July 29, 2004
eMachineShop: your toys, delivered to your door
Brian Smith passes on this fantastic link to a placed call eMachineShop. Their blurb:
eMachineShop is the remarkable new way to get the custom parts you need. Download our free software, draw your part, and click to order - it's that easy! Your part will be machined and delivered. Even better, your cost is low due to the Internet, software, and automated machines.
Why waste time traveling, calling, faxing or emailing to conventional machine shops? Reduce your total time up to 90% and open doors to new products and projects. Intelligent design software gives instant exact pricing, expert feedback, and unrivaled convenience.
I took machining in college a few years ago (and have some military experience in a related field), but I don't have the setup to do some of the stuff I'd like to have. Now, I'm thinking of commissioning a number of cool toys I've been hankering after. Posted by Russell Whitaker at July 29, 2004 11:31 PM | TrackBack
Just think, you could have metal Legos!
Posted by: Andy Chen on July 30, 2004 12:30 AMThat sounds fantastic! - I can see it being used as a cheap, accessible resource for inventors who need to create prototypes but see setting up a shop at home as prohibitively expensive.
Bring on the better mousetraps :)
Posted by: Monica on July 30, 2004 03:37 AMMessed around with their free demo software and went through their audio tutorial. It was actually pretty easy to use. I don't have much CAD experience and I was able to get through it without much trouble.
I might try doing some modeling of some simple FAL parts this weekend to practice.
One problem that I might see with this place is that they are based in New Jersey. As you know, New Jersey is a socialist shithole. Therefore, they might hassle you about designing parts for firearms. Obviously, they can't do receivers without the proper FFL, but they might even be hesitant to do perfectly legal parts.
Posted by: Brian Smith on July 30, 2004 11:09 PMMy first thought was that the prices would be too high, but after looking at their site, they seem more than reasonable. Milling seems to be pretty expensive, though, so it wouldn't take too many custom parts to make buying your own milling machine cost effective. Even if you had your own machine shop, though, it seems like they would be an excellent resource to produce low quantities of parts (in the 100's). An inventor might need to go through the process of creating the parts the first time through - the act of creating the part could generate better ideas about the design, after all. Once the part's design is settled on, however, it doesn't make since for the inventor to spend hours repeating the process manually when he could use this resource to make duplicates for test or demonstration models.
Posted by: Bob Tipton on July 31, 2004 03:35 PMYes, eMachineShop is expensive. Your local machine shop can make those parts for you a lot cheaper. If you have some designs that you made with eMachineShop then you can export them to 3D DXF files that any other machine shop can read to produce your part at a reasonable price. You can find out how to do this on http://www.geocities.com/ems2obj
Posted by: Mike on April 18, 2006 05:06 AMYes, eMachineShop is expensive. Your local machine shop can make those parts for you a lot cheaper. If you have some designs that you made with eMachineShop then you can export them to 3D DXF files that any other machine shop can read to produce your part at a reasonable price. You can find out how to do this on http://www.geocities.com/ems2obj
Posted by: Mike on April 18, 2006 05:07 AM