Ensuring Trust and Security: How PrintParts and SmartParts Revolutionize Traceability in Additive Manufacturing

As the landscape of industrial 3D printing continues to evolve and mature, a growing number of companies are actively seeking to overcome persistent obstacles hindering its widespread adoption. Among these challenges, the traceability and authentication of manufactured parts have recently garnered significant attention. Parts produced using additive manufacturing techniques are often perceived to be vulnerable to counterfeiting, primarily due to the inherent digital nature of their design files. These digital assets can be easily duplicated, modified, and illicitly distributed, posing substantial risks to intellectual property and product integrity. Moreover, as more organizations move towards qualifying 3D printed components for critical applications, it becomes paramount to possess a comprehensive, verifiable history of each part. This includes knowing every step of the manufacturing process, from material sourcing and machine parameters to post-processing and quality control checks, alongside precise information about the materials utilized. Addressing these critical concerns, PrintParts, an innovative New York-based startup, has developed SmartParts—an advanced solution designed to enable end-to-end traceability for any 3D printed component. We had the opportunity to speak with Aundera Schroder, the esteemed Director of Communications at PrintParts, to delve deeper into the company’s pioneering work, the innovative SmartParts technology, and the overarching importance of robust traceability in the rapidly expanding field of additive manufacturing.

Meet Aundera Schroder: Bridging Design, Marketing, and 3D Printing Innovation

“I am Aundera Schroder, and I serve as the Director of Communications at PrintParts,” Aundera began, introducing herself and her connection to the dynamic world of 3D printing. “My professional background is deeply rooted in design and marketing, with my early career experiences primarily focused within the fashion and photography industries. The realm of additive manufacturing quickly captured my interest due to its tangible, physical nature. The profound appeal for me lay in the ability to seamlessly transition a conceptual idea from its initial design phase through rapid prototyping all the way to a finished, functional product.”

Aundera elaborated on her journey into the additive manufacturing sector: “Prior to joining PrintParts, I dedicated over two years to leading marketing efforts for Link3D, a leading additive Manufacturing Execution System (MES) provider that was notably acquired by Materialise. During my time in that role, I gained an invaluable understanding of just how critical digital transformation initiatives are for modern manufacturing organizations seeking to leverage advanced technologies. Therefore, when the opportunity arose to join PrintParts and play a pivotal role in developing the branding and market positioning strategy for SmartParts, it felt like an incredibly natural and exciting progression.”

“Initially, my primary focus at PrintParts revolved around helping the team articulate the company’s compelling story, particularly highlighting the remarkable work they accomplished in supporting New York City’s COVID-19 response efforts. This also involved raising the organization’s profile as a highly trusted manufacturing partner,” Aundera explained. “Currently, a significant part of my work involves introducing our groundbreaking SmartParts embedded traceability solution to the wider market. As a truly novel technology, this requires a substantial amount of educational outreach and evangelism to ensure its benefits are widely understood. I am incredibly proud to share that SmartParts has already received multiple prestigious accolades, including the Formnext 2021 Startup Innovation Challenge, the U.S. Navy’s Hack The Machine Challenge, and most recently, recognition within Hexagon’s Sixth Sense Innovation Program. These awards underscore the innovative nature and potential impact of our solution.”

The Vision Behind PrintParts: Building Confidence in Additive Manufacturing

The journey of PrintParts began not just as a manufacturing service but as a response to an industry need. “PrintParts originated as an NYC-based service bureau, deeply focused on production-oriented additive manufacturing,” Aundera recounted. “The foundational idea for PrintParts emerged when our CEO and Founder, Robert Haleluk, was working within the injection molding industry. He keenly observed a rapidly increasing demand for additive manufacturing, particularly at a production scale. Leveraging his extensive manufacturing expertise, Robert established PrintParts with the clear mission to provide clients across diverse sectors—including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, and general industrial manufacturing—with high-quality, production-grade additive manufacturing services.”

“While striving to fulfill demanding production orders for his customers, Robert quickly identified traceability as a significant impediment to their confidence in adopting additive manufacturing on a larger scale. This critical insight led to the development of SmartParts,” Aundera continued. “In early 2020, Robert was joined by Cody Burke, a seasoned veteran in the additive manufacturing industry, who brought with him eight years of experience from Stratasys, where he spearheaded investor relations and strategic planning projects. Together, Robert and Cody conceived and developed the innovative idea for SmartParts – an embedded solution designed to deliver true end-to-end traceability specifically tailored for the additive manufacturing industry.”

Today, PrintParts stands as a leading advanced manufacturing technology provider. Its overarching mission is unequivocally centered on building unwavering confidence in additive manufacturing. This is achieved through a dual approach: by consistently delivering high-quality production services and, crucially, by establishing a revolutionary new standard for traceability and authentication with its proprietary SmartParts technology. This strategic focus ensures that PrintParts not only manufactures parts but also guarantees their integrity and verifiable history, addressing key concerns for industrial adoption.

PrintParts’ Comprehensive Offerings: From Production to Pioneering Traceability

“PrintParts offers a robust suite of services, encompassing both high-volume production additive manufacturing and advanced application development specifically built around our SmartParts solution,” Aundera detailed regarding the company’s capabilities. “Our operational footprint includes an impressive fleet of over 50 industrial printers, supporting a diverse range of additive technologies such as FFF, FDM, SLA, DLP, and SLS. A significant portion of our systems is strategically dedicated to the production of high-performance carbon fiber composite parts, giving us the capability to produce and ship more than 10,000 such parts every single week. This capacity underscores our commitment to industrial-scale additive manufacturing.”

Aundera also highlighted a significant past achievement: “One of our most impactful projects took place in 2020, when PrintParts proudly served as a prime contractor for New York City’s critical COVID-19 response. During this challenging period, we rapidly expanded our operations by establishing a custom-built, FDA and ISO-13485 compliant Class 1 medical device laboratory. Over a concentrated six-month period, this facility successfully produced over 1.5 million 3D printed nasal testing swabs, demonstrating our ability to deliver high-quality, critical components under immense pressure and stringent regulatory requirements.”

“Currently, approximately 70% of our business is derived from production orders placed by manufacturing organizations that are actively grappling with the complexities of integrating additive manufacturing into their existing quality management systems,” Aundera explained. “This direct engagement with our customers provides invaluable insights. We are constantly learning from their specific challenges and requirements, and these lessons directly inform and accelerate the ongoing development and refinement of our SmartParts solution, ensuring it meets real-world industrial needs. Through this iterative process, SmartParts is becoming an increasingly robust and user-friendly system.”

“PrintParts currently integrates SmartParts technology directly into the components we ship to a selection of our customers. This empowers participating customers with an unprecedented level of capability,” Aundera concluded. “They gain the ability to effortlessly trace parts back to PrintParts as the original supplier, to thoroughly verify the materials that were used in their production, and crucially, to confirm strict adherence to all specified manufacturing parameters and quality standards. This transparency builds profound trust and security within the supply chain.”

Unpacking SmartParts: The Engine of End-to-End Traceability and Authentication

“SmartParts fundamentally bridges the gap between digital assets and their corresponding physical parts, thereby ensuring comprehensive, end-to-end traceability across the entire product lifecycle,” Aundera emphasized when detailing the core functionality of SmartParts. “With SmartParts, the authenticity of both materials and finished parts can be verified with remarkable ease, requiring nothing more than a simple handheld scan. Our integrated solution comprises three key pillars: proprietary Intelligent Material taggants, specialized scanning devices, and the robust SmartParts cloud platform. This synergy makes it straightforward to authenticate materials at any stage and to instantly retrieve all relevant manufacturing data associated with a specific physical asset. We are effectively enabling fast, flexible, and reliable traceability of materials throughout the entire supply and manufacturing value chain, empowering organizations to achieve several critical objectives:”

• **Combat Counterfeiting:** Providing an unforgeable identity for parts significantly reduces the risk of fake components entering the supply chain.
• **Easily Add Embedded Lot and Batch Traceability:** Streamlining the process of tracking materials and parts by specific production lots or batches, enhancing quality control and recall efficiency.
• **Prove Source of Origin for Materials:** Meeting stringent regulatory requirements such as ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) by providing verifiable data on material provenance.
• **And, coming soon, serialize individual parts:** This advanced capability will allow for unique identification and tracking of every single component, offering the highest level of granular traceability.

Aundera elaborated on the unique technology underpinning SmartParts: “SmartParts’ proprietary Intelligent Material taggants are ingeniously composed of programmable particles. These particles can be seamlessly embedded directly within the additive materials themselves or, alternatively, applied to parts during post-processing stages. The magic of these programmable particles lies in their ability to convert energy from one wavelength to another. Crucially, their highly tunable properties introduce multiple layers of control, which can be leveraged to generate literally trillions of unique and distinct IDs. This unparalleled capacity for unique identification forms the bedrock of our traceability system, making each part identifiable and verifiable.”

“The SmartParts scanners are designed to precisely identify these unique IDs based on their specific energy response characteristics,” Aundera explained further. “Upon identifying an ID, the scanner then references our secure SmartParts Cloud platform to retrieve all digital manufacturing records meticulously linked to that specific ID. Our scanner offerings are diverse, ranging from straightforward binary solutions that enable simple, quick authentication checks to more sophisticated and complex solutions tailored for organizations requiring significantly increased levels of detailed traceability and data retrieval. This flexibility ensures that SmartParts can meet a wide spectrum of industrial needs, from basic verification to intricate supply chain monitoring.”

Why Traceability Matters: Securing the Future of Manufacturing

“Many of our customers are keenly interested in adopting additive manufacturing for production due to its compelling benefits, which include reduced lead times, enhanced sustainability through optimized material usage, and significant reductions in inventory costs,” Aundera stated, outlining the allure of AM. “However, additive manufacturing also introduces new and amplified risks related to traceability. The inherent ease with which digital design files can be duplicated, distributed, and subsequently manufactured by unauthorized parties poses a considerable challenge to security and intellectual property.”

“This critical vulnerability leads customers to harbor legitimate concerns about verifying the authenticity and quality of materials, effectively managing their sprawling network of suppliers, and authenticating crucial manufacturing data,” Aundera continued. “To truly propel the additive manufacturing industry forward into widespread, high-volume production applications, it is absolutely essential that we introduce and widely adopt technologies capable of comprehensively solving these fundamental problems. Such solutions must provide the robust security and transparent traceability that companies not only expect but critically depend on for their operations and reputation.”

Aundera also broadened the discussion to the wider manufacturing landscape: “Generally, counterfeiting has been escalating into an increasingly pervasive and costly problem across the entire manufacturing sector. This issue has been exacerbated by the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent geopolitical tensions, which have significantly disrupted global trade flows and supply chains. For instance, disturbing estimates suggest that over 8% of all medical devices currently in circulation are in fact fakes, posing severe health risks. Similarly, more than half a million counterfeit parts are believed to be placed onto airplanes every single year, presenting grave safety hazards. Without adequate protective measures, the accelerated adoption of additive technology, which drives down the cost of deploying high-quality production capabilities, has the potential to dangerously intensify these already alarming trends, making robust traceability solutions more critical than ever.”

“Furthermore, we are observing a substantial increase in interest from organizations diligently seeking to verify their compliance with emerging ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) regulations,” Aundera noted. “This involves integrating advanced traceability solutions that can definitively prove the source-of-origin for both materials and finished parts. Such capabilities are becoming indispensable for demonstrating ethical sourcing, responsible manufacturing, and overall corporate accountability, solidifying the need for innovations like SmartParts.”

The Future is Traceable: PrintParts and Web3 Innovations

“In the simplest and most direct terms, SmartParts serves to intrinsically link digital records with their corresponding physical assets. It represents a natural and logical extension of our PrintParts production service offering, enhancing the value and trustworthiness of every component we produce,” Aundera concluded. “We foresee an abundance of opportunities to deploy our cutting-edge technology to resolve critical challenges that plague contemporary manufacturing. Beyond traditional applications, we are also actively exploring emerging applications around digital property rights inextricably tied to physical assets, leveraging innovative technologies such as NFTs and other related web3 frameworks. This signifies our forward-thinking approach to securing and authenticating not just physical goods, but also their digital twins and associated data in a decentralized future. We have several exciting announcements planned for the remainder of the year, and we eagerly look forward to updating you all very soon!” For more information, readers can visit their website HERE.

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*All Photo Credits: PrintParts