[ihc] eMachineShop News Article

[Dan Nees <cookiedan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

By Peter Svensson
The Associated Press

It's the Internet Revolution meets the Industrial Revolution: a new
program that lets people design 3-D objects like car parts and doorknobs
in metal or plastic, then order them online.

Programs for computer- aided design, or CAD, have been around for
decades, but eMachineShop.com appears to be the first service that
checks whether a design can be made and tells the customer how much it
will cost. If the customer wants the item, the design goes to a "real
world" machine shop for manufacturing.

The key to this enterprise is free design software provided by
eMachineShop that aims to be simple enough for hobbyists and other
nonengineers.

Prices won't be competitive with Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart won't make 10
copper doorknobs, then sandblast them for you. EmachineShop charges $143
for that.

The company was created by Jim Lewis, a programmer and self-professed
"tinkerer." One previous credit: "the world's hardest sliding block
puzzle." 

Lewis' software company, Micrologic, designed eMachineShop and contracts
with machine shops around the world to do the manufacturing.



Variety in its parts

Even though the Midland Park, N.J., company, which has 19 employees,
doesn't advertise, it has handled more than 1,000 orders for things like
door signs, motorcycle seats, robot frames, car engine covers, guitar
plates and camera parts.

The most expensive item it has sold since it began beta testing last
year is a $4,011 aluminum, 26-inch-diameter part for a high-powered
laboratory magnet.

The customers range from large companies that make prototypes to
hobbyists, including Dennis J. Vegh of Mesa, Ariz., who had the company
make metal parts for an airplane he's building based on a 1929 design.

"I had to have the pieces made, because they do not exist anywhere,"
Vegh said.

He found the software quick and easy to use. The quality of the
finishing has varied a bit between orders, he said, but has been
acceptable.

"Being able to sit at your home computer, draw up some parts, submit
them and 30 days later they are on your doorstep, all without human
contact, is mind-blowing," Vegh says.

Lewis, the company founder, estimates that with conventional methods, it
takes about 40 hours to design a part, get a quote, straighten out
manufacturing problems with the machine shop and put the order in.

Taylan Altan, professor at the College of Engineering at Ohio State
University, agrees, saying the process can easily drag out to two weeks.



The expertise factor

"One of the biggest problems we have today in American design and
manufacturing is that designers know very little about manufacturing,"
he says.

As a result, designers draw parts that are hard to make and require
several rounds of modification before they can be put into production, a
problem eMachineShop aims to avoid by building the knowledge of a
machinist into the design software.

For instance, if you're designing a part made of sheet metal, it won't
allow you to include a bend too close to an edge - the machinist needs
enough surface to hold on to when bending.

Lewis is also working on Pad2Pad, an application that makes electronics.
Manufacturers of printed circuit boards, like PCBExpress.com, are
already online, but Lewis aims to take the concept one step further by
also attaching components like resistors, capacitors and chips to the
boards.

Pad2Pad is taking orders, but it is "a couple of years behind
eMachineShop" in its development, Lewis says. One problem is stocking
the components customers want.

Lewis also wants to branch into what is perhaps the least sexy segment
of manufacturing: making cardboard boxes for packaging.

"My dream," Lewis says, "is essentially to become the Amazon in the
manufacturing segment."

Copyright ) 2004, Newsday, Inc.
-- 
Dan Nees <cookiedan@domain.elided>