3MF Consortium Joins Linux Foundation

The 3MF Consortium, an organization dedicated to advancing a universal specification for 3D printing, announced it is becoming a Linux Foundation member and that HP's Luis Baldez is its new Executive Director. Baldez replaces Microsoft's Adrian Lannin, who has served as director since the 3MF Consortium was founded in 2015. Among the original creators of the 3MF Consortium, Lannin will remain a strategic advisor to the group, according to 3MF.

The 3MF Consortium is among the original members of the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), which became part of the Linux Foundation in recent years to enable smooth collaboration among open source software projects and open standards. According to a press release issued by the organization, 3MF will leverage the resources of the Linux Foundation/JDF alliance to advance 3D printing specifications and formats.

“The 3MF Consortium has done the important work to create an open standard for 3D printing. The time is now to drive the evolution of 3MF from development to adoption,” Baldez said. “We would not be where we are today without Adrian Lannin's leadership and contributions, and we're looking forward to his insights as our ongoing advisor.”

“Luis is a longtime champion of open standards and is an expert in the 3D printing space,” said Alex Oster, chairman of the 3MF technical working group and director of additive manufacturing at Autodesk. “Luis' leadership and our collaboration with Linux Foundation will accelerate our work on 3D printing and help us build an even more vibrant network of contributions.”

The 3MF Consortium is supported by 3D Systems, Autodesk, GE, HP, Materialise, Microsoft, nTopology, Stratasys, and Siemens, among others,  and has been implemented in nearly 40 products from 22 companies. The 3MF specification includes six extensions that range from core and production to slice, material and property (including color), beam lattice and security. The Secure Content specification was recently released and establishes an underlying mechanism for payload encryption of sensitive 3D printed data based on modern web standards. For the detailed specifications for all extensions, visit the 3MF Consortium github repository.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.