Fabbaloo - Fabbaloo Blog

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Thursday

Jul082010

Ponoko Hubs the UK

Thursday, July 8, 2010 |

Distributed manufacturing platform Ponoko has announced they've got a new manufacturing hub: London, UK-based RazorLAB. This adds to their already established empire of hubs including New Zealand, San Francisco, Milan and Berlin. What does it mean? Greatly decreased shipping costs for makers using Ponoko's services. In fact, Ponoko has actually been subsidizing shipments to the UK until now to remain competitive.

The new hub is another in a continuing line of "independent" shops using Ponoko's "making system", joining the Milan and Berlin operations. These are independently operated shops that are affiliated with Ponoko. We don't know the deal between Ponoko and the independent hubs, but we suspect it's a pretty good deal for these shops, since the association brings makers and their designs from around the world to their local manufacturing facility. Oh, and how can we forget the near 150 very small fabricating shops in the 100kGarages project that are also associated with Ponoko.

The more you look at it, the more it appears Ponoko is a global coordinating layer on top of the manufacturing base, a layer that funnels consumers to the right equipment in the right locations.

Via Ponoko

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Monday

May242010

Poor Man's 3D Printing: The Print

Monday, May 24, 2010 |

In our previous article we provided ideas on how to prepare your 3D model at the lowest cost possible. But once you have the model ready to print, how do you get it done at low cost?

There are three basic approaches:

You Know Someone. That's right - you just might happen to know someone who has access to a 3D printer, perhaps at work, at a school or less likely at a residence. A few kind words, a simple request and perhaps a bottle of a favorite fluid might do the trick. This is, by far, the least expensive approach. Erm, depending on the fluid.
Use a Service. You don't have a printer or access to one. Pricing is typically done by volume and choice of material(s). There are many services available to accept your .STL file and print it out, but the most popular services are Shapeways and Ponoko. They'll print your model on high-quality commercial machinery and ship it to you overnight at a reasonable cost.
Get a Printer. You realize you want to print a great many items, or the same item many times and believe using a service would be awkward and possibly expensive. You can avoid the USD$10,000's required for commercial printers and their subsequent operational cost by instead choosing a hobby 3D printer kit. The most popular choices today are from MakerBot, Fab@Home and BitsFromBytes, each of which offer kits or plans for usable 3D printers for a few thousand US dollars or less.

This article is part of a short series on Poor Man's 3D Printing. You might also want to read The Design.

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Tuesday

Apr062010

Ponoko Makes MakerBots!

Tuesday, April 6, 2010 |

What does a personal manufacturing service from New Zealand have to do with a 3D printer kit manufacturer from New York City? A lot more now, apparently. The two organizations have teamed up to leverage each other's strengths.

MakerBot has opened a Showroom on Ponoko, where you can purchase and customize not only your MakerBot chassis, but also MakerBot electronics and whole assembly kits.

One of the most interesting personal aspects of the MakerBot is the chassis, which is supplied in pretty basic form in the standard kit. However, it's simply a collection of panels cut and holed in the correct pattern. Many MakerBot owners have highly customized their printer by replacing these panels, sometimes in pretty radical ways.

Now it's much easier to customize these panels through Ponoko's personal manufacturing service. The MakerBot CupCake design files are freely downloadable from the new showroom, allowing you to customize them in any way you'd like - without disturbing the functional pattern, of course. Then you simply upload the customized file back to Ponoko and use their service to physically manufacture the customized panels. The great part is Ponoko's selection of materials, which include 13 different acrylics, black and white Delrin, clear PETG, two species of bamboo, cork, hardboard, MDF and even veneer.

No two CupCakes shall ever be the same again.

Via Ponoko and MakerBot (Hat tip to Derek)

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Wednesday

Feb032010

EuroPonoko!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 |

As we suspected a short while ago, Ponoko has announced a new build location in Europe. The new hub will be located in Berlin, and joins the existing build hubs in San Francisco and New Zealand.

This development means European makers or consumers will have significantly less shipping costs when using Ponoko:

For example the cost of shipping a P1 size of 3mm thick plastic sheet of material to anywhere in Germany will plummet by about 85% to around just US$9, while places like Amsterdam and Paris will reduce by around three-quarters to about US$16!

There's a slight catch, however. It turns out that Ponoko did not actually build the hub themselves - they've simply partnered with an existing fabrication operation:Formulor. According to Ponoko:

Formulor is 100% independent of Ponoko. This means the pricing is different, the materials catalog is different, and the business terms are different. And in this case, your package of goodies will be delivered from Formulor, not Ponoko.

Yes, it's not quite the same, but the results will no doubt be very similar and of course at less cost. Great move, Ponoko!

Via Ponoko Blog

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Wednesday

Dec302009

Ponoko Mystery?

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 |

New Zealand-based personal manufacturing service Ponoko has posed a mystery with an obscure post on their blog. The entire text of the post is:

Hello Europe
It may be snowing…. but some bright rays are on their way.

We know that Ponoko has already set up a satellite manufacturing hubs in the USA (San Francisco area), but this is the first we've heard about Ponoko setting up a European manufacturing hub.

Or do we?

Perhaps the summer-soaked New Zealanders are merely having pity on the wintery Europeans in the northern hemisphere.

Via Ponoko

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Tuesday

Dec012009

Ponoko's List

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 |

You've probably heard about Ponoko, the New Zealand based personal manufacturing and marketplace service. You can not only have your item built with their facilities, but you can also mark your item for sale and others can have Ponoko build it for them, too. And you get paid for it!

One of the interesting twists to Ponoko's wide range of services is the ability to request a design. That's right, if you don't know how to design something, you can punch in a description of the desired object, post it on Ponoko and (hopefully) some inventive maker will stumble across your request and make it for you.

To see the list, simply sign on to Ponoko's site (you *do* have an id there, don't you?) and hit this link. As of this writing, we see some USD$155,000 in items requested. The largest item is for a lamp clasp at USD$75,000 for 1,000 units. These prices might even be low, as the requester merely specifies the "ideal price per unit".

We're wondering if Fabbaloo readers with design skills are aware they might be able to pull in some extra cash for their ZCorp or Objet 3D printer savings fund by knocking off some of these requests.

Via Ponoko

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Wednesday

Sep232009

The 20,000 Meet the 6,000

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 |

This is quite interesting - a partnership between Ponoko, producers of a terrific personal manufacturing and sales platform, and ShopBot, makers of inexpensive CNC Routers. What they've done is create a new gathering place for both designers and fabricators: 100KGarages.com.

The idea is that designers (or shoppers) on Ponoko who find a great design now have the option of having the item built locally by any one of (eventually) 100,000 garages equipped with ShopBot tooling.

We think this is a great idea, because it not only reinforces the green idea of "doing things locally", it also takes some pressure off of Ponoko's ultra-busy manufacturing facilities. It makes sense: Ponoko has a storehouse of designs and a broad audience of shoppers, while ShopBot has thousands of their machines deployed worldwide, waiting to build stuff. 100KGarages simply puts the two together.

The view from the CEOs explains this clearly.

ShopBot President Ted Hall:

Ponoko's making system gives our ShopBot owners the ability to receive a new stream of work from a wide range of customers. Our partnership also means everyone now has easy access to their own local 3D fabricator. This is the first step to providing a solution for the doers and makers out there who want to join in re-building America, one garage at a time.

Ponoko CDO David ten Have:

Our online making system makes it easier than ever before to turn ideas into real things, and by partnering with ShopBot we bring together more than 20,000 creators and over 6,000 fabricators to use a powerful online service to design, make and deliver goods locally.

At this point, it's still a bit new and according to their site:

It may sound a bit complicated at first but our idea is to be as open and unconstrained as possible, while also making it possible to get stuff done easily. We don't want to force fabricators or designers into a particular framework and will allow each a range of options for participation. We expect that the system and methods here will continuously evolve as we learn about what works best. There will be opportunities for feedback and interaction in the forums and we encourage everyone to participate.

We totally agree with the idea and wish 100KGarages 100K successes.

Via 100KGarages (Hat tip to Olga)