Since 2021 I’ve been building up technical skills at the intersection of 3d design, short-run manufacturing, electronics, and embedded programming. It led me through dozens of highly diverse projects, where the requirements directed the learning, all the knowledge was tested in practice, and all the solutions were iterated on until they were practical enough.
As a result, the range of design and production processes I’m able to do in-house has grew substantially. Here’s some of the things I’m able to do directly at my workshop:
- functional 3d design in Fusion 360 - cnc machine parts, electronics cases, reverse-engineered replacement parts and custom tools for the workshop itself
- 3d printing on Bambu Lab X1C printer, previously Prusa MK3S - mainly in PETG, PLA and TPU. After hundreds of prints and thousands of hours worth of prints, getting high quality results of the right strength quickly is now a no-brainer
- high quality (0.1mm precision) 3d scanning from tiny objects like Warhammer figurines (using a customized OpenScan setup), all the way to full-sized cars using an Einstar scanner and a buff PC. Extremely useful for reverese-engineering products, designing accessories or just using physical objects in visualisations
- acrylic / HDF / plywood laser cutting and engraving. There’s some uses where 3d-printed parts don’t make too much sense, and laser-cut acrylic fills that niche wonderfully
- soldering - manual processes using a good old soldering iron, a hot-air station or a good-sized SMD hot plate makes any soldering job a breeze
- PCB layout in KiCad - while electronics design is a very deep topic that takes decades to master, I now have enough experience to quickly design many of prototype and enthusiast boards needed. Getting the designs ready for manufacturing by JLCPCB for short-run manufacturing helps close the loop
- embedded programming using platformio + Arduino, QMK, or lower-level with STM32/FreeRTOS
- a small subset of sheet metal work - small gauge sheet bending and spot welding. Good for making rugged cases or, say, custom cookie cutters.
- the workshop also has a decent oscilloscope, signal generator, a reference TV signal generator (long story), bucketloads of electronics components and metal fasteners, and naturally a host of metalworking tools
Being able to all these things in-house brings the design-to-prototype turnaround time down a lot and eliminates the miscommunication risks when talking to suppliers. That’s not to say I don’t work with suppliers for parts that doesn’t make sense for me to manufacture myself.
If you need support with your venture, hit me up, I’d be happy to share the experience in service of any and all projects that could use it.