Gadgetopia

Designing something in two dimensions and printing it out has always been a fairly easy task, and recently getting something “imaged” in three dimensions has become reality. But only if you don’t care how durable that something ends up being.

Now there is a better alternative; eMachine Shop will do it for you. Download and use their free software to draw your design (or import a dxf file from a CAD drawing), it will tell you if your doodad can be made or not, then it will give you a cost estimate for the work. You then send your drawing to eMachine Shop, and they will build it and ship it out to you.

They do injection molding, milling, turning, laser cutting, waterjet cutting, wire EDM, tapping, bending, blanking, punching, plastic extrusion, and thermoforming. Turnaround time is generally about 30 days; considering the fact that it’s one-off work, that’s not unreasonable. The cost is pretty reasonable too. An article on cnews listed 10 brass doorknobs custom milled for about $150. That includings labor.

seen first on Gizmodo