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!
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!