XYZprinting invests in voice control

January 9, 2018

(Credit: TechCrunch)

The company is incorporating voice control technology in its new Da Vinci Colour AiO 3D colour printer.

As TechCrunch reveals, this technology has been developed by XYZprinting over the last two years, inspired by similar voice services. Although the service is currently “limited”, the company hopes that eventually it will serve a variety of helpful functions for users, including giving them the ability to prepare their print job, calibrate the printer, conduct printer maintenance tasks and get status updates.

“For the first phase of the rollout, we will be able to support search function at XYZ 3D gallery,” explained Frank Peng, Associate Manager-U.S., XYZprinting. “What this means is if you would like to find a 3D model of a vase, you would just say ‘search for a vase for me,’ and the XYZ 3D gallery will pull out all vases on the gallery for you to choose from.”

The printer which will feature the voice control technology, the Da Vinci Colour AiO 3D colour printer, offers a full-colour solution without the use of nylon powder or multiple filaments, functioning by spraying the colour onto the heated PLA filament which it uses to print plastic objects.

“The 3D printing industry is working together to utilize additive manufacturing’s advantages to better our lives and benefit the consumer’s product usage cycle,” Peng said. “So ideally what this means for voice recognition is that a car company like Ford can keep digital inventory of their parts and users can give a command of “search a 1999 Ford radio tuner for my car,” and the part can easily be located and printed.”

So far, XYZprinting has not revealed whether it will add the voice control technology to other printer models.