My FABulous story, by Imprimaker

By February 1, 20173DP, FABulous, Projects

Let’s go with another FABulous story! We started with 3DKumo, and today, we will discover Imprimaker’s.

IMPRIMAKER promotes the education in design and technology by empowering children to design and manufacture their own smart toys. STEAM education is entering the schools and homes (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). Students are being empowered as creators, not just consumers of technology. Different solutions to learn more about technology already exist. However, they are still quite expensive for a massive entry into the market and most of them focus on just one technology (coding, robotics, electronics). A global solution doesn’t exist yet. IMPRIMAKER has successfully developed an online 3D modeling tool, allowing children to easily create from scratch or to customize the shape and add-ons of a toy, including smart and interactive functionalities such as illumination, motion, sensors and in the future wireless communication, making it possible to create the “Internet of Toys”.
Ana Abril, CEO of Imprimaker explained that “o
ur purpose is to stimulate creativity and technological skills of children from an early age on. In our 3D editor, we contribute to improve spatial vision of children while considerably stimulating their creativity, logical reasoning, ability to solve complex problems and decision making skills. Additionally, by transforming their design into a physical object, children see their ideas come to life, which gives them a high degree of satisfaction and confidence in themselves and their technological capabilities.

When FABulous started, Imprimaker was a one-single person company. Two years later, they are 5 people. With the support of FABulous, Imprimaker was able to develop a commercial and stable version of the product based on FIWARE technology with a low-cost, open and fast solution. When they talk about FIWARE, they have it clear: “My company wouldn’t exist as it is right now without FIWARE. Our development has been clearly accelerated by the FIWARE technology and FABulous acceleration program.”  

For the registration of the users on their website to save their design and order the toys, Imprimaker has implemented the following FIWARE generic enablers: Keyrock identity manager, authorization DPD and PEP ProxyThe implementation of those 3 APIs helped them to reduce the effort on the accounts management. Those APIs support the procedures for user registration, user profile management and the modification of user accounts.  It means that thank to PEP PROXY, Imprimaker can differentiate between distinct user profiles (user, artist, admin, etc…): they have created three different profiles: customer, Imprimaker, and administrator.

Regarding the future of 3D Printing, Ana Abril believes that “in the industrial sector, it will evolve much more as it clearly helps to develop new products. Also domestic 3D printers and modelling tools should evolve still much more to become more easy to use for non-expert users, and be able to enter homes and schools. However, I think the more important gap right now is on the applications side, as people do not really understand the potential and benefit of using this technology in their current life. Adults are used to buy everything they need and do not have time or interest on making products by themselves. Children adapt much easier new ways of product manufacturing, making them more conscious about the environmental problems due to the huge products consumption and wastes generation. Stimulating children to become makers will extend the product lifetime and reduce the huge amount of waste generated nowadays in modern societies.”