I have been a fan of this community for sometime now and have always enjoyed seeing the wonderful and many times absolutely unexpected fruits of your labor. I have absolutely no idea how some of you pull off the amazing creations that I have seen over the past two or so years. Simply amazing. You guys (and girls) cram things that were never meant to be crammed into places in ways that are unique, innovative and oftentimes mindboggling. My comfort with a soldering iron ends pretty quickly and yet here I see entirely hacked up boards. I cringe when I see those because I respect the amount of time and dedication that goes into them. I personally don't get much past picking up a GB Micro and firing up some homebrew. I simply lack the skillsets that are obviously in abundance here.
While my post is partially commercial in nature, I feel that I am able to offer some distinct benefits to this community that nobody else is able to do and I feel that would be of direct benefit to many of you here - especially those who have CAD or Sketchup experience. If this type of post is frowned upon, please let me know and I will modify or remove it.
To the point: I am in the middle of starting up a different type of rapid prototype company. But I don't have any customers yet. Which means I have a $140,000 machine sitting in my garage while I learn to use it. Translation: I have excess capacity and am willing to make some parts at a huge discount while I am in the "beta" stage.
My machine uses polyjet technology and is made by Objet Geometries. That means it jets out a UV polymer in layers as thin as 16 microns and continues this process layer by layer until it builds up a 3d object. Polyjet is comparable to SLA (stereolithography), which uses big vats of resin and UV lasers but my machine offers even thinner layers and thus decreased stairstepping from SLA, which is already a very high resolution process. Parts come out smooth, strong and require little to no post processing. For the moment, I refer you to Objet's gallery to show you what some of the parts my machine can produce look like.
http://objet.com/Misc/Gallery/tabid/70/ ... fault.aspx
I intend to get a gallery of my own sample parts up and running shortly.
Prices are surprisingly reasonable because I have literally no overhead (for now) and I am learning how to use the machine. Consider this a beta test before I go live in the next month or two. I can't promise instant turnarounds and I can't promise 24/7 phone support or the like but I can promise that the parts you get meet your expectations or I will offer a full refund.
Given that each layer is 0.0006" thick, I believe that is well within tolerances for the type of projects that are done here. You could even make a mold of the final model that I send you and continue to make small scale copies, further driving down costs.
Anyway, let me list some sample prices:
A 3" x 3" x .5" Part would cost you $53.54 plus shipping.
A 5" x 6" x .5" Part would cost you $86.79 plus shipping.
A 3" x 5" x 1" Part would cost you $111.79 plus shipping.
A 6" x 6" x .75" Part would cost you $133.72 plus shipping.
To keep this in perspective, take your geometry to any other provider and see what they are going to charge you. Most places will charge a minimum of $200 to $300 for each of those parts. The cheapest price I have found for a 6" by 4" by 2" part is $455. For comparison, I am charging $237.73 for that same part. Send me your bounding box size and I will be happy to give you a quote.
The key to keeping prices low is to keep from having three large dimensions. Meaning a part that is 6x6x6 would be vastly more expensive than a part that was 6x6x1 because the machine has to build up each layer in 0.0006" increments and therefore takes much longer to build.
I would be happy to answer people's questions or help you understand the process more. This really is amazing technology and while it is not likely to be on everyone's desk in a year, my goal is to bring it to the masses in as much of an accessible way as I can. That or fail miserably but have a heck of a time trying
