Adways Labot 
Junya Mori
Adways Labot, a subsidiary of Japanese internet company Adways, has launched a teaser for its 3D printing data sharing platform, which specializes in creating figures. The service is called Delmo, and it will be available later this month. The company already started distributing several samples of 3D printed data in STL format.
We’ve recently seen many vendors introducing inexpensive 3D printers for individual users, and peripheral services have been springing up at the same time. Adways Labot is taking advantage of this trend, unveiled their sharing platform to allow users to share knowledge and exchange 3D printing data.
We’ve also seen many communities where pictures of figures can be shared, including Pixiv and Wonder. When 3D printers attain higher penetration, there could be a huge need for sharing knowledge and data among users.
Japanese news site Toyo Keizai Online recently interviewed David Reis, the CEO of Stratasys, where he unveiled some interesting user metrics. He says their 3D data library (available on the Stratasys website) sees a million visitors and 80,000 downloads every month. Makerbot has been strong in the education space, but it will also be interesting to see how it can evolve in the figure space.
For Delmo, it will be probably hard to generate traffic in Japan since the platform targets a very niche group. They will probably need to expand globally like Tokyo Otaku Mode, which is now developing a strong following from users worldwide.
3D printing technology has been used at design studios and architectural offices for the purpose of rapid prototyping. These days, many startups including Makerbot, Cubify, and PP3DP are developing cheaper but more user-friendly 3D printers. Makerbot was acquired by the major 3D printer vendor Stratasys for $403 million. And here in Asia, Pirate3DP received funding amounting to $482,000 from Singapore-based Red Dot Ventures.
When we look at the Japanese market, electronics retail chain Bic Camera recently started selling Robotama.com’s’ CellP 3D printer. Another Japanese chain Yamada Denki also started 3Dsystem’s Cube and its high-end CubeX model, and Nojima has started selling the CubeX series on its e-commerce channel.
