MakerBot Opens Innovation Center in Italy’s LIUC

LIUC_LogoCASTELLANZA, Italy, June 15, 2015 – LIUC – The Università Cattaneo inaugurated the first MakerBot Innovation Center in Europe at the headquarters of the university. This project is the result of the recent agreement signed with MakerBot, a global leader in the desktop 3D printing industry.

MakerBot Innovation Centers already exist in the US at the State University of New York, Florida Polytechnic University, The University of Maryland and the University of Cincinnati, among others. A MakerBot Innovation Center is a large-scale 3D printing installation that is designed to empower university faculty and students to innovate faster, increase collaboration and compete more effectively. The MakerBot Innovation Center at LIUC consists of a network of 20 MakerBot Replicator 3D printers, which will be used by both students at LIUC as well as by entrepreneurs, technicians and professionals. At the core of the MakerBot Innovation Center is the MakerBot Innovation Center Management Platform, a proprietary and innovative 3D printing software platform that links all of the MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers together, provides remote access, print queuing and mass production of 3D prints, and is designed to streamline productivity and staffing of the center. The scalable design of the MakerBot Innovation Center allows LIUC the option to easily add additional MakerBot 3D printing technology in the future.

The MakerBot Innovation Center will be managed by research group SmartUp – Manufacture Digital Laboratory, a project for spreading the culture of digital fabrication, jointly developed by LIUC and Unione degli Industriali della Provincia di Varese.

Michele Graglia, president of LIUC, noted: “The opening of the MakerBot Innovation Center is an important step in LIUC’s efforst in the field of digital fabrication. It comes on the heels of the SmartUp project, developed in collaboration with Unione degli Industriali della Provincia di Varese, and the project “Digital Do It Yourself”, which has obtained a loan of EUR 2 million in connection to the ”Horizon 2020” program. We are convinced that this initiative will accelarate innovation in various fields and disciplines at LIUC. Our first initiatives aimed at educating businesses about 3D printing are a concrete example of the potential for public-private partnerships and collaboration, ranging from engineers to entrepreneurs.”

The inauguration was also attended by Andreas Langfeld, general manager of MakerBot Europe, who expressed the company’s satisfaction with respect to this milestone. Jonathan Jaglom, CEO of MakerBot, noted: “We’re excited to partner with LIUC to open the first MakerBot Innovation Center in Europe. 3D printing is transforming the way we think, design, invent and manufacture. The MakerBot Innovation Center allows LIUC to make this powerful technology available to more students across campus and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. We believe that the MakerBot Innovation Center will give LIUC students a competitive advantage by creating an environment in which entrepreneurialism, education and innovation is cultivated and encouraged.”

Unione degli Industriali della Provincia di Varese is announcing this landmark through its new president Riccardo Comerio: “The land on which you play the game of competitiveness, including the traditional manufacturing sectors, is to service before and after sales, as well as that of the pre-production activities such as prototyping.

[JT1] It is for these reasons that the ideal new factory is more and more linked to the ability of a continent, a nation, or a region to create a network of services that can act as a stimulus and support companies in the implementation of the so-called digital fabrication. The MakerBot Innovation Center, as well as our lab and digital SmartUp, are born for this. They provide these services to the businesses in our region.”

The president also stressed the changing paradigms underlying any production model: “In this new scenario, the pursuit of cost reduction for production through low wages has been replaced by the development of technologies. Digital pre- and post-processing can reduce not only the cost of production, but also the time. This makes it more important today than it was yesterday to bring these technologies to Europe, also to such mature industries like textile industry or mechanics”.

The training activities that will be launched within the MakerBot Innovation Center will directly involve students from LIUC, particularly those enrolled in the graduate program of Engineering Management, as explained by the Rector, Valter Lazzari: “With the MakerBot Innovation Center, LIUC is equipped with state of the art infrastructure for training in the field of digital manufacturing and prototyping. We added a Laboratory of Creativity, Innovation and Design to the curriculum of engineering in which students can work with 3D printers directly to acquire skills essential to successfully enter todays’ workforce. This is another opportunity for students of degree courses in Economics and Law and is adding to the numerous experiential activities already offered. So it is in line with the idea of a university open to the most innovative forms of knowledge and skills that is characteristic for LIUC.”

Director of MakerBot Innovation Center at LIUC will be Prof. Luca Mari, Professor of the School of Engineering and director of the LIUC SmartUp – Laboratory Manufacture Digital: “The installation of the Innovation Center is a twofold challenge to our University: we want it to be a tool to make the training of our students more interesting and enable them to meet the needs of a changing society. At the same time, we want to continue to work to make the University more and more open to the local community, a place of dialogue that promotes innovation, also testing technologies such as 3D printing, which are enablers of innovation”.

At the inauguration LIUC also presented the first courses for companies, scheduled for the June 24 and 25 (“Practical course on 3D printing”) and July 15 and 16 (“Practical course on prototyping with 3D printing”). The first course is held to introduce participants to the world of digital manufacturing through a practical approach by creating artifacts with 3D printing technologies, while the second will focus in particular on the processes of designing and prototyping new products.

Each participant will design and print 3D objects from a catalog of models, using a computer station ready for three-dimensional modeling and a corresponding 3D printer.

About MakerBot

MakerBot, a subsidiary of Stratasys Ltd., is leading the Next Industrial Revolution by setting the standards in reliable and affordable desktop 3D printing. Founded in 2009, MakerBot sells desktop 3D printers to innovative and industry-leading customers worldwide, including engineers, architects, designers, educators and consumers. To learn more about MakerBot, visit makerbot.com.

About The Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC)

The Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC) is an independent, state-recognised institution situated in the small town of Castellanza, within easy reach of Milan and the Malpensa International Airport. The university is housed in a nineteenth century cotton mill which has been beautifully restored by the world famous Italian architect Aldo Rossi and is surrounded by over 90,000 square metres of parklands. It is only 1 kilometre from the train station that links Castellanza to Milan in 35 minutes and just over 1 kilometre from the motorway.

The town has a population of approximately 15,000 inhabitants and since the late 1800s has been one of the main industrial centres in the province of Varese. With the beautiful backdrop of the Alps and the famous Italian lakes of Lago Maggiore and Lago di Como,the province of Varese is also home to 23,000 manufacturing and craft industries that export over 30% of their production worldwide and generate employment to approximately 175 thousand people.

The University is an important example of the tradition for initiative and entrepreneurship in this part of Italy. It was founded on the initiative of the Industrial Association of the Province of Varese and was immediately recognised for its close relationships with the business world.

For amore information, please visit www.liuc.it.

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