Our goals - The wider perspective
5-axis FDM 3D printing has suffered from a chicken vs. egg problem with the availability of printers and a slicer. 5-axis machines are not available on the market today because there is no viable software to run them and the software hasn't been developed because there are no machines to use it.
We believe the main issue is the lack of a capable easy-to-use 5-axis slicer. However, no matter which part is the larger challenge, one is useless without the other. With this in mind we set out to create a highly robust set of the two. Hardware:
We developed a fully new modular 5-axis printer (for the lack of a better word) that support a variety of tools and materials. The goal was to create a system that is versatile, easy to modify as a part of ongoing R&D, and very durable. These goals resulted in our Archer Demonstrator. As the name suggests, it is meant to serve as a first generation machine that can do whatever we wish to include in the slicer - provide real-life demonstrations of new functionality - and to do it consistently without hardware failures.
Archer Demonstrator may or may not reach the market in its current form, but that's ok. All the major components of the system, 5-axis motion system, tool changer, AutoRegen drybox, etc. (check out Hardware for more details) are viable as stand-alone upgrades. Even better, they are all very DIY friendly. In fact, Archer Demonstrator was built with just the print bed and machine frame and covers manufactured externally as custom designs. Everything else is either off-the-shelf or 3D printed.
Our goal is to make 5-axis 3D printing available to regular people, no matter who designed or built the hardware.
Software:
This is the main challenge - Creating software that makes 5-axis printing simple enough for everyday people. No need for class rooms or trainings, make it easy enough that MaxiSlicer becomes 'just' an improved slicer.
In our opinion, that's the truest form of technological advancement - making difficult things easy.
This is of course easier said than done. We have laid out a roadmap of features needed to make 5-axis printing easy. The flip side of the coin is that the software needs to do a considerable amount of heavy lifting to let the users have it easy. Basically, our task is to program all the difficult things once so that it can be avoided by regular users in their day to day life. This is what the first 3-axis slicers did, as well. We are just dialing up the difficulty for us software developers.
The core functionality of the slicer is already operational (check out our YouTube channel) and we are continuously working on adding new features. We will eventually release material on the slicer itself, but we still have more work ahead of us before that.
Our goal is to make non-planar 5-axis 3D printing easy enough for regular hobbyists, and to support a variety of motion systems and hardware designs, eventually even user-defined ones. In other words, we want to make 5-axis FDM printing both easy enough and truly available enough that regular people can do it at home. 
