Farms of 3D printers are a potential solution to batch production, with some companies relying on numerous machines to 3D print a large group of parts at once. While they may increase output, print farms may also be labor intensive to operate. To demonstrate the overall utility of its cloud robotics platform, an Oregon startup called Tend.ai has deployed a robotic arm, artificial intelligence and cloud computing to create an automated print farm. Tend.ai has built what it suggests is a universal machine automation solution that combines a number of components into a cloud robotics platform. While the specific make and model of each piece of hardware is left up to the user, all one needs to get started with Tend.ai is a robotic arm, a webcam and a robotic gripper.

If you've got more than a handful of 3D printers or other devices running at a time, it's a full-time job keeping them going -- removing and packaging products, tweaking settings, pushing "OK" after minor errors, that sort of thing. Why not have a robot do it for you? Tend.ai is a new company that helps you train collaborative robots to perform machine tending, something generally reserved for bots serving heavy industry. "This whole thing started because a friend of mine down the street literally has 20 3D printers, and his wife was having to run out every three minutes to keep them running," said Mark Silliman, co-founder and CEO of Tend.ai, in an interview. Silliman's company Smartwaiver was acquired in December, and his co-founders have also had a few recent exits. Security head James Gentes sold his analytics company The Social Business last year, as well, and backend engineer Robert Kieffer was part of Zenbe, which Facebook bought in 2010.