we bring the benefits of customization and an open hardware ecosystem to 6 billion people?' That is our driving application,' Regina Dugan, head of Motorola's Advanced Technology & Projects group, said in a Friday statement. 'It requires technical advances in areas such as material strength and printing with conductive inks for antennas. And those advances must support production-level speeds and volumes, which is a natural partnership with 3D Systems.'
'3D printing promotes a level of sustainability, functionality, and mass personalization that turns these kinds of global ambitions into attainable local realities,' said Avi Reichental, President and CEO of 3D Systems. 'Project Ara combines two exponential technologies, and we expect that the resulting high-throughput advanced manufacturing platform will have far reaching implications on the entire digital thread that stitches together the factory of the future.'
Motorola and 3D Systems previously partnered on a series of maker events, dubbed Make with Moto, which called on students at the nation's top engineering and design schools to tinker with open, hackable smartphone hardware and 3D printing.
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