AMbrace’s innovative business model involves providing manufacturing companies in the aviation and other industries with a secure streaming service for the additive manufacturing of spare parts. Companies can store 3D files in a variety of printer-specific formats in AMbrace’s digital warehouse and send them on demand to a service provider, who then prints the required spare part on site. To do this, AMbrace is developing networks for the manufacturing of spare parts in a global ecosystem of certified 3D print service providers.

Within the framework of their partnership, PROSTEP and AMbrace have agreed to adapt the Secure Additive Manufacturing Platform originally developed in the SAMPL project to AMbrace’s specific requirements and to extend it to include digital warehouse functionality. Key components of the solution are the OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform with the blockchain module and SAMPL technology for integrating 3D printers, which turns them into secure and trusted printers. Blockchain technology ensures that the 3D data to be printed can be identified in a traceable manner and can only be printed the licensed number of times to avoid the manufacture of pirate copies.

“The partnership with AMbrace is an important step on the way to industrializing the solution, as was originally intended in the SAMPL project,” states Dr. Martin Holland, Head of Strategy & Business Development at PROSTEP. “The way we see it, this partnership supports a new business model with which we intend to transform global supply chains for spare parts provisioning,” says Herman von Bolhuis, CEO of AMbrace. “Our streaming platform makes it possible for customers to have spare parts manufactured quickly and securely, whenever and wherever they want.”