There should be a plugin community or app store for Formlabs.
Users, companies, partners, or whomever could develop and publish apps or plugins that enhance Preform, the dashboard, or even Fleet Control, which should probably be one of the featured apps in the app store or plugin community itself.
Integrations / API Category
There could be a separate category for integrations.
3Shape and whatever API 3Shape uses with Preform and/or FormLabs printers.
Integrating with Excel and File Explorer or Google Sheets and Google Drive to make calculations or formulae based on print demand, like using certain .FORM files depending on how many parts need to be printed in different numbers of stacks or levels, because Excel or Google Sheets is integrated with an ERP system, Airtable, Zapier, etc. that pulls the demand from orders.
Firmware Category
There could be another category for firmware tweaks.
For example, on the Cure L or Wash L to turn on or off certain hardware (lights, screen, fan, etc.) when one hasn’t been touched in x minutes.
A given plugin could be:
- Proprietary or varying levels of open source
- Certified by Formlabs to not impact a printer’s warranty, is serviceable/supported, etc.
- Developed and coded independently by end-users in a modular fashion
- Modifying code output to a given SLA printer (G-code, post-processor?) to slow down certain motors, adjusting the force, and improving the quality/yield of small features among other aspects of your hardware, like turning off fans when the machines aren’t in use to mitigate additional particulate/odors from spreading throughout the facility
- Adding additional features to the core functionality of PreForm, like finally being able to view the prints in the same orientation as the printer so we don’t have to flip the screen 180 degrees in Windows settings to visualize the process (CAM software for CNC machines aren’t upside down, because machinists visualize the chips and coolant and oil and everything in relation to gravity - the flow of resin is no different when each layer is delaminated and the bottom of the tank is flexing and moving in different directions that snap and bend small and big features over and over causing shifts in each print)
Many of the surface finish and print fails could have been solved by now via software, but keeping PreForm completely closed without opening up the software via an app store or plugin community inhibits progress with FormLabs limited resources let alone the skills gap and low supply of software engineers.
There are countless other improvements that myself and others will probably be more willing to divulge on once FormLabs takes this leap of faith.
I want to help develop many software improvements, but all of them would inundate this oversimplified feature request forum, which doesn’t have any tags or hierarchies, like hardware and software let alone subcategories, like SLA v SLS, Preform v Dashboard v Fleet Control, and deeper levels of categories, like Large (L) format or not, Finishing let alone Wash [L] v Cure [L], 3[+] v 3L, etc.