Hi Hacker News! I'm one of the co-founders of Voodoo Manufacturing (https://voodoomfg.com/) in the current YC W17 batch. Voodoo Manufacturing is an automated 3D printing factory capable of producing anywhere from 1-10,000 plastic parts in 2 weeks or less, at injection molding prices. The difference between us and other 3D printing services is that we use lower-end commoditized 3D printers rather than commercial or industrial machines. Today we have 160 MakerBot Replicator 2s. We started Voodoo because we believed these machines were capable of making high-enough quality parts and products for various use cases. Obviously we're not (yet) producing any high-performance parts for airplanes, etc., but we can make cost-competitive hardware components, and surprisingly we make a lot of promotional products (event swag, trophies, memorabilia, etc.)
Since launching Voodoo we've come to realize that traditional manufacturing is still really hard for most people and companies, and definitely falls short when you're producing parts in runs of less than 10,000 units. More than 3D printing, we're excited about the future of fully digital manufacturing -- going from a digital design to physical parts with virtually no upfront costs or overhead. Today we're cost-competitive with injection molding for runs of 1-10k units (the exact cross-over point depends on the part), but our goal is to reduce costs by 90% over the next 5 years, and thus become competitive for runs of up to 100k units. We also believe that 3D printing and other digital manufacturing technologies will continue to improve, from materials to machines, and so over time we'll become capable of producing high-quality and high-performance parts that can be used for more applications.
A couple of projects we've worked on include this current marketing campaign with Dixie (http://www.crushtomizer.com/) where they're using our API to submit orders to be manufactured and drop-shipped on-demand, and a pet-project where we printed a life-size body model in less than 24 hours (http://blog.voodoomfg.com/2016/06/10/a-life-size-human-model...). Today, we've worked with over 1,200 customers, from large brands to small startups, to help people make things that wouldn't be possible or economical with other manufacturing methods. We're excited about all the things currently happening within manufacturing, and are proud to be one of the companies trying to push forward and build a new type of factory, right here in the US.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on what we're doing, what you might want that we don't currently offer, or help you out if you have a project in mind. Thanks so much!
How many hours do you have on your Makerbots? I've worn two into the ground, and at around 500 hours things start to "go wrong". Air prints, printer head misalignment, more frequent clogged nozzles, a variety of things. At 1000 hours, belts start to show wear, build plates have noticeable warpage, extruder gears need replaced.
If you can, could you speak to your long term maintenance plan? I was swamped keeping two Rep 2s running consistently, I can't imagine managing a fleet of 160.
In a similar vein, it would be really cool if in a year or so a blog post showed up showing statistically significant numbers about wear on the MBs, percentages of successful prints, why prints failed, etc.
I also have had really bad experiences with Makerbots after a few months of moderate daily use. But Makergear and a few others around the same price point have been pretty great so far.
That said, my organization moved on from the consumer tier printers to a few of the higher end ones, so I likely won't have the best input on those anymore.
Are you just doing FDM printing or can you also do milling?
I'm very very interested in multiple possible $300-$1000 budget things for both. Edit: Looking at the other comments (I haven't priced anything out using the site yet, scared to do so b/c i don't like drip campaigns), some of my projects might be below this budget using you! Wow!
Is the goal that I use this service to make beautiful enclosures for my projects, or to do all the hardware needs for my project from design to complete?
I've mostly used Oshpark/Shapeways. I was looking into getting a desktop milling machine like an Othermill or Shapeoko, but from my testing they're still way too loud to have in my home office.
Do you cater to one-off things from people like me, or is the hope to be doing mostly B2B?
We're just doing FDM today, but in the future we plan on expanding to other 3D printing technologies (i.e. SLA, SLS, etc), and eventually even non 3D printing tech like milling or laser cutting.
If you don't want to submit a form on our website, feel free to either email me at jonathan@voodoomfg.com.
Exactly, today's cine we'r eonly manufacturing plastic parts, most hardware companies use us to make enclosures, brackets, and other internal and external components. And then prototypes of course as well.
We definitely do one off projects. If you want, you can just upload files to our website Direct Print service and checkout. Those orders leave our factory next business day: https://voodoomfg.com/direct-print
Oh this is fantastic. I have a few ESP8266s sitting around bare / in tiny ugly plastic containers, I'd love to finally get them nice enclosures. I'll definitely check out the direct print / your site!
The only schematics I have right now are for an external project from years ago with specific slots for sensors/cables. I haven't made anything for my own projects yet since I considered the enclosure part too expensive and not worth the time, I'm going to rethink that now though.
These are great recommendations, since I've never heard of the companies before :) I have a friend who recently joined Tempo Automation, who seem to be able to do this too.
Sadly it seems that while in the last year or two many new companies have entered this field yet, I personally haven't had much time to shop around and try anything but Oshpark. Exciting times though!
Oh, you mean PCB milling! Well never mind then; those three are all for metal and plastic milling. I worked at Plethora for a bit, I forget that "milling" means different things to different people.
Good to see a manufacturing startup in YC! I'm currently a grad student in industrial engineering and have been working with geometric analysis for manufacturability for around 2 years now.
What types of analysis are you doing on the parts to determine cost? Slicing, orientation optimization, volume analysis, full toolpaths with estimated time?
Does your analysis automatically look at the tradeoff between injection molding and 3d printing for a particular design which was uploaded?
I noticed the current interface requires all parts to be in the same unit. Any chance of a per-part unit selection (while keeping the batch)?
We look at object SA, V, and geometry and without slicing estimate print time and material usage. From there we factor in other costs such as machine time, labor, and packing and shipping.
We don't compare to injection molding to calculate price. When we say price competitive between 1 and 10k units, it's based on avg IM mold and units costs. It's pretty hard to find data on that though.
Yeah, good point. We don't yet let users assign different units to different models in the same purchase on our website, but can add that feature!
Oh, I follow now. I was going to mention that your site doesn't advertise PIM at all if that's a service offered! I really wish there were readily accessible data sources with pricing in the manufacturing field. Trying to estimate impact and cost savings is a mess without the data.
What kind of internal fill patterns are you using? What are some of the tests which get run in the machines? Do you have any numbers on how accurate the printers are compared to Joe Schmo who just bought his first $1,000 3d printer?
I agree, but at the end of the day you need some estimate of what's being manufactured to produce a price. Otherwise, we'd only be able to give you some rough prices per g of material, print hr, and labor...
We very our infill depending on the part, but usually just standard hex. We did have some factory-wide precision numbers which I'd have to dig up. If you interested in learning more feel free to shoot me an email at jonathan@voodoomfg.com!
Great question. It was for a few reasons. A lot of YC is still what happens during the batch (Tuesday dinners, office hours, demo day, etc), and we felt those were things that could benefit us. As well, a lot of VCs aren't used to "manufacturing" startups, so we felt that having the YC stamp would provide some nice validation and hopefully make conversations with investors better. Also, YC just naturally pushes you to work so hard for the 3 months your in it that we felt it would also be a net positive. At the end of the day, we determined that if we went through YC and continue to do well, it would be worth it, and if we end up failing, YC won't be the reason.
We are definitely cheaper! I don't know if you compared to the Shapeways PLA option, but that's actually us doing the fulfillment ;)
We're cheaper than other 3D printing services because we took a different approach and use lower-end commoditized 3D printers, rather than commercial or industrial machines. The machines we use are cheaper, and use cheaper (open) materials, and require cheaper maintenance and repairs. We're also optimized for volume and cost-reduction as a company, where as Shapeways is more optimized for variety and low-volume orders.
We use 3D printing extensively, for large sized parts, and there are very few options out there.
Consider buying a few machines that can do very large parts. We would use you literally today if you could do that. It's a very underserved part of the market.
What do you use the parts for? We'll be introducing medium format printers into our factory this quarter, but they will be more like 300 x 300 x 450mm. Would definitely be interested in what you're doing though, because we're always looking for ways to expand our offering :) Shoot me a message at jonathan@voodoomfg.com if you want to chat more.
Does it have to be a single piece, or is partitioning it into smaller chunks an option? There are a number of academic papers on cutting models to fit inside the build box constraint of 3d printers, though I'm not aware of any nice, automatic, commercial options right now.
I noticed you guys don't ship to Canada - any specific reason why? Also your user edit page appears to be broken - https://voodoomfg.com/users/edit, click update, drops to a blank white page
This looks great! I myself just bought a chinese 3d printer to prototype some parts. One thing I noticed was QA was difficult. If I did a run of 10k parts, how would you QA them?
We are able to get more consistent prints than a lot of people using their own printer, mostly because we've been able to build a lot of process around maintain and operation. So, for a given part, we'd make a sample for you to get approval, and then use that as spec. We regularly test printers to make sure they're operating normally.
Great! Sorry I didn't know whether or not to post to the root. I noticed you only had PLA and TPU materials. Is ABS in the works? My project required waterproofing and more strength than PLA.
This is a really cool approach to make 3d printing affordable!
I'm one of the cofounders of Rolling Cube (rollingcube.in), an Indian startup in the digital manufacturing space. We're trying to make traditional manufacturing convenient and accessible to everyone, starting with laser cutting, and would love your feedback on the concept.
Quotes are based on the specific model. You can upload a STL or OBJ to our site to see what the price is for our Direct Print service (low volume). For high volume orders, sometimes the price is slightly different since we quote more accurately and can sometimes make optimizations. Generally things can cost as little as $0.25 and pretty much go up from there.
We can make plastic parts at the same volumes but without the mold startup cost (that is how we are cost competitive). Because we don't need to machine a mold out of aluminum, we can get started immediately from your digital file.
Because we work from digital files, we can do a lot of other fun things like customize every object to be slightly different! It's all about zero spin-up cost and time!
Our quoting engine needs a mesh file to estimate price from. As well, all of the 3D printer compiles need the same... It should be easy to export your model as a STL or OBJ though!
Please develop a different, self-degrading material - we already have too many plastic material in the ocean and it is a major problem - you certainly did read about it, this is commonly known nowadays. I wonder how anybody would build a new business on the idea of flooding the world with even more poison.
The material we use, PLA, is actually biodegradable! It would take a while naturally, but can be done easily with industrial equipment. We also recycle all of our scrap material back into filament :)
Conclusion: "bio" plastics are not better in any way.
Especially PLA from genetically modified corn is not a good solution, sorry.
To reduce the amount of harm you are doing to the planet with that mass production facility should build a safe recycling chain for your customers until you find some less destructive way to make money.
To the HN techno-blinded crowd: downvoting these facts does not produce a better health for your children.
Growing up and becoming an adult also means being able to take responsibility for the future. But, yeah, Trump on, Amerrica!
Since launching Voodoo we've come to realize that traditional manufacturing is still really hard for most people and companies, and definitely falls short when you're producing parts in runs of less than 10,000 units. More than 3D printing, we're excited about the future of fully digital manufacturing -- going from a digital design to physical parts with virtually no upfront costs or overhead. Today we're cost-competitive with injection molding for runs of 1-10k units (the exact cross-over point depends on the part), but our goal is to reduce costs by 90% over the next 5 years, and thus become competitive for runs of up to 100k units. We also believe that 3D printing and other digital manufacturing technologies will continue to improve, from materials to machines, and so over time we'll become capable of producing high-quality and high-performance parts that can be used for more applications.
A couple of projects we've worked on include this current marketing campaign with Dixie (http://www.crushtomizer.com/) where they're using our API to submit orders to be manufactured and drop-shipped on-demand, and a pet-project where we printed a life-size body model in less than 24 hours (http://blog.voodoomfg.com/2016/06/10/a-life-size-human-model...). Today, we've worked with over 1,200 customers, from large brands to small startups, to help people make things that wouldn't be possible or economical with other manufacturing methods. We're excited about all the things currently happening within manufacturing, and are proud to be one of the companies trying to push forward and build a new type of factory, right here in the US.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on what we're doing, what you might want that we don't currently offer, or help you out if you have a project in mind. Thanks so much!