

My startup's private beta has just launched. 3D printing for the masses - steveklabnik
http://www.solidsmack.com/couldfab-3d-printing-for-those-just-hankerin-for-distributed-manufacturing/2009-09-28/#more-6473

======
samwillis
I work as a design engineer and regularly have parts I'm designing RPed so
this looks really exciting and I look forward to something like this being
available in the UK.

One of the things that we would usually do is have the RP firm finish our
parts for us, painting and polishing, perhaps applying an overlay for the
graphics on a screen or even vac casting to make a small batch of parts. I
think it would be really important for you to allow people to request these
services through the site as well.

I notice that you mentioned on the site that you will eventually supply laser
and water-jet cutting as well. I think it would be good to also source
machined components though the site.

We are increasingly finding that having parts prototyped in china is about
half the price of having them produced here in the UK. For example a few
months back I was looking to have a 400-300-200mm part prototyped that had
been designed for injection molded. I cant remember the exact figures but our
Chinese suppler quoted half the price for machining the component out of a
solid block of plastic using a 5-axis milling machine than the local RP firm
was quoting for an SLS. I hope you will allow oversees suppler to bid though
the site as they are very competitive and very responsive!

~~~
steveklabnik
Hi Sam. There's actually no reason that you couldn't use this in the UK if you
wanted to; shipping costs would just end up being a bit higher. Eventually,
I'm sure we'll have some international sellers on our system to help out with
that as well, but baby steps!

We've talked to a few industrial design firms, and they agree with you on the
finishing aspect. The issue is that unlike uploading a file, there are a _lot_
of ways that those kinds of things can be done. Imagine filling out a form on
how you'd like finishing to go! So we've sort of come to a middle option.
After you're quoted, but before you've accepted, there's a commenting feature
that allows you to have a dialogue with the seller, so that you could ask for
these kinds of things, and they could adjust their quote. We'll be looking
into how to make that process easier in the future, to be sure. As you've
said, it's pretty important.

I'm assuming by 'machined' components you mean subtractive processes like CNC?
That'll be even farther down the support list, but yes, we'll get there at
some point. The relative number of types of machines that do 3D printing and
laser cutting are tiny compared to the number of CNC machines, so we figured
that it would be a good beachead to start with.

We don't have any bias against having international sellers. As far as your 5x
difference goes, there aren't that many SLS machines in the UK, but lots of
milling machines in China. Add in the whole £ vs 元 thing, and I can certainly
see how China'd come out cheaper. However, you have a lot of turn around time,
and I've heard of some people having intellectual property concerns, unfounded
or not.

The best thing about the Internet is that it levels the playing field for
everyone!

------
mressler
Steve,

Will there be much discrepancy between the manufactured parts if they actually
get fabricated in two separate machine shops? How precise is the equipment
used in most of your participating shops?

I see you're working on the "How it Works" section and I'd love it if you had
some pointers to books or frequently used applications (hopefully low cost??)
for this industry.

The premise seems solid and I'm looking forward to using CloudFab!

~~~
steveklabnik
Currently, parts will only be manufactured in one shop. We're big proponents
of the 'release early, release often' mentality. So we're starting small,
getting feedback, and improving. Getting bigger jobs done across shops is one
of those things that is on the to do list. For that to be efficient, we'd have
to be producing a fairly large batch of parts, and so we'll tackle that
problem once it happens.

Well, we're accepting sellers, as well, so we'll have a pretty wide range of
equipment. As of right now, we have equipment of average precision. I'm not
sure if that helps, so I just grabbed an average printer from Dimension to
give you a ballpark figure, and it has a .010" layer thickness. We're trying
to encourage those with MakerBots to sign up, and they have a .1mm resolution.

One of the greatest blessings of 3D printers is also the greatest weakness,
right? You can basically make anything. So the problem with examples is that
one can make total sense to someone, and be totally foreign to someone else.
To give you some ideas, I'd say check out Thingaverse, or this interview with
Bram Cohen, inventor of Bittorrent:
[http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/268-Shapeways-
Member-...](http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/268-Shapeways-Member-
Interviews-Bram-Cohen.html)

Thanks for the questions. We have some bigger things in the works as well.
More on those later.

------
steveklabnik
Hey guys. A few of you have asked about my startup, and I was keeping it under
wraps, but no longer!

If you guys want to get in on stuff, use "hackernews" as a code so I know to
give you dibs over random people.

Anybody have any questions?

~~~
cperciva
Can you put up a page with examples of objects and how much it cost to produce
them?

I think I'm like the vast majority of people you'll see -- vaguely aware of 3D
printing, but with no sense of what it can produce or how much it costs. If I
could look at a page and say "gee, I'd like to make something like that item
there, and that price looks reasonable" then I'd be far more likely to use it.

~~~
steveklabnik
Education is actually a huge part of all of this, as I was in the same boat as
you a year ago.

Short answer: anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. It depends
on how fine of quality you want in the part (which is also related to the
particular process). If you can deal with some rough edges, it's much cheaper.

Longer answer: We're actually in the middle of making our "How it works"
section much more in-depth. Something like this should be on there, especially
for purposes of comparison between processes.

