Direct Digital Manufacturing Factory Opens Within UPS’ Worldwide Shipping Hub
- BY Sandra Helsel
- May 4, 2015
- 1 min read
Source: http://inside3dprinting.com/
(3DPrint.com) — UPS Store has announced that a startup called CloudDDM would be introducing a full-scale manufacturing facility within UPS’s worldwide hub, located in Louisville, Ky. The fully automated facility will house 100 3D printers which can be used to manufacture one-off parts, or mass manufacture 1,000 of the same part. The “DDM’” in the company’s name stands for direct digital manufacturing. The 3D printers found within this new facility all run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and require just three employees total; one per eight-hour shift.
Through a tie-in with UPS that allows CloudDMM to launch within its worldwide shipping hub, which happens to be the world’s largest packaging handling facility, CloudDMM is able to afford an additional six hours within a day to make UPS’s cutoff times. Typically, if a shipper wishes to have a package delivered the next day via UPS, the package must be dropped off by 6 p.m. Pacific time. Because of this tie-in, any order placed through CloudDDM that takes under four hours to print and is submitted to the company by 6 p.m. Pacific time, will be delivered the next day.
